Experience doesn’t predict job performance. So what does?

The science is clear. Experience does not predict job performance or new hire success. So, it’s time to redefine what a qualified candidate looks like.

What does the science say about experience and job performance?

Researchers analyzed 81 independent studies on the relationship between pre-hire experience and work outcomes. In statistics, a perfect correlation is 1.00 and no correlation is .00. Here’s what the researchers found:

• The correlation between years of experience and overall job performance is .06.
  
• The correlation between years of experience and turnover is .00.

Why doesn’t experience predict well?

There are a lot of possible reasons why experience doesn’t help job success. Here’s a few:

• Work experience doesn’t equal job knowledge. Just because someone has been doing something for a long time doesn’t mean that they’ve learned a lot. People who are brighter and more curious will gain more knowledge than those who are less cognitively capable and curious. So, if you want to predict job performance, you should assess knowledge instead of experience.
  
• Job experience doesn’t equal task mastery. We all know someone who has been doing something for a long time but still isn’t good at it. Some people will never be great golfers or awesome cooks, no matter how many times they do it. The same goes for job performance.
  
• Jobs aren’t identical. While job titles can be the same and job descriptions look similar, no two jobs are the same. The exact job duties and how the person spends most of their time differ from organization to organization.
  
• Candidates “enhance” job experience. With Artificial Intelligence exploding in the recruitment space, it’s never been easier for candidates to create resumes that make them look like the ideal candidate. Simply tell the chatbot what job you are applying for, and it can create a resume that shows you have the exact experience required.
  
• The situation matters. Pre-hire experience doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens within a team, for a specific supervisor, and inside an organizational structure and culture. All of that changes when a new hire joins your organization. This is one of the reasons it is so hard to predict job performance when evaluating external candidates.

What Does Predict Job Performance?

The science is also clear when it comes to what predicts job performance. It’s a combination of what’s inside the person and the situation. Fortunately, there are scientific ways to evaluate candidates on the individual differences listed in the below graphic. Also, there are some things you can do to try to control the situation and improve hiring outcomes.

What are the Best Ways to Predict Job Performance?

Instead of requiring a certain number of years of experience, use these scientifically proven candidate evaluation methods:

• A “Big Five” Personality Survey. The Five Factor Model of personality (a.k.a., the Big Five) strongly predicts many different work outcomes. But not all Big Five measures are the same. The tool should provide domain, aspect, and facet level scores to provide the highest predictive value. And, when a business psychologist with subject matter expertise interprets the data, the results will be more accurate and helpful than when only an automated report is used.
  
• Cognitive Ability Tests. This is the single best predictor of job performance. And, as the job becomes more complex, the better this predicts performance. It’s critical that the complexity of the tests match the complexity of the role. A business psychologist can advise you on which ones to use and how to combine them with other tests to ensure fairness and legal defensibility.
  
• Structured Interviews. When employers use structured interviews, they are twice as likely to make good hiring decisions compared to unstructured interviews. That’s why competency-based interview guides and interviewer training will give you a good return on your investment.

Other Ways to Improve New Hire Success

Pay attention to the situation.

• Find out what you can about the candidate’s past situations and compare it to your open role. Some factors to consider include the size of the organization, amount of systems and processes in place, availability of people and financial resources, remote/hybrid/in-office, and job scope and complexity. If even just one of these things is vastly dissimilar, it could significantly impact the candidate’s likelihood of success.
  
• Give your candidates a Realistic Job Preview so they know as much as possible about the job tasks, work group, and organizational culture. Be sure to give them the good, the bad, and the ugly! The objective is to give candidates who are unlikely to be happy in the role due to situational factors a chance to self-select out of the hiring process.
  
• Prepare the supervisor. Give as much information as you can to the hiring manager to help them with onboarding, motivating, and developing the new hire. Use candidate assessment tools that give practical advice about how to play to the person’s strengths and fill their gaps.
  

In summary, using pre-hire experience to screen out candidates is an outdated practice that does more harm than good. By measuring what’s inside the person and matching that to the situation, you’ll do a much better job of predicting job performance.