Experience is not Expertise

How many of those “we are hiring freshers with 6 years of experience” memes have you seen on LinkedIn? It is imperative that equal opportunity to learn and grow is provided to the youth as more than one instance, especially the ones that come from our own day-to-day work life, tell us that formal education is unable to fill the gap between ‘fully-trained’ and ‘fully-workforce ready’.

Then why is it that experience is given a higher priority when looking for candidates, especially for senior management positions. Today on the occasion of ‘Youth Day’ let’s explore the possible explanations.

Practically, it makes sense

There’s simple math behind it. If we pick someone experienced for a job there’s a highly likely chance that they know how to get the job done. That too without any training resources and time spent. They can take charge of an office sooner and hence, can be productive as soon as they join.?

So, speed is of the essence. If that is the case, then practically, it makes sense to onboard an experienced individual.?

Although, growing your in-house talent has its own pros.

It comes with loyalty of your tribe. You would rather have them upgrade themselves than letting themselves get obsolete or be underconfident about the ‘experience they don’t have’ - “the best teacher I know is the job itself” - James Cash Penney.

Upgrading oneself is never easy

It needs one to push themselves out of their comfort zones. Training internally also lets you observe the underlying soft skills of a person. If someone is able to take themselves out of their comfort zones, they are able to adapt and are able to help others do the same, you have your future leaders right there.

This increases retention in more than one way. Other than a sense of loyalty, you are also developing bonds, by putting your people through the same labors, increasing engagement and developing pre-conceived respect for their mentors. Your fresh hires would respect their managers because they saw them in action which might be more effective than them just pulling their ranks.

While we are on the topic…

of upgrading ourselves. ‘Experienced’ might also translate into ‘set in their ways’. Resistance to change is a well known psychological concept and again, while there are people who constantly upgrade themselves, #respect, but having that bias of ‘I know it all’, especially for the organizations who are still budding and are into newer technologies and markets, might not be the most productive thing to do. Due to their nature, these markets are volatile and so the talent required to function in these markets needs to be dynamic too.

Whitening hair in the sun

There’s an idiom in Hindi “Ye baal humne dhoop mein safed nhi kiye hai!” which translates to ‘I haven’t whitened these hair in the sun’. White hair being the indicator of the number of years a person has lived and sun refers to sunbathing and chillin doing nothing.?

Collectivist societies like India, and a lot of communities and societies in Asia, Africa, and other regions of the world have had a long handed down tradition of ‘respecting the age’. We touch the feet of older people as a sign of respect and gratitude. It can be our grandparents, older relatives, and sometimes teachers and mentors. But hey, we don’t have a shortage of people in these categories who are well… not particularly… experts of anything.?

While touching feet and other such gestures have other deep cultural values attached to them, it may be a factor playing a role in our subconscious assumption that more years spent doing something means more expertise in it. We all have older people (relatives or not) with not so much experience of what we might be facing but we still consider their advice nevertheless.

Ending Note

Don’t equate experience with expertise. An individual who is willing to give their 200% in picking something new and getting it done right and more, in our experience, is much more valuable than a person who might have spent time doing something very mechanically.?

Youth is a period of our lives which by assumption gets related to energy and zeal. We as organizations have the opportunity to channel that energy into creating business giants of tomorrow. Let’s give our youth the chance and guidance they need to push beyond limits.