Education or Experience: Is It Time to Look Beyond This Debate?

Have you ever applied for a job you thought you would be the perfect fit for, only to be told you don’t have enough years of experience, however arbitrary a number that may be? Or, have you found the ideal candidate for a position and then discovered that they don’t meet the minimum educational requirements for the role, no matter how much experience you have and whether those credentials relate to the role in question or not?

The age-old debate—education versus experience—likely won’t be going away anytime soon. However, some researchers believe that the answer depends on where you are in your career journey and the industry you work in.?

According to Gault et al., “employability varies across industries and occupations, especially those affected by rapidly advancing technology that require increased education” (2018). Additionally, a Pew Research study of more than 2,000 millennials found that nine out of ten people with at least a four-year degree reported that their education had already paid off or would in the long term (Gault et al., 2018).

For many organizations, knowledge is a valuable and intangible asset, but should that include educational-based knowledge, experience-based knowledge, or both? In a 2018 study of the supply-chain management profession, researchers found that employees need to have a significant level of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to effectively perform in a role. In this case, knowledge is the content or technical information usually obtained through formal education or on-the-job experience. Skills can be trained and are generally acquired by doing, and abilities are attributes a person has that can impact their performance.

Type of education must be considered

Perhaps the debate needs to shift to the type of education hiring managers should be looking for. Understanding theory is great, but if a candidate has experience putting that theory to work through internships, work experience, or volunteer experience, that candidate could be a step ahead of someone without those additional experiences.?

“Employers today expect recent college graduates to demonstrate the equivalent of two years’ worth of work experience in their domain before they’ll consider hiring them,” says Charles Kilfoye, assistant vice president of Learner Success at Northeastern University. “That’s why it’s important to build experiential opportunity right into our academic programs, so learners apply classroom skills to solve real-world problems for real workplace sponsors.”

It seems that for entry-level positions, education with experiential learning components should hold more weight than straight education when choosing the ideal candidate for a role. But what about older applicants?

Someone who has been in the profession for several years will likely have more experience and competence to fulfill the role’s duties, and this experience should be given equal weighting to education when evaluating applicants.?

As Annie Mulder points out in an article for Investopedia, candidates who earned a degree 15 or 20 years ago will need to show potential employers that they sought out further learning opportunities, kept up with industry trends, and acquired new skills required for the role.

Soft skills, hard skills, and life-long learning

Career success doesn’t depend solely on hard skills, such as writing, design, software development, and so on. While they are essential for an employee to perform well in a role, soft skills—communication, conflict resolution, creative thinking—are often overlooked, despite their ability to predict success and assess performance.

No matter your educational background, keeping your skills up-to-date to meet the changing demands of a role or new technology in the industry is critical. Employees who invest time and money into improving skills and knowledge may be more likely to receive a promotion, a raise in their current role, or a higher starting salary in a new position. Employers can also benefit from providing education opportunities for employees, including reduced turnover rates and improving company culture. In fact, a? Gallup study revealed that 59% of millennials said that opportunities to learn and grow were extremely important to them when applying for a job.??

As you can see, there is no easy answer to the question about education versus experience. Depending on the role and level (e.g., entry-level or more senior), one could be more valuable than the other. Perhaps the most important thing to consider is whether an employee is keen to pursue further development opportunities throughout their career and improve both hard and soft skills, which can benefit both the employee and the organization.?