The Experience Myth - Revisited
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The Experience Myth - Revisited
I've evolved
Hey there,
This December, I’m revisiting older posts to see how my thinking on the subject has evolved. After all, being open-minded to changing your mind is a key part of growth.
I hope you enjoy (again?)
Ben
Personal Note: I accidentally sent out last week’s newsletter on Monday. That’s on me. I blame the holidays. They’ve turned my brain into a noodle.
The Experience Myth - Revisited
This week I’m revisiting The Experience Myth, one of the first things I ever published.
My thinking on “experience” has changed over the past year. Now, my original point that “experience” is overused so frequently that it’s virtually meaningless still holds.
Where I have changed is the idea of experience quality. More and more, I see the immense value of working at a place where you can learn what good looks like. That’s where experience matters.
Here’s an example: Pretend you take a job running the patient intake at a surgery center. You know nothing about surgery; all you know is that the job is OK and everyone is nice. You’re happy. But one day, six months in, an experienced coworker approaches you and casually mentions that many patients seem to have complications. Further, they say that the doctors at this surgery center seem a lot more emotionally fragile than the last two places they worked - they say this while letting you know that the environment in the operating room may not be as pleasant as you’d like to believe.
The difference between you and this more experienced coworker is that they have more time in good environments, whereas your experience is only in not-so-great ones.
It’s this concept of quality that has changed my mind. If I know, from experience or research, what a good work environment looks like, I will also understand the value of someone’s experience in that environment. I wouldn’t expect someone from Uber to be concerned with unit economics, and I wouldn’t expect someone from Enron to act ethically. If I wanted workers who understood unit economics or were ethical, then candidates from those places wouldn’t be high on my list. Specifically, in those examples, their experiences work against them.
But it works the other way as well. Earlier in my career, I was fortunate to have a boss who practiced what great teams did. While difficult to implement at first, he introduced new people, processes, and philosophies that gave me a solid foundation to develop my career, lead my teams the right way, and create environments where even a worker with a short tenure gained invaluable experience.
I’ve come to value a candidate’s experience, but only if they can demonstrate why I should.
The Experience Myth
In 3 Quick and Easy Ways to Make Better Hires we saw that “Years of Experience” was the worst predictor of candidate success (coming in at a paltry 3%). Yet an “Experience” requirement is ubiquitous on nearly every single job description. What is going on?
We all know that experience is just one variable in a much more complex decision, and that’s fair. But I don’t think that’s the issue here.
The problem is that “experience” is a catchall term that means different things to different people. Consider all the things you could be talking about when you talk about “experience” (this list is far from exhaustive):
Can communicate in the industry or company jargon
Industry-specific network or existing book of business
Years performing a role or working in an industry (regardless of effectiveness or success)
Wise judgment and solid decision-making skills
Done the exact thing you need done before (or so you think)
Older (or looks older)
Works with integrity and has a moral compass
If any of the above traits are important to you or your team, why not just ask or evaluate for those instead?1 For example, instead of saying, “We didn’t like them because they didn’t have enough experience,” isn’t it much better to say “We measured their decision-making skills, and well, they weren’t very good compared to the other candidates”?
All of which poses the question: which of the many meanings of experience predicts candidate performance? The unsatisfying answer is, “it depends” - what you need is almost entirely contextual. Next week I’ll talk about ways we can meaningfully evaluate and prioritize the things we think we’re talking about when we talk about experience.
For now, ask yourself (and your team) what you mean by experience. The answers may surprise you.
Other thoughts on “Years of Experience”
Thankfully, there’s an increasing number of companies rethinking the experience and what it means. A recent article from the New York Times on the impact of worker’s leverage in our current economy has some great examples of the long overdue adjustments companies are making in a tight labor market.
Like it’s bias-welcoming cousin “culture fit,” “experience” is much too vague to mean anything meaningful. Anytime there’s a lack of specificity, you can bet that bias is present. Be wary. If someone on the hiring committee says a candidate didn’t have enough experience, ask them to be more specific.