The current recruiting environment trends towards experience, is this detrimental to employers?
Focusing your recruitment on experience can lead to you missing out on top talent. Worse than that, you could end up with a team of limited workers who are trapped in the box of traditional thinking.
What characteristics do you look for in your ideal employee? Based on the job adverts on my LinkedIn feed, top of every hiring manager's list is: "experience in this exact role". The recruiting environment is ruled by LinkedIn, check-boxes, CV's and keyword searches. It is becoming increasingly difficult for workers to gain new experience.
It’s a well-documented catch-22; you can’t gain experience, without experience. So well documented in fact that it’s hard to believe it still happens. The internet is overloaded with successful individuals recommending hiring talent over experience. Yet, everyday talented candidates are passed over for rivals with ‘more relevant experience’.
Choosing the best candidate, requires weighing the pros and cons of each. Weighing experience vs skills and aptitude. But should experience always be a pro?
In some circumstances past experience can actually limit what a candidate may be capable of. Experienced candidates may be set in their ways. People trained and reinforced in the “traditional method” are often trapped in the existing paradigms. They struggle to approach problems in new and creative ways. Inexperienced candidates can bring fresh ideas, ask difficult questions, and challenge existing norms. They might even discover solutions to problems that traditional thinking had determined impossible.
So why are talented applicants who thrive in their current roles still rejected? Often for candidates who have been 'surviving' in a more senior role. Sometimes even candidates who couldn't manage that. Is experience so important, that hiring someone who is demonstrably bad at the job, is less of a risk than employing someone who might excel?
I see many jobs requiring 3-5 years experience in a similar role, yet the average millennial stays in one job for only 2.8 years. LinkedIn enables us to be connected with so many potential employers, it's hard not to be job hoppers. The most ambitious among us don’t intend to stay on any rung of the career ladder long enough to tick your “experience” box.
If you are looking for the best candidate, you are looking for the person who will do the best possible job. Limit yourself to experienced candidates and you will probably be missing out on the true stars among your applicants. Talent trumps experience, don't let recruiting norms get in the way of building your perfect team.