Experience and Education

Managing risk is an important part of what recruiters do. Recruiting is a gate-keeping service. We are starting to figure out that taking time to get the right person in is often less expensive than taking the time to get the wrong person out. Over time we have invented all kinds of tools and methods to manage risk. Once they have been around for a while people generally stop asking whether they work or not.

We hire people to complete tasks and run functions (not really – we employ talent to create value, but I’ll try to stick to the point). A good recruiter will want to figure out whether someone is capable of doing a task before they get through they get the key to executive washroom. But most recruiters are swamped, so they look for easy-to-recognize and generally-agreed-upon statistics to assess whether a person can really do what they say they can. The two most common are “Years of Experience” and “Degree (Education).”

The problem is, both of these are unreliable measures of whether someone can do a task or run a function. We tend to miss the point that both of these are short-hand measures of risk. After all, if someone has an MBA they can’t be stupid right? (Which means you need to hang around more MBA’s – you can’t take a blind swing at one of my family get togethers without knocking three of four MBAs to the ground, which is where they are probably going to end up after the punch is gone anyway). If someone has “programmed” for 10 years they have to be good at programming, right?

Wrong. We are just talking probabilities here. Risk analysis. If you take any two individuals and know only one fact about them (which one has had more experience doing a particular task or function), then you will draw the conclusion that the one with more experience will be better at the function. Or perhaps if someone went to Harvard and another person went to Whatsamatta U, you say to yourself “Harvard’s always better.” But they’re not. Dolts get into Harvard all the time. They are called Legacies. Sure, they’re rich dolts. But unless you are looking for a VC, that doesn’t really matter, does it?

It may in fact be that you are more likely to get someone who is qualified by virtue of their greater experience. But it is not a certainty. Do you know how great a risk you are facing? Is it a 1 in 5 chance that the person from Princeton with 20 years of programming experience can barely chew gum and walk at the same time? A 2 in 5 chance? And if you don’t know, then why use the measure at all? The probability of value is outweighed by the possibility of risk.

We have to be willing to demand proof of outcomes and behaviors. Have the candidate show you work they have done at previous companies (within the legal guidelines established by your company, of course). Have them demonstrate the reach and power of their network to you. Get testimonials from people you trust who also know them. And for goodness sakes, spend the time up front to create a “roles description” that can be evaluated with proof and outcomes.

Years of experience and education (other than in positions that require certification such as legal positions), are bad indicators of potential and unreliable measures of risk.