Look around LinkedIn: Virtually every job posting contains a work experience requirement.

On the surface it makes a lot of sense: The theory is that - through your prior related experience - you've gained the knowledge and skills needed to be productive faster and perform better than someone who's inexperienced (Rynes, Orlitzky, & Bretz, 1997).

But is this true?





What industry leaders say

Google's SVP of People Operations Laszlo Bock dismisses the value of experience:

"Most of the time the nonexpert will come up with the same answer [as an expert] because most of the time it’s not that hard...Sure, once in a while they will mess it up, but once in a while they’ll also come up with an answer that is totally new."

Hubspot's Chief Revenue Officer Mark Roberge found the conventional wisdom regarding work experience was wrong:

"For us, experience didn’t matter as much...I did a lot of experiments with experience level — like was it better to have 15 years of experience or no sales experience? — and there was a strong correlation between success at HubSpot and less prior experience...As people have more experience, they become less moldable, which is important in our space because most reps have never sold something like our product before.”

Sales expert Anthony Iannarino thinks a focus on hiring for work experience is completely misguided:

"The shortest route [for hiring] is to find someone who has already done that job. But this approach is completely wrong...Even without extensive experience people who innately possess [the desired] qualities, and who are coachable, may move to results faster than those who are rigid and inflexible. In fact, the more experience they have on their resume, the more bad habits they might have."

There's a striking commonality here: Work experience might make someone a more dependable employee, but also a less adaptable one.

So why is work experience such a frustratingly inconsistent predictor of performance?

What research reveals

A meta-analysis with data from 31,428 salespeople found that work experience (measured as years of total selling experience) was indeed correlated with objective sales performance (Franke & Park, 2006).

However, the correlation is small enough that, although the more experienced salesperson will have higher sales on average, the researchers conclude, "there will be many exceptions to this pattern in most sales forces."

What are these exceptions based on?

A fascinating study conducted by Professor Dokko and her colleagues provides insight on the costs and benefits of work experience. They found that work experience was positively correlated with work-related knowledge and skill, but once the effects of a person's knowledge and skill were accounted for, experience and job performance were negatively related.





Source: Dokko, G., Wilk, S. L., & Rothbard, N. P. (2009). Unpacking prior experience: How career history affects job performance. Organization Science, 20, 51-68.

These authors theorize that the costs of work experience are rooted in cognitive and behavioral rigidities learned in previous jobs that act as organizational baggage, hurting performance by "weighing down their responsiveness or ability to reflect in the new situation."

Their theory of organizational baggage is supported by their findings that employees who were more adaptable and who felt they fit well with the culture of their current company displayed less of a detrimental effect of prior experience. This research converges amazingly well with what the industry leaders stated above.

(For more examples of this organizational baggage effect, see posts by Jason Lemkin and Mark Suster.)

So how much should you care about work experience when you're hiring?

The takeaways

Industry experts and academics agree that prior work experience is an unreliable predictor of future work performance. The unquestioned assumption that prior experience predicts future performance it is one of the biggest reasons why hiring is broken.

So why does everyone use it?

It's an easy shortcut and it makes intuitive sense. Instead of using work experience as an imperfect proxy for work-related knowledge and skill, you can more accurately identify job candidates who are more likely to succeed by assessing their knowledge and skill directly.

To job candidates: Understand that you're facing an uphill battle when you don't have the desired work experience. You need to think hard and be creative about how to best showcase your talent in lieu of work experience.

To employers: Next time you post a job listing requiring "X years of experience," ask yourself if your rationale for doing so is based on data or because "it's the way I've always done it." It's not always easy overcoming such an ingrained belief, but you might be ignoring the best talent if you don't.

Ideal builds recruitment automation software that talent acquisition loves. Ideal’s AI can instantly screen and shortlist new candidates, uncover strong past candidates who are a great fit for a new role, and initiate candidate contact. Companies use Ideal to sift through the resume noise and instantly identify who to interview, all within their existing ATS. Learn more at www.ideal.com.

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