
Why you shouldn’t hire based on experience - jasoncrawford
http://blog.jasoncrawford.org/why-you-shouldnt-hire-based-on-experience
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kevin_morrill
Agree you shouldn't take experience at face value, but I do think it's
critically valuable to explore experience in an interview.

In an interview, I try to ask questions about the job they'll be doing rather
than backward looking behavioral questions. But you can still apply what you
know about their past experience to forward looking questions: If they fail on
certain areas, but just haven't had a chance to work on that type of problem
in their previous experience--it's a lot less distressing. But if they're
failing at things they "should" know better from their experience, it's a huge
red flag. So for example, someone who says their an expert in web development
should have no problem deciding on the best way to manage application state
given HTTP's statelessness. Someone coming from a C++ background who struggles
with exactly what tools to use for this might still grow to be a fantastic web
developer.

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jasoncrawford
Yeah, totally agree. That's consistent with what I'm saying here: the key is
not how much experience you have, but how much have you learned from what you
do have?

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bdfh42
I remember a lecturer of mine many years ago decrying so many people who
claimed 10 or 15 years experience when in fact (as he said) they had had 1
years experience repeated 10 or 15 times.

Of course, we are all interested in hiring folks that can "do" - experience is
just an initial indicator that they might be able to.

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guynamedloren
Well I think this is common knowledge. Nobody in their right mind would hire
on experience alone, but it is a fairly safe starting point that's typically
followed by more reliable measurements of skill.

Edit: very misleading title. After reading the post a second time, I realized
you were referring to hiring based on experience on a specific platform, which
is a bit silly, but yes, it happens.

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jasoncrawford
My point is that people overvalue experience, relative to intelligence, and
drive, and other components of raw talent.

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mercurial
Up to a point, but experience does serve as a filter. It's hard to measure
intelligence and drive from a resume - it's hard enough to get a picture of
actual experience.

An important factor is what kind of experience we're talking about. Take an
engineer with ten years of experience. After ten years, a qualified engineer
should be fluent in a fairly large number of technologies in various
capacities. On the contrary, somebody who has been writing CRUD PHP webapps at
the same company for the last ten years might not be your first choice for a
hire.

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travisp
The research mentioned shows that the correlations are close to 0 even within
similar work (there aren't many surgeons doing the equivalent of CRUD PHP
webapps), which would imply that it's a filter that doesn't actually do you
any good. I suppose you're arguing that the correlation is greater than 0 for
an engineer and therefore it might be an effective filter. But how much
greater? Particularly for industries where skill _is_ important, using a
marginally effective employment filter can significantly backfire.

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D_Alex
Sure... "in a wide range of fields" experience counts for little, maybe
nothing. The author mentions auditors, clinical psychologists, parole officers
etc. I bet astrology and water dowsing could be added to this list.

In many other fields, experience counts! I have worked with many young
engineering graduates, and seen them develop (I also was inexperienced myself,
once). So much of the time in their early career is spent looking for
information, making/fixing silly errors and reinventing the wheel.

I have the following semi-quantitative observations to offer: Engineering
salaries in my field roughly double between 0 and 5 years experience, and then
roughly double again between 5 and 12 years. And in engineering consultancies,
one does not expect to make money on engineers with less than 2-3 years
experience - we take the hit in the hope of benefitting later.

Of course the experience benefits vary from person to person. Furthermore,
there is another factor that tends to offset experience - drive, or energy.
The sweet spot - for majority of engineers - seems to be at between 5 to 15
years experience, where the drive + experience combine to deliver a very
productive individual. This is of course a generalisation, and I am sure we
all know many exceptions.

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jasoncrawford
I think you missed this part: “This doesn’t mean you can’t learn from
experience. It means that learning from experience is _not automatic_. Some
people can make the same mistakes over and over again and be none the wiser
for it.”

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D_Alex
No. I did not miss it. I was responding to the general thrust and the
overarching message of the article, which seems to be "you should not hire
based on experience".

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Peroni
_...and a track record of delivering results._

That is literally the definition of experience.

I'm assuming the point you're making is that the number of years is irrelevant
and it's the results that matter. That makes a bit more sense but the title is
misleading.

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chris_wot
I think you are missing the point - he's talking about experience here in
specific areas.

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Peroni
I appreciate that. My point is that the title is intentionally sensationalist.

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jasoncrawford
I don't think it's sensationalist, but if it is, it certainly wasn't
intentional

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nasir
Really depends on what you want to achieve. For building an MVP experience is
really important.

