Why You Shouldn’t Ask for Years of Experience in Job Descriptions

When you’ve secured funding for a new job role or an employee decides to leave your charity, it can be tough to figure out exactly what you need from the next person. What skills and experience are essential? And how can you translate that into a job description that will attract quality candidates?

We often hear recruiters say that they look at the person who was in the job before, or someone in a similar role, to see what kind of qualifications and how much experience they had. But this isn’t a reliable approach.

Here we’ll be explaining the research on why years of experience isn’t a good predictor of job performance and why we don’t recommend including it in your job descriptions. We’ll also go through some better ways to think about what’s needed from the next post holder.

What the research says

In 2016, Frank L. Schmidt published a research report summarising meta-analytic findings from 100 years of research, on how well different selection methods can predict job performance.

Schmidt’s report looked at 31 different selection methods, including years of relevant job experience. He found that someone’s capability to perform a job is influenced by their cognitive ability, personality traits, knowledge and skills, rather than simply the number of years of relevant experience they have.

In fact, the relationship between years of relevant experience and job performance is very weak (a correlation of .16). In groups where experience of the job was no more than five years, the relationship was slightly stronger, but years of experience was still only a modest predictor of job performance.

Years of experience doesn’t say much about performance

This is because years of previous experience conveys little to no information on performance. For example, someone with three years of experience in project management may have the same level of competency as someone with seven years of experience in project management.

Prioritising years of experience rewards quantity over quality and ignores the aptitude and actual skills of a candidate.

What’s more is that years of experience may deter many candidates from applying for your roles. This could be limiting your applicant pool and preventing you from hiring the most suitable candidate.

Research shows that women are less likely to apply for jobs when they don’t feel that they meet 100% of the criteria and they are also less likely to apply for more senior positions. They make safer choices in recruitment than men. Therefore, if they see a job with X number of years of XYZ experience, which they may not have exactly, they won’t apply because they don’t think they will get the job.

Including years of experience in job descriptions may also put off older candidates from applying. They may feel like the organisation is looking for a younger person or that they won’t even be considered for a role. Research by Centre for Ageing Better found that older candidates felt that they were less likely to be considered and deemed a good fit for roles when the job description specified ‘3-5 years of work experience’.

Beyond this, arbitrary job requirements, like years of experience, can also impact your employer brand. Job seekers make assumptions about an organisation’s culture from reading a job description, and including years of experience may suggest to candidates that your organisation is rigid, archaic, or doesn’t prioritise development.

What to put on your job descriptions instead of years of experience

Rather than including years of experience on your job description, it’s more effective to emphasise the specific skills or competencies that are needed to perform the role, and the level of skill needed.

So for example, instead of 5-7 years’ experience in fundraising, you could ask for ‘a proven track record of building and maintaining relationships with customers, clients or stakeholders’ or ‘a creative thinker with the ability to develop and execute innovative campaigns, events or appeals that drive engagement or revenue’.

And for technical skills, like using Excel, you’re better off specifying what the job holder needs to be able to do in Excel (e.g. pivot tables, organising datasets, financial modelling), with some consideration of what can be learned on the job.

More effective methods for assessing skills and competencies

There are more predictive methods to measure a candidate’s skills or competencies that can help you make the right hire. Here, we outline three methods to use instead of years of experience.

Behavioural/competency questions

Behavioural or competency questions ask candidates to talk about a time when they demonstrated certain competencies in a previous situation. For example, you may ask a candidate how they delivered a project from start to finish and resolved any issues along the way to demonstrate how they problem-solve, handle, and learn from unexpected situations. These questions can show a candidate’s level of experience and likely behaviours based on their past behaviour.

They’re an effective method that can be used at the initial shortlist stage as a screening question and/or in job interviews.

Work sample tests

One way to assess a candidate’s skills and ability to perform a job is through work sample tests. Work sample tests are hands-on assessments or simulations of all or part of a job that must be performed by applicants. For example, for a research role, an applicant may be asked to analyse some data or develop a research plan.

Work sample tests can be used at the initial shortlist stage as a screening question, and/or as a task after a job interview. We recommend saving longer work sample tests for later in the recruitment process, so you don’t put candidates off from applying, but using one or two short work sample screening questions at the application stage. You can read our blog on work sample tests for more information on how to use them.

Tests of job knowledge

Like work sample tests, tests of job knowledge can be a great way to assess required job knowledge for roles that need a specific skillset. For example, for a data analyst role you could provide applicants with theoretical information about what you want to find out from a dataset, and ask them questions about what statistical analysis they would use.

For example: ‘You’re working on a dataset that includes the exam scores of students in a school. You want to determine if there’s a significant difference in the average test scores between male and female students. Please identify the statistical analysis you would use to answer this question and briefly explain why this is appropriate.’

However, for some roles, where you may find excellent candidates with transferrable skills from other backgrounds, we advise against including tests of job knowledge, but for roles like an accountant, legal adviser or web developer, these may be very helpful.

As with work sample tests, we recommend including one or two short questions testing job knowledge at the initial shortlist stage as screening questions and possibly including another question at a later stage in the recruitment process.

Ready to take on board our advice? Post a job today.