Industry experience: the most overrated criterion in C-level searches.
“The candidate must have 15 years of experience in automotive / mechanical engineering / chemicals.” I hear that sentence in briefings almost every week. And it’s a sentence that kills innovation before it starts.
In a real transformation or restructuring, deep industry DNA is often less an asset than a blind spot. People who have walked an industry’s well-trodden paths for too long tend to tackle the crisis with yesterday’s recipes.
The best turnaround managers we at TALENTspy have placed in recent years were often industry agnostics.
What they bring isn’t their competitors’ contact list but a universal, razor-sharp restructuring playbook. They handle stakeholders with agility, manage cash flow under pressure and orchestrate across functions. They ask the uncomfortable questions the industry insider no longer dares to ask.
Less industry purism, more focus on a genuine ability to drive change: that’s what protects enterprise value.
Are you ready to open up to candidates from other industries who bring hard execution skills?
