Hiring for potential can bring fresh thinking, transferable skills, and long-term growth. It is especially useful when a company wants someone who can evolve with the business, ask new questions, and bring a different lens. In industries like marketing, branding, communications, and strategy, this matters because the work is not always only technical. It is also about people, context, timing, judgment, and problem-solving.

But potential needs support. If a company hires someone for their ability to learn, it also has to provide onboarding, clarity, leadership, and time. Otherwise, the responsibility is placed only on the candidate, and the hire may struggle for reasons that have more to do with structure than ability.

Hiring for exact experience also makes sense. Sometimes the business need is urgent. Sometimes the role is highly specific. Sometimes the team does not have the capacity to train someone from scratch. In those situations, hiring someone who has already done similar work can reduce risk and help the company move faster.

But exact experience is not a guarantee either.

No two companies have the exact same problem. A campaign that worked in one company may not work in another. A strategy that worked with one budget, one audience, one culture, one leadership style, or one market may not translate directly somewhere else.

Big brands, smaller businesses, startups, local companies, and corporate teams all have different realities. The same issue can look completely different depending on resources, timing, team structure, audience behaviour, internal politics, and business goals.

So hiring someone who has “done it before” can be helpful, but it should not be mistaken for a ready-made solution. Experience gives someone a starting point. It does not remove the need to listen, diagnose, adapt, and understand the new context.

This is where I think hiring gets interesting.

A candidate with exact experience may bring confidence and speed, but they still need humility and flexibility.

A candidate with potential may bring energy and perspective, but they still need structure and support.

A candidate with a non-linear background may not have solved the exact same problem before, but they may have solved many different kinds of problems across different environments.

So maybe the question is not: should we hire for fit or experience? Maybe the better question is: what does this role need most right now?



• Does it need immediate execution?
• Does it need fresh thinking?
• Does it need industry knowledge?
• Does it need someone who can learn quickly?
• Does it need someone who can challenge the current approach?
• Does the company have the time and leadership capacity to support growth?
• Does the problem require someone who has done this exact thing before, or someone who can understand the situation and build the right approach for this company?

I think strong hiring comes from clarity.

• If the role needs exact experience, be honest about that.
• If the role has room for learning, be honest about that too.
• If culture matters, define what culture actually means.
• If skills matter, define which skills are essential and which can be developed.

In the end, hiring is not just about finding the most impressive resume or the most promising personality. It is about finding the right match between the person, the problem, the team, the timing, and the support available.

Both approaches can work. Both can fail. The difference is whether the company understands what it is truly hiring for.