Non-traditional employees of all types are typically assets to companies, even if their undergraduate degrees don’t directly match up with their job titles. While there are cases where you’d definitely want a one-to-one match (i.e., a doctor), HR is a more flexible field.
Why Settle for One Type of HR Professional?
Human resource professionals can be found in every industry and sector, including healthcare, education, social service, and government, so why just choose candidates with an HR degree?
Degrees in workplace development, marketing, psychology, or business admin can impact an HR employee’s decisions for the better, but why stop there? A bachelor’s in education, communication, finance, and economics can all offer your professionals a unique perspective.
Relevant experience, hobbies, or a customer service background can be more than enough to bring something new to the table. Designers and visual artists shouldn’t be overlooked, either.
In the end, HR diversity is an absolute necessity in any industry, so is the candidate’s ability to be empathetic, trustworthy, and compromising. Knowing how to use the technology required for their job, like payroll software and pay stub makers, is another much-needed skill in HR.
How Diversity Boost Profits
Studies show that diverse teams produce better outcomes. When you’re flexible with your hiring practices and remove all biases are ability, gender, and age, your team will perform better and bring in more revenue for your company. In the hiring process, don’t focus on:
- Ivy League Schools: Someone who can go to an Ivy League School likely comes from an affluent background, but several of your best employees won’t ever attend or graduate from Harvard. About 0.02% of the American population counts themselves as Ivy League Alumni, so you’re severely limiting your candidate pool.
- Traditional Career Paths: Many single-parents would be incredible HR employees but are passed up due to gaps in their schedule likely created to raise their children.
- Consistency: People change careers, not jobs, 7 times during their lifetimes. Treat adaptability as a virtue, not a detriment, to see a rise in profits.
3 Other Potential Benefits of Hiring Non-Traditional Staff
Hiring a non-traditional HR employee isn’t about hiring a great candidate despite not having relevant work experience. It’s about proactively looking for people who come from different academic and professional backgrounds. Once you do, you’ll receive the following benefits:
1. Expanded Talent Pool
If you’re hiring for a specific candidate, the process can take longer than it otherwise should have. Everyone wants to hire a candidate that looks good on paper, but that’s a major part of the problem. An in-demand candidate will have many offers and will negotiate their salary.
When you cross off unnecessary requirements, like a 4-year degree, you open the door to other candidates that may lack educational qualifications but excel in the skills department.
2. Connect With Other Customers
What’s more beneficial to your company? A marketer who has never worked in the restaurant industry providing ad copy for said restaurant or a candidate with past waitressing experience? Unless the marketer has experience in a niche, a past employee will almost always win out.
Why? Because they have first-hand experience with relative customer pain points. HR works in a similar way. If you want to hire a previous restaurant employee in HR for a restaurant, they are better equipped to understand employees and communicate with customers.
3. Fresh Ideas
The major problem non-diverse teams come across is a lack of creativity. The more diverse your team is, the more unexpected ideas they bring to the table. While it’s true that anyone can be creative, they can’t walk a mile in someone else’s shoes unless they’re incredibly empathetic.
It’s sometimes better to hire a non-traditional HR professional instead of staffing only traditional employees. That way, they can take a multilateral approach to most situations.
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