In business, many people are infatuated with the number of years of experience.
During pitching, many consultants love this sentence: "I have xx years of experience in yyy."
In their job ads, HR people love to specify: "minimum of xx years of experience in yyy."
Business people are often impressed with the number of years of experience, e.g., "Wow, James has 20 years of experience in sales, he must be really good."
But is the number of years of experience really meaningful?
Imagine if I said: "I have 20 years of driving experience."
So what?
Does it mean I am a better driver than my friend, who has only 5 years of driving experience?
Well, not necessarily. What if I were a dangerous and reckless mad driver, while my friend is a safe and defensive driver?
Although it can imply that I am a better driver than people who passed their driving test a few months ago, as you can see, the number of years doesn't tell much.
Insight #1: Number of years doesn't automatically mean competence.
Furthermore, it's tempting to think that people with many years of experience have seen a lot.
The implicit assumption is that if you have done something repeatedly for 20 years, you have seen many variations of the problem and, hence, are more equipped to solve any new problems.
Well, this is not always true.
I might have 20 years of experience in driving. But what if I only drove from home (in the low-traffic countryside) to a grocery store (15 minutes away) once a week?
Compare this 20 years of experience against someone with 3 years of experience (but she was a lorry driver who drives long hauls across countries, 9 hours daily)? She definitely has faced more varied road conditions than I might have.
Therefore, the number 20 is meaningless when compared to 3.
For example, John is a strategic planner manager in a Fortune 500 company. He has done strategic planning for his company for the last 5 years. Does John really have 5 years of experience? Or does he only have 1 year of experience, repeated 5 times?
Compare John with Sue, a McKinsey consultant who did 10 different strategy projects across 8 clients and 5 countries in 3 years. Is Sue more experienced than John? Or John is more experienced?
Insight #2: Number of years doesn't always translate into a wide breadth of experience.
Similarly, how does this 20 years of experience compare to someone with 1 year of experience, but that experience was driving off-track roads in the jungles of Borneo or the desert of Kalahari?
Very different 20 vs 1. Which one is better? Depends on what kind of driver you need... If you are heading to Sahara, you will be better off taking the driver with 1 year of experience, than the 20 years of experience.
As you can see, the number of years, by itself, is meaningless.
Insight #3: Number of years doesn't mean relevancy of experience.
So, if the number of years is meaningless, why do HR people specify it in the job description? Why do consultants mention it during pitching? Why are we impressed with this?
I think it's time for us to stop using the years of experience as a measure of competence.
Perhaps the better measure is: "How much $$$ impact have you created?"
The number of years tells me not much.
But the $$$ impact tells me much.