On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, John H. Dicus wrote:
> >How important is it for someone to have experience in a world where
> >tomorrow will not be like today? The world has fundamentally changed
> >from the old orderly organized world to today's diverse, fast changing
> >unorganized world.
"Experience" in what? In organizations that value learning and recognize
that the future will not just be a continuation of the past, what matters
is flexibility, teamwork, learning from mistakes, and the ability
continually to develop new skills and absorb new information.
However, in the high-tech industry at least, "experience" is usually
defined much more narrowly: number of years of C programming, familiarity
with Unix, etc. I was turned down for several jobs because I didn't have
"Windows experience," twenty years in the software industry
notwithstanding. When I finally got a job using a Windows PC, I learned
enough to be productive in a day or two.
In much the same way, the sort of background I have, which includes
programming, training, tech writing, a doctorate in human resource
education, and quality assurance, too often becomes a liability rather
than an asset, as the narrow-minded seekers of "experience" see too little
in their specific area, rather than a great deal that can be applied to a
constantly changing work environment.
In one regard the fault lies with technical recruiters and the HR
departments in many companies, which scan resumes for buzzwords rather
than looking in more detail at combinations of skills and experiences and
for both breadth and depth in the interpersonal as well as the technical
realm. These companies may lose in the long run, but quarterly results
are more important than long-term thinking in far too many areas. Some
companies would rather lay off staff and hire new people with different
specific "experience" than train the people who have already shown their
ability to master what the company does and who would be happy to take on
a new challenge. This sort of thinking is immensely damaging to
employees' sense of themselves and sends the best of them packing.
So, the corporate world (at least in the high-tech sector I know) needs a
great deal of education on what experience really means and what skills
are valuable in a time of constant change, and this requires changing the
minds of, if not replacing, executives wedded to narrow models of limited
experiences to be applied to specific, never-changing tasks.
Marc Sacks
Senior QA Engineer
Spyglass, Inc.
--Marc Sacks <msacks@world.std.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>