Redefining experience

Often recruiting firms want to have experienced people to work for them. The specific experience needed is usually listed and most probably there will be no-one who has achieved the right experience in all areas of competence. The recruiter has to make compromises and decide to emphasize some of the characteristics that the future employee seems to have. For example having an experience of the tourism industry could be a good starting point for those working within that industry but what is that experience really all about? What is it that you should know? I understand that if you have to create tourism services it is absolutely clear that you cannot be totally without knowing the problems and obstacles in the creation processes. And you maybe should be able to show that you know how to create those services yourself, at least if your job is really about creating services within tourism. But when it comes to the situation where you are leading others who are creators, an experience that has given you the right tools for structuring up reality, seeing the future, being information literate and above all seeing entities instead of details could be sufficient. And well, in the society of today, knowing how to network and build up networks that co-create something valuable within those networks, is utterly important.

Here is one practical example showing that experience could/should be redefined. I have a good friend who has no children of her own. This means that by some definition she has no experience of children and how to bring up them. But as a matter of fact she is the one who has given new, innovative ideas to help me with questions when upbringing my own children. Why? She is a good listener as well as broad-minded. She skips the details and uses the wisdom she has gathered when meeting with really different people and families during her lifetime. And yes, she has helped me in situations when I have been insecure and worried. In other words she has saved me from giving up and helped me with my decisions. So even without that "right" experience you can give a developing and helping hand. And maybe that is just what is needed.

So maybe we should really reconsider what we mean by the appropriate experience for a job? Maybe we just need wise, humane people who know how to see the whole situation? I would definitely like to be that kind of person in my job and I will try really hard to learn from every mistake I make. And we really never stop getting experienced, or do we?