Why Top Performers Don’t Always Come from Direct Competitors

In my years of headhunting, I’ve had the opportunity to place some exceptional candidates, people who have gone on to become top performers and President Club's Award winners for my clients. But here’s the interesting part: many of these standout hires didn’t come from direct competitors.

For my cybersecurity clients, the preference is often to hire from within the same industry. Given the complexity of solutions and the need to engage with high-level decision-makers like CISOs, this approach seems logical. It reduces the learning curve and ensures the candidate knows how to sell into a cybersecurity context.

However, one of my clients, a VP of APJ of a leading US cybersecurity company, took a different approach, and the results were truly impressive.

A Fresh Perspective on Hiring

This VP was open-minded from the start, which made all the difference. He believed that while industry knowledge is valuable, it wasn’t the most important factor. Instead, he valued candidates’ learning ability, inner drive, and attitude above their familiarity with the cybersecurity landscape.

So, rather than hiring a candidate from a direct competitor, we brought in someone from a different technology domain - an industry adjacent to cybersecurity but not directly in it. This candidate, someone I had placed before, had previously impressed me with her ability to pick up new sectors and thrive quickly.

During the interview process, when the hiring manager asked her about her understanding of cybersecurity solutions and how she would adapt, she didn’t give theoretical answers. Instead, she confidently said, “Give me five minutes, and I’ll prepare an elevator pitch for you on the company’s solutions so you can see my understanding in real time.”

And she nailed it.

Her ability to learn quickly and articulate her understanding in a short amount of time wasn’t just impressive. It was a clear demonstration of her adaptability and resourcefulness.

From Impressive Interview to Top Performer

Once she joined the company, I watched her thrive in her new role. She didn’t just settle for learning the basics. Within a single quarter, she had already established herself as a rising star. Some may call it beginner’s luck, but the foundation she built went far beyond short-term wins. She worked both hard and smart, developing a strong pipeline and laying the groundwork for long-term business success.

Three years later, she remains one of the company’s top performers. Her success story didn’t end after the initial excitement; she’s continued to grow her business and remains a key asset to the team.

The Lesson: Look Beyond Industry Experience

This experience taught me—and reaffirmed for my client—that top performers don’t always come from direct competitors. Yes, hiring from within the industry can be advantageous, but there’s so much more to consider when looking for exceptional talent.

Factor	Why it mattered more than direct industry experience
Learning agility	The speed at which the candidate could absorb an unfamiliar market and product turned out to predict performance better than prior exposure to that same market
Drive and attitude	Motivation and ownership carried the ramp-up period that industry-experienced candidates would have skipped, but this candidate compensated for with effort
Fresh perspective	Coming from outside the industry meant fewer inherited assumptions about "how it's done," which was useful in a market where the competitive playbook was still evolving

Should you rule out competitor hires, or just stop defaulting to them?

The latter. Direct-competitor experience is still a legitimate hiring signal. It de-risks ramp-up time and shortens onboarding. The point isn't to avoid it, it's to stop treating it as the only credible signal. When a candidate from an adjacent industry shows learning agility and drive in the interview itself, that's evidence worth weighing against the comfort of industry familiarity.

The bottom line

Industry experience reduces ramp-up risk, but it isn't the only, or even the best, predictor of who becomes a top performer. Hiring for potential, not just familiarity, is what surfaced this hire. It's worth building that into how interviews are structured, not just treated as a lucky exception.