The candidate who doesn't fit the template.

Varied is not integrated. How to tell the difference in an interview.

Picture this. You are a founder working with your board chair on a VP of Sales role. You have narrowed the pool down to two candidates. Tony has fifteen years of experience in the exact area of the industry that your business works in. Predictable path, linear progression. A straight-line safe candidate. Steve however walked a winding path. Multiple industries, three companies over fifteen years and an impressive but unrelated educational background.

On paper Tony sounds like the safe bet. They will slot into the organization fast, create the type of work that you are used to seeing and your hiring job is done. But there is something you can’t quite put a finger on about Steve that interests you. During their interview they answered some of your questions in ways you weren’t expecting, but that made you think. When they were talking about their career and experience, they connected the stops along their road with clarity and precision. Each step that, from the outside, looked disjointed was actually leading them forward. They have a sophisticated but different way of looking at things than you are used to. Your brain is saying Tony is easier to justify, easier to onboard and will do the job. But you are still thinking about Steve. Why? Because Steve is an Integrator.

Traditional business thought is that specialists like Tony should be the goal. Experience, training, thought processes all aligned with the candidate profile and the expected path through your industry or vertical. Executives and founders hire specialists because they are easier to evaluate, easier to defend, and faster to onboard. Controllers, VPs of Engineering, heads of Legal these are areas where you want someone with a huge depth of experience in that vertical. Specialists exist for a reason. There are roles where deep mastery of a narrow domain is the job.

Integrators are primed for roles where it is the ability to move between frames that will lead them to success. A specialist can tell you what is happening inside their frame. An Integrator can tell you when the frame itself is wrong, or when something can be borrowed from another area to improve the current one. Senior commercial leadership, general managers, cross-functional roles requiring judgement under ambiguity. In these types of roles experience from other industries, other companies and even other career paths are often the key ingredient to someone’s success. In complex, shifting environments, breadth of experience outperforms narrow expertise.

When you are creating your candidate profile you don’t just need to know what you want them to be able to do. You need to know how well defined the processes are for doing the work, how much room there is for improvement, and what the value might be of having someone with a fresh take look at these items. Leaders often fall into the trap of hiring people who think and act like they do because it feels comfortable. It is precisely because of this that they owe it to their companies to expand the range of who they think could be a fit when the role has room for flexibility and growth.

So why don’t more people already look for Integrators? Because they are underpriced in most hiring processes due to the fact that their value shows up over 18 to 36 months, not in the first 90 days. Specialists produce faster. Integrators produce deeper. If the role is a three-month fix, hire a specialist. If the role is a three-year build, hire an Integrator. If the role plays in a kind learning environment with fixed rules, firm regulations and highly standardized processes then a specialist is the way to go. If the role is in a wicked learning environment where the rules are either highly flexible or don’t exist, regulations are less of a concern and processes are constantly shifting or in need of improvement, then an Integrator with a breadth of experience can be exactly what your business needs.

So how do you figure out if someone is an Integrator or just a candidate with a non-linear and unconnected career path? Ask them. Ask questions like: walk me through what the different parts of your career have in common. Not chronologically. Thematically. When discussing a success in a previous role ask what they brought from other areas of their background to make that success possible. If they can articulate a through-line that is specific, credible, and tied to the problems they solve, you are looking at an Integrator. If they give you a vague answer or list unrelated experiences, you are looking at someone whose career was varied without being cumulative. Different candidate, different hire. Not wrong, just not an Integrator.

Hire Integrators for roles that require judgment under ambiguity. If your senior leadership pipeline only rewards specialization, you will produce specialists. Which is great when you need a specialist. However, when the business needs an Integrator, you will have to hire from outside. In that situation be open to that hire. But to get ahead of that for an even better move, start looking within your own organization for opportunities to develop Integrators you already have. Look in different but related departments when you are doing internal hires. Encourage your staff to upskill and learn in multiple areas, not just their current specialty. Look for the people who are making connections between silos and helping things work better, not just the rock stars in a single discipline. Your team will end up better rounded and more adaptable. That is the competitive advantage specialization cannot give you.