5 years experience. 10 years experience. 20 years experience. Which one is better? There are many times when no experience may be better than 20 years.

An employee with 20 years of tenure can help or hurt a team. That’s why I hate the idea that tenure alone is used in making employment decisions. Tenure means little without growth!

Tenure + Growth = Experience!

Tenure or Experience?

The Truth About Experience

Tenure does not create a better employee, growth does. If I am hiring new employees, evaluating current employees or even looking in the mirror, I need to look at growth versus tenure.  I need to change my mindset about experience.

Does the person I am looking at truly have 20 years experience or one year experience repeated 20 times?

Tenure without Growth Becomes Stagnation

Who cares if someone has tenure occupying a desk or collecting a paycheck for a job title they were hired to do 20 years ago.

If that person is doing the job the same way they did it 20 years ago, they are stagnant.  In fact, if anyone is doing their job the same way they were doing it 20 MONTHS ago they are becoming stagnant!

This world is moving quickly. Change is part of life. If we are not always looking for ways to grow and get better, we are on the road to stagnation.

Identifying Experience Versus Tenure

Tenure + Growth = Experience!

Growth is the essential element that makes tenure valuable. I am not talking about positional growth.

There are many people who choose not to pursue promotions, but they continue to grow. Conversely, there are many people with impressive titles who rely on their old experiences in this ever-changing world, and they stagnate.

There are some question we need to answer about these tenured people to determine whether they are on the path to experience or the dead end of stagnation.

• What was the last thing you did that made you uncomfortable?
• What is the newest technology you have learned?
• When was the last time you were required to change how you did your job? How did you react?
• What is different about the way you do your job now versus 12 months ago?
• How have you adapted to changes in your marketplace? Work environment?
• What new ideas do you have for doing your job moving forward?

These can be interview questions, performance review questions or questions I ask myself in the mirror. The answers can be telling.

The Bottom Line:

We should not confuse tenure with experience. I would rather have a rookie with a thirst for growth than a tenured employee who has become stagnant. A tenured stagnant person in today’s world is like I world-class sprinter who puts on fifty pounds.

Who cares that you could run like lightening a few years ago! Because you stopped improving yourself, you are not valuable to the relay team. You will slow us all down and keep the rest of us from reaching our goals.

Who will you be looking at later today? Who will you be looking at in the mirror? Experience matters. Tenure does not.

The only way to gain experience is to continuously strive for growth. Without growth, my tenure does not make me valuable. It only makes me tenured.

Question:

What other ways does experience differ from tenure?