Barack Obama in his speech in 2007 titled Our Moment is Now mentioned in passing that experience could be right or wrong. In the Human Resource Management profession (HRM), most times, we focus on possession of years of work experience and pay little or no attention to the rightness or wrongness of the experience in question. Could this be as a result of the assumption that there is nothing like right or wrong experience? Could it be as a result of the inability to perform a surgery on work experience to thoroughly examine it for what it’s worth?
Length of work experience should never be mistaken for depth and breadth. With the exception of those whose tenure on jobs are hinged on their expertise, some remain on jobs owing to their tremendous capacity for subservience and/or their relationships with those in the corridors of power (connections)…in my consultancy engagements (brief albeit), I have realized that some with years of experience have no felt presence in their organizations, they are simply “obedient”. The implied meaning of this is that if we focus solely on length of experience without unpacking and thoroughly examining the richness (breadth, depth et cetera) of the experience in question, we run the risk of employing people with little or no strategic value to our companies. Beyond depth and breadth, we must also pay attention to relevance — how relevant is the experience in question to the vacant job and the organizational objectives as defined by the management of the organization?
Though we are embedded in a society that assumes that wisdom and insight comes with the passage of time, we must rise above the faulty assumption that only the ‘old’ possess insight and wisdom. This is important because a failure to acknowledge exceptional abilities of some individuals is to lose touch with reality. I believe we can recall vividly how some individuals in primary and secondary schools defied the norm by getting double or triple promotions because of their abilities which surpassed those of their peers. Another case in point is those who complete doctoral programmes in 3 or 4 years while majority take a few more years. My point is that there will always be exceptions hence we should not take a rigid stance when it comes to individual abilities, in this case as calibrated by years of work experience. Some will achieve in 3 or 4 years what others will achieve in 8 years career-wise. Work experience is not like a university course curriculum that is programmed and must be covered in a defined number of years and not less than — this should not be confused with the doctoral example above.
I am inclined to think that the rigid thinking around work experience could also be as a result of lack of understanding of the concept of individual differences (perhaps a dismissal or denial of this existential reality). Maybe it is lack of a full grasp of the concept considering the fact that many still carry out measurements of individual abilities during selection exercises. If you believe that everyone must possess 5 years experience then there is no need to test them since you are convinced that 5 years experience is all that it takes to perform well on the job. To be rigid about years of experience and still go on to test individual abilities is to contradict oneself as it pertains the concept of individual differences, the focal point of differential psychology. At the heart of measurement lies individual differences — you cannot measure if you do not believe in individual differences.
It is paramount at this point to touch briefly on the rationales behind the strong grip on the work experience philosophy. This push for work experience is motivated by two major reasons: the intention to attract deep insight and solid skill set that will be brought to bear on day-to-day organizational affairs, and the intention to avoid training. The reason why a particular organization promotes strongly the philosophy of work experience is anybody’s guess. To promote work experience philosophy because of the need to attract unique insights and skill set is laudable, the only issue is how to engage the process. Questions worth asking should revolve around decision on the right number of years of work experience — who decides that? Who is/are used as the benchmark for setting such requirements? Are they the best? Why are their experiences used for setting the standard? Isn’t it possible that there are people who are better than these individuals (that is they achieved more in less time)? My article titled On work experience:Addressing faulty recruitment assumptions and practices published in 2018 in BusinessDay newspaperdealt with some of these questions. I would be remiss if I fail to add that the idea of promoting the work experience philosophy in order to avoid investment in training is to have a limited understanding of the HRM system.
In the aforementioned article, I opined that I would place open-mindedness, ability to learn fast and a good work ethic above work experience. This opinion of mine is based on the consideration that work experience is not foolproof, in other words it is suspect as mentioned above. Another novel thinking worth embracing is focusing on the ability of individuals to convert or transfer and adapt knowledge and skills across occupations — work (sometimes, not all the time) might differ in components but share same principles and require same skill mix.
Critiques of long held practices in my opinion is one of the surefire ways of making improvements in different spheres of life. Despite the tendency for individuals and organizations to hold on to their views owing to thebackfire effect, I consider it important to share my views and engage your thoughts.Rethink.
Jude Adigwe
