The hiring process can be a stressful and overwhelming experience for all parties. With companies looking for very specific candidates to fill positions, are these organizations becoming too strict with their candidate searching? Is hiring for the experience really the right way to search for potential new employees? Brought to you by 4 Corner Resources, here are three reasons you should look away from hiring for experience and look towards hiring for potential.
Experience Doesn’t Equal Performance
You may assume that if a candidate has a certain amount of experience in their field that their experience will transition to your company, but that might not always be true. Prior experience does not always guarantee a certain level of performance. Some candidates may have years and years of experience in their field and have never been challenged before. Bringing extensive knowledge to the table is great, but if they’ve become bored and are no longer passionate about what they’re doing, they’ll bring that lack of motivation to your company.
On the flip side, hiring someone with no experience will bring in a fresh perspective and will challenge other employees’ knowledge. Asking questions and reinforcing current employee knowledge is a great way to improve your company’s overall environment. New hires can also bring in high levels of motivation, passion, and curiosity which can make the difference between a positive and negative working environment.
Hard Skills Can be Taught but Attitude Can’t
You’ve probably seen this before: you find a perfect candidate, one who checks all the boxes with years and years of experience, but when it comes to actually performing in the workplace and completing tasks, you realize that they aren’t fit for the job. Why is this such an issue? It’s certainly possible to teach an employee a new skill – such as how to use different software or give a presentation to a client. However, trying to teach someone a different personality trait is nearly impossible. In the example above, the company decided to hire based on experience. Though not every hire will turn out this way, had the company looked towards hiring a candidate with little experience, the attitude in the workplace could have been better.
You could be Overlooking the Best Candidate
Turning candidates away simply because they don’t fit a certain criterion could be a detrimental mistake for a company when looking for a new employee. You could be missing out on the perfect person. For instance, let’s say a potential candidate puts in an application for a job posting that is looking for four years of experience. They only have two years of experience, and you immediately write them off for the position because their resume does not fit the criterion of the job posting. Yet, had you looked further, you could have seen that they are passionate and excited about your company. While this does not guarantee that they would be a perfect match, their attitude towards your company could be great for the culture you are trying to build. Though you can put things like years of experience in job descriptions, you should keep your options open if candidates don’t meet them exactly, you could be overlooking the chance to find the perfect employee.
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