Experience vs. Confidence: When evaluating two candidates, which gets more weight?
With the presidential race and all of the discussion that goes with it, I can’t stop thinking about the debate between experience and confidence.
Candidates don’t come through the door offering the exact same experiences. Invariably, one will have more direct experience, but the other will exude unquestionable confidence that they are more capable for the job. While a strong background is always important to have on your resume (whether applying for a job at the White House or Random House), the perfect combination of experience, skills and confidence can be hard to come by. We employers (and voters) have to choose: which is more critical?
Employers must look carefully at an applicant’s resume and background when trying to evaluate his/her potential. In the entry-level field (a parallel you could make with the Presidential race, as neither contender is the incumbent), the most important message a job seeker can convey is his/her ability to successfully apply previous experiences to the task at hand. While previous experience may not necessarily be on-the-job, other considerable endeavors such as community involvement, extracurricular activities and pertinent academic achievements could certainly supplement work history.
If a candidate has relevant work experience, but hasn’t developed the “soft” skills to back it up, does that make him/her a more viable candidate? Or what if someone has the confidence to succeed, but doesn’t have the industry experience to back it up – do you trust your gut?
At the end of the day, all candidates – from entry-level job seekers to presidential hopefuls – must showcase how they will transfer their all-inclusive skill set in order to win the job.
Experience, Jennifer Floren
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Jennifer Floren - who has written 7 posts on Cheezhead.
Jenny, founder and CEO, launched Experience in 1996 with the mission to educate, assist and inspire college graduates as they forge new paths into the world of work. Experience has grown its network to include more than 3,800 universities, 100,000 employers and 3 million students and alumni – all of whom are focused on launching the careers of the world’s most important talent.
Jenny has been recognized as one of the nation’s youngest business leaders and achievers by numerous organizations including Forbes, Business Week, New York Times, Working Woman, Boston Business Journal, Women’s Business, and Entrepreneur, and is a frequent speaker at nationwide universities and major business events such as the Kennedy eRecruiting Conference, EMA, the MIT Enterprise Forum, Springboard Venture Capital Forum, and the Association of Colleges & Employers. With a career path as a psychology-major-turned-entrepreneur, a relatively young CEO, a woman in business, an Internet pre- and post-bubble survivor, a venture capital fundraising veteran, an advisor to top universities and Fortune 500 employers, and as someone who helps millions of people find their true calling every day, she has many perspectives to share with her audiences.
Jenny earned a BA in psychology from Dartmouth College in 1993, and was a management consultant with Bain & Company in Boston prior to starting Experience. She is currently a board member and active participant in the MIT Enterprise Forum, Junior Achievement, the Dartmouth College Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, and the Caring Canines organization which certifies and manages therapy service dogs (along with her wheaten terrier sidekick, Bailey).
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October 7th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Gut is important, as are hard skills and experience. However, when recruiting software developers we’ve always had more success hiring individuals with strong soft skills, even if their experience or aptitude in specific technologies was lacking.
The soft skills that I’ve found are important for technology hires are: exceptional communication, willingness to experiment, and ability to persevere. Candidates with gifts in these areas, and a C.S. degree or equivalent experience have provided value to our team with a very low turnover rate.
Some of our most successful employees have had very little experience in the niche practice areas we recruit for, namely Google Apps migration technicians or enterprise search developers.
With a good training program, a culture of success, and the willingness and patience to translate those soft skills into expertise in specific practice areas, technology companies can build a successful recruiting strategy.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:33 am
This question could be asked many different ways. Hard skills vs. soft skills; experience/competence vs. character/personality? The answer is that it always depends on the job. Would you want to hire a brain surgeon who had minimal experience but tremendous soft skills? On the flip side, soft-skills are a lot harder to acquire/learn than hard-skills. So if you have the luxury of training someone and giving them time to develop without risking your product or service, then go for it (assuming they have the aptitude)! In the end, it’s situational.