{"id":4343,"date":"2026-04-28T10:34:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T09:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/?p=4343"},"modified":"2026-04-28T10:34:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T09:34:33","slug":"should-we-really-be-hiring-for-experience-or-potential","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/nigels-notes\/should-we-really-be-hiring-for-experience-or-potential\/","title":{"rendered":"Should we really be hiring for experience\u2026 or potential?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If your answer is \u201calways on experience,\u201d you might be filtering out your best future performers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Story 1: The experience obsession<\/strong><\/em>
A colleague of mine graduated as an Occupational Therapist and applied for an entry-level role in a regional healthcare organisation. However, the job ad required\u2026 \u201c3 years of prior experience\u201d<\/em>so she couldn\u2019t even apply for the job she had literally just trained for. Instead, she was offered an interim admin role supporting the successful candidate \u2013 someone with over 7 years\u2019 experience. But here is the twist: That (7 year) experienced hire was using outdated techniques that are no longer taught. So, the \u201cinexperienced\u201d graduate had the most current knowledge and could have flourished in the role\u2026 but didn\u2019t have the required number of years experience on the CV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does this make you wonder what we\u2019re really screening for when we ask for experience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Story 2: The reality check.<\/em><\/strong>
There are<\/em> moments where experience genuinely matters such as specialist roles, high-risk environments, urgent delivery. Some examples: most insurance companies won\u2019t insure drivers of certain specialist vehicles unless they have a certain number of years experience behind the wheel. Certain high-rise construction companies won\u2019t take on inexperienced staff unless they have spent time working under direct supervision.\u00a0 Many specialist schools won\u2019t use inexperienced supply teachers to cover for absent staff simply because their lack of experience and classroom presence may cause an urgent situation to become even worse. Hiring purely on potential in these cases can be a costly mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what should we do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hire for experience when you must<\/strong> \u2014 but be brutally honest about how much is actually necessary.<\/em>
Hire for potential when you can<\/strong> \u2014 because every single hire, no matter how senior, still carries risk and room to grow.
There is no such thing as a 100% perfect match.<\/strong> Every hire is a bet on future capability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big question we should ask is: Are your hiring criteria predicting performance\u2026 or just protecting comfort?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If your answer is \u201calways on experience,\u201d you might be filtering out your best future performers. Story 1: The experience obsessionA colleague of mine graduated as an Occupational Therapist and applied for an entry-level role in a regional healthcare organisation. However, the job ad required\u2026 \u201c3 years of prior experience\u201dso she couldn\u2019t even apply for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nigels-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4343"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4347,"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343\/revisions\/4347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.big5assessments.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}