If you look at the typical resume, 80% of the document’s “real estate” is occupied by a section titled EXPERIENCE, in which job candidates describe their past employers, positions held, and length of service. There’s a reason for this – most employers place a great deal of emphasis on prior job experience when making hiring decisions.

For both job seekers and those doing the hiring, here’s a wake-up call:

Past job experience is nearly worthless when it comes to predicting a person’s success in their very next job.

If you don’t believe me, consider research in which 81 workplace studies conducted over the past 60 years were reviewed by a team of researchers. They concluded that:

1. Organizations focus heavily on prior work experience to assess whether a job applicant will succeed in the job they want to fill.

2. Previous experience in one organization is not a good predictor of effective performance in another.

Not only is prior experience a poor predictor of future job success but leaning too heavily on it as a hiring factor (e.g., requiring a minimum number of years of experience) means you are pre-emptively disqualifying candidates who would perform well if hired. It also means you may be perpetuating the exclusion of women, racial minorities, and people with disabilities who typically have less access to pre-hire work experience. This misguided hiring bias has profound repercussions on individuals and whole groups of people who are overlooked due to their past work experience.

If part of your job is to select the best people for the job, reconsider how much emphasis you place on prior experience. Then consider adopting more valid ways to vet and select candidates. Here are some methods that are more effective, than assessing past work experience, in predicting job success:

Behavioral Questions: Ask the candidate to recall and reflect on an event from his or her past work life that relates to some aspect of the job you are hiring for. You’ll get a window into how they approach situations they might encounter in the position you are seeking to fill.

Scenario Questions: Ask situational questions that start with “what would you do if…” This yields more useful insights than asking a client about their past performance.

Simulations: Take the interview one step further and build a simulation that literally puts a candidate to the test on an important aspect of the job like judgment, persuasive skills, problem-solving, etc.

Tests: Depending on the particular job, it can be useful to utilize a valid test aimed at measuring job-relevant skills, intellect, personality or other characteristics. These tools must be selected with great care to ensure they are valid, legal, reliable, and equitable.

What practices have you found to be most and least helpful in hiring a new employee?

Image Credit: Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

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