The Tradeoff Between Experience and Potential
Recruiters have been “convincing hiring managers that raw experience and skills are far less important than past performance and future potential” for years. Hiring managers have a tendency to filter out new candidates based on past experience and by doing so they are losing a number of talented and perfect candidates for the job.
Just a few reasons there is a problem with hiring filtered by experience include:
- Prohibits returning military veterans from entering positions above entry to low-level positions
- Prevents those strong candidates from other industries from getting a fair assessment
- Eliminates diversity of hiring (race, age, gender) and can become a legal issue for some companies since by definition diversity “means the person did not follow the classic career progression”
“Bridging the “experience and skills” vs. “potential and performance” gap is actually quite easy, more legally sound and essential for improving the quality of people hired.”
Utilizing recruiters throughout the hiring process allows for a less biased set of candidates presented as well as allowing the recruiters to dive deeper into a candidates experience and skill set and makes a case for them not solely based on what is written on their resume. Some areas recruiters should gain more insight on their candidates include:
- Determine if the job change was part of a bigger career plan or a reaction to a problem
- For each company ask about major projects and accomplishments
- Ask about any recognitions received, along with the how and whys of them
- Assess if a candidate learns skills quickly
Source: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130530001324-15454-the-problems-with-experience-and-the-potential-of-potential