20 years experience or 1 year’s repeated 20 times?

If you claim to have 20 year’s experience is it really true? Or do you have 1 year’s experience that you have merely repeated 20 times? Confused? Don’t worry – most people are when I ask these questions.

If you have been working in ONE company for the past 20 years, you might only have ONE year’s experience that you repeated 20 times. You have experience in ONE business model, experience in ONE company culture, experience in ONE IT system, experience in ONE industry … ONE … you get my drift. Real experience is where you have been exposed to DIFFERENT systems, cultures, methods, etc. People with REAL experience are more adaptable, come up with different solutions and give better input to business problems – simply because they have a variety of experiences. When faced with the option to employ staff, I will always tend to lean more towards the candidate with REAL experience. A good work history to me means the person have regularly exposed themselves to new challenges, and this can only be achieved when they change their jobs every two years or so. Dare I say – fire those employees with 20 year’s service? If you don’t, you may be doing them a great injustice.