What do the food industry and sporting goods industry have in common? They both need to understand their consumers — and they both have sensory evaluation (sensory evaluation is a scientific discipline that uses human senses — sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing to evaluate consumer products). How do we know that? Well, after a bit of trial and error, some great sourcing, and a need mandated by a Hiring Manager, we found out!

We were tasked with finding a Wear Test Manager with sensory evaluation experience. This person would be responsible for managing and setting the direction of our apparel wear testing program. The importance of sensory evaluation is that it provides us with data on what our consumers “think” about our products and “want” from our products.

We assumed (thinking this would be an easy search) a Wear Test Manager with sensory evaluation experience could be found in other apparel companies, so we focused our sourcing efforts there. After a few detours and dead ends, back to the drawing board we went. Having another conversation with the Hiring Manager, sensory science experience now became one of the primary requirements vs. simply being a “nice-to-have.” Here is our perspective, from both Sourcer and Recruiter point of view, of how we were able to source outside of our industry.