A musician applied for your sales opening? Here are six reasons you should hire them.
By: Melanie Lahti
Tags: Careers, Hiring, Talent

They are competitive and they love to win

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

If you’re not a competitive, achievement-driven individual, you cannot succeed in the performing arts. In orchestral music, you “win” a job by going through rounds of blind auditions, playing a trial period, and, if you’re lucky, winning tenure after a few years. The pressure to win is intense. In addition to practicing for hours upon hours every day for many years, you have to learn how to win an audition. Most music students and professionals read books like The Inner Game of Tennis to prepare for the psychological challenges of the process.

If you have a job applicant who has professional credentials in the performing arts, they are likely in the top <1% of their field. They have worked tirelessly for years, maybe decades, to cultivate the mindset required to win a job in a highly competitive industry. Some people, like myself 10 years ago, ultimately decide that they lack the talent or patience to win a fulfilling job as a performer. (For context, there is only one orchestral clarinet opening in the US right now). But professionally trained performers can transfer that drive, that hunger to succeed, to a new professional setting, and bring in big wins for your company.

They have been trained to achieve perfection in their work

During my freshman year at Yale, the concert band performed a piece by our director, Dr. Tom Duffy, called A+. In this piece, Duffy demonstrates what would happen if every member of the ensemble made a small number of mistakes, straying from what’s written on the page. The result is, of course, preposterous, and it reveals how critical it is that every member of an ensemble achieve perfection in their playing. 97% accuracy is nowhere near good enough. You’d be fired so fast if you averaged 97% accuracy in an orchestra.

Musicians have to devise strategies to overcome the mechanical challenges of operating their instruments, like slow, repetitive practice; playing different rhythmic permutations of tricky passages; using alternate fingerings; adding visual cues to their written music; etc. Ultimately, operating the instrument is just the first step — they need to interpret the music once they have a foundation for execution. If they can set and achieve ambitious goals in performance, they can do the same at your company.

Once you train them, they can self-direct and require minimal management.

When you’re studying music performance, you meet with your teacher once per week for one hour. They coach you on whatever repertoire you’re preparing, perhaps offering some specific exercises related to fundamentals, but most teachers expect a music student to select repertoire, ask questions about what’s working and what’s not, and generally guide the direction of their own development. For the rest of the week, the music student practices for hours a day with no direction or coaching. They are essentially on their own in working through individual challenges.

Without necessarily knowing it, musicians cultivate the ability to solve problems on their own, plan long-term projects (like selecting and preparing repertoire for a recital), and manage up. If you hire a musician to join your firm, you’ll need to set them up for success with a strong onboarding program, but if you invest that time upfront, you’ll save yourself time in the long-run.

They might have more operational and administrative experience than you realize

Photo by Lala Azizli on Unsplash

Musicians work on a range of non-musical projects as students and professionals. These might include:

Running a teaching studio, which requires coordinating schedules, communicating logistics and expectations, booking space for recitals, marketing the studio to potential new students, understanding unit economics, handling extremely complicated personal tax filings, etc.

Planning a recital, which requires selecting and booking a venue, finding collaborators and coaches and coordinating schedules with them, marketing the event, writing program notes, hiring a recording engineer, potentially arranging catering and clean-up, etc.

Writing grant proposals

Maintaining a website for a teaching studio or ensemble

Contributing to labor negotiations with a players union

If you see this sort of experience on a resume, odds are good that the candidate can quickly come up-to-speed with administrative processes at your firm and maybe even improve them.

They can sell anything (they literally went to school to learn to perform)

Admittedly this one doesn’t apply to every musician and might be more broadly applicable to the theater crowd. However, musicians are trained to perform. A skilled performer can communicate something meaningful to their audience, draw them in, and keep them engaged. They are also well-practiced in memorization. Over the past decade or so, music schools have added oral communication or presentation skills to their curricula, so that performers can speak directly to an audience and provide context that might help bring the program to life.

Many sales, recruiting, and customer success interactions involve a performance of sorts. Sometimes you have a script to guide you through a call or an in person meeting, which you’ve rehearsed and perfected over time. If a performer expresses interest in your company, odds are good they can use their performance training to influence others and close deals for you.

Photo by Conor Samuel on Unsplash

They are exceptional collaborators who can navigate difficult conversations with colleagues

Playing in a small ensemble or even a garage band cultivates exceptional interpersonal skills by necessity. Without them, the ensemble will fail. A small ensemble performs without a director, and practices without a coach for the most part, so they have to listen to and watch each other to make music as a unit. The individual becomes far less important than the greater whole in these situations, as every player operates like an organ within a larger organism.

Per my earlier point, the ensemble is striving for perfection, and they need to hold each other accountable. If someone is out of tune, or isn’t rhythmically aligned with others in the ensemble, it needs to be addressed with sensitivity and tact. Chamber musicians learn to say, “Can we tune this?” as opposed to “You are out of tune.” They can then iterate and become more direct — “How about just the two of us? Can you bring your pitch up to meet mine?” These communication skills are invaluable in a professional setting where you are accountable to a larger team. If you hire a musician to join your team, they will communicate with the tact and precision required to get things done.