Experience paradox – Part 1: you stand at a new starting point

Experience is an important and valuable concept. Everyone is trying to make the best use of their time – in a more plaza-like definition, to manage and to grab more of whatever interests them.

Most of the people working in HR have one thing in common; when hiring someone new to the team, they look for experience in the job they want to do and make sure that the applicants have the necessary experience and the qualifications.

We can define experience as a kind of qualification. Knowing how to set up a website, getting a brand’s e-commerce operation up and running – and okay, I don’t want to give examples that are all about technology, but turning a fish farm, docking a large ferry, connecting a major power line inside an island to the mainland…

Examples of experience go on and on, just like people do as long as they continue to do the work they do. It happens to everyone; you encounter difficulties while doing a job, you think about solutions to them and while you actively create solutions, you constantly learn, learn, learn…

The knowledge that you gain through learning will eventually allow you to know how to solve problems that you may encounter while doing a job, and bingo; that’s exactly what I call experience.

I know from myself that these days I have to do more than one job at a time.

For a client, collecting data to convert the potential provided by publicly available data into sales, preparing the printed catalogue that another one plans to distribute at a fair for the printing house, listing the products on another’s website and ensuring that search engines can find them, preparing the signboard, corporate identity and other materials for the new office that a friend of mine who lives on the other side of the country will open and organizing the delivery of these without any problems…

And repeating these with different clients throughout the calendar year.

The result of all this effort is not only the cash I see in my bank account, but also the same acquired experience.

So far, I have dealt with database problems in some jobs, prepared the graphics of some sites from scratch, and faced serious quality losses because I sent the jobs I sent to the printing house as raster instead of vector.

When I look back from today, it seems simple and even ordinary for me to be able to do all of these jobs I listed. However, all of these jobs are from different disciplines, and I need experience and expertise to be able to issue an invoice for each of them.

Does experience draw the line?

As if chasing new work, doing existing ones, collecting revisions, delivering them and dealing with their financial affairs were not tiring enough, I must deal with a new definition that has entered the business world anymore.

This is a striking sign that the conventional understanding of the more experienced the better, which was once accepted by a large segment of society as a matter of experience that enabled a professional at any level to stand out from their peers or competitors and was important in catching new business opportunities, is also starting to change.

Experience paradox.

When and why has being experienced in doing business started to be perceived as a disadvantage is a subject that needs to be discussed separately.

The first signs that the “traditional definition of experience” is changing

The perception of experience as a kind of resistance, conservatism and even acceptance rather than a definition that is indispensable in the business world, seems to have first started to be discussed in the 2010s in tech entrepreneurship and in circles and dynamic organizations that are closely related to technology and that affect the rest of the world.

These are even more evident in rapidly changing sectors and in corporate structures where there is a large workforce of young, dynamic, agile people who are just starting to work and whose expectations are higher than the previous generation.

What makes the value of the concept of experience paradoxical is that experience will keep individuals stuck in patterns of success and that instead of opting for innovation, the person will turn to what is confirmed. In fact, having experience is a kind of comfort zone.

You may be experiencing the Experience Paradox:

• I tried it before and it didn’t work: a reflex to reject new ideas in advance.

• I was successful doing it this way: want to doing do new things the old way while holding on to old successes.

• A closed attitude towards new ideas and methods and not being afraid to take risks related to work.

• A defensive reflex against the ideas of the new generation, not caring about them, not prioritizing them.

• Making decisions without thinking about the details and going to the conclusion.

Why did the concept of Experience paradox enter our lives?

The main reason why the Experience paradox has become more visible today is that technology is updated every day and presents us with something new, and the new generation, which has found a great harmony with this technology, prefers the concept of experience to be creative and agile.

Perhaps what needs to be accepted is that the start-up culture, which makes starting a new business understandable and accessible / democratic for everyone, also has a great effect on this; because doing business is no longer just about selling physical products.

On the one hand, we continue to learn while doing business, and it is no longer necessary to do this by being in a physical place. Remote and online working methods are quite common and have been loved and adopted by the old as well as the new generation.

What does the experience paradox really represent?

The experience paradox can be defined as the manifestation of a conflict that represents staying in the safe zone and being innovative. On the one hand, there is the knowledge, foresight and confidence that being experienced provides; on the other hand, there is the flexibility, risk-taking and potential that innovation provides.

Moreover, it is not only individuals who are in this contradiction, institutions also experience this contradiction.

• Let’s hire someone new, but that person should not be too rigid in doing the job.

• Let’s hire someone new, but we should not have to teach him / her the job.

• Let our managers be experienced, but at the same time he / she should be able to understand the young people.

Such demands, which are frequently flying in the air during corporate recruitment and repositioning processes within the company, are an indication of how much corporate structures have internalized the state of being experienced and at the same time, the expectations are just as uncertain.

So is it possible to avoid this experience-based paradox? Yes. The first rule for solving problems in life is to accept the existence of the problem, which should be the first step you take.

It is an important approach to redefine the concept of experience not only as a skill acquired by doing a job for years but also within a broader framework such as adaptability, learning more easily and the ability to manage change.

It would be wrong to define the concept of Experience Paradox as a dilemma that only devalues the experienced or completely ignores them.

Experience is not worthless and despite everything, being experienced is the key that will unlock many dead ends you encounter, but it also changes and transforms like many things in your life, your environment, your family and your work. Old methods are not completely sufficient in solving new problems, you will be able to overcome this dilemma when you combine old knowledge with new tools.

You are not at a finish line with the experiences you have gained, on the contrary, the point you stand at represents a new starting point. When you manage to think more flexibly, open yourself up to learning new things and are more ready to cooperate, the experience paradox will give way to the evolution of experience…