When it comes to doctors and lawyers, experience is usually a plus. Then again, a lot of the older professionals I have visited are woefully out of touch. In a couple of cases this has turned out bad for me.
In the advertising world, I have seen few jobs where having experience is really important. Pharmaceutical experience, interactive experience, package writing experience…come on. I’ve seen job descriptions where the knowledge that was being required would take literally one hour to figure out and less than a day to master.
When will companies figure out how to assess a candidate’s ability to problem solve and learn rather than always requiring them to have done everything before? When you only hire people with a narrow set of experience you create an environment where everyone thinks alike, nobody questions, nothing changes, and everything gets stale. Your company NEEDS fresh blood or it will die.
Experience is bunk. It’s thinking that makes the difference.