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There’s a lot of companies who want to hire people with diverse backgrounds. Until it comes to little things like...previous experience. 🤷
10 years ago this was pretty common: “We want someone from a Big 10 school, a former athlete, someone in a fraternity or sorority, etc.”
And a lot of places STILL hire this way, especially in sales. They’re just self-aware enough to not verbalize it.
A lot of it comes from the idea that only ultra-competitive personalities are great at sales. But that's not true.
What you really need to be successful in sales, as Debra Senra mentioned in our recent podcast, is grit. The mental fortitude to commit to success.
Grit can look like a lot of things. Working your way through community college. Working a difficult job in some other field (e.g. retail) and not giving up. Even just living through difficult life circumstances and persevering.
And there’s nothing wrong with hiring an athlete either. But go back. Look at your successful hires under the ‘classic’ profile. You’ll notice something: they didn’t all work out.
They may have been competitive. But they didn’t all have grit.
Full conversation with Debra Senra (CRO at Ten Spot) is available on Hirewell’s Talent Insights, here.
You can follow me on LinkedIn here. Join the discussion on this LinkedIn post (or give it a 👍) here.