Staying Competitive: Experience Vs Expertise

"Staying Competitive" means, staying in the business, adding skills to enhance or maintain a competitive advantage. Every professional must stay competitive to be able to deliver consistently, earn raises and bonuses year on year.

I have always heard people I meet, telling me that they have N years experience at work. I have heard candidates talking about their "experience" during interviews. They passionately state what they have achieved in their work life.

On deeper interrogation, I find that most candidates I meet are "kinda" shallow. I find that they are able to answer questions that are "straight out of the book" and they are able to answer questions to situations that they have faced during their careers with ease. When I ask, if there is any other way to solve the same problem, they don't have an answer. For argument's sake, when I twist the situation a bit, they are unable to find a solution or an answer.

Very few candidates, have demonstrated the ability to think differently and find a solution to a "twisted" situation. I am constantly on the look out for these kind of people for my organization, because these are the kind of people who are potential leaders.

What makes the second type of candidates different from the first type? For one, they are more in demand, for two, they are are better suited because they possess a special quality of thinking differently and three, these type of people are simply more fun to talk to during an interview.

The difference is "Experience" and "Expertise"

Experience is the number of years of service one has put in at his career.  For example: in a bank, there is a certain standard process that the people are used to, in an automobile assembly line, the people are used to working in a certain way, in other words, process B follows process A, and process D follows process C and so on. People know the sequence of activities to be carried out to get the job done.

In the above situation, we see a phenomenon, "History repeats". Experience comes in hand when history repeats.

Now look at the possibility of a BRAND NEW situation that can stare at you at anytime, a situation that has never occurred before in your life, no one you know of has ever faced this situation, you read all available books and search the internet for a solution, but fail to find one. What do you do when this "situation" strikes? Who will come to your help at this point in time?

There is something that can help you, something called "Expertise"

Expertise, in my opinion, can be defined as how efficiently you handle a situation that you have faced for the first time.

Expertise cannot be studied in classrooms. It is a quality that a professional develops over time. A professional spends times to gain experience, reads books/attends classes to gain knowledge. It is the application of this knowledge and prior experience with other situations that helps the professional develop expertise. Experience tells a professional where to apply a certain technique. An expert seems to have an answer to every situation that someone brings up, he/she seems to know how to handle a problem, even though the problem has never occurred before.

Professionals are made thru' education, but how many of them stay educated? Very few I admit.

Stay competitive by reading good books, understand new techniques. Don't be in a hurry to implement any of these tricks, wait for a time. In time, you will face a situation where you will have to apply the knowledge that you have a gained to crack the problem.

When I interview candidates, I filter candidates by experience in a certain process. When I meet them, I search for the quality of expertise thru' their answers to "twisted questions", alternative answers and solutions. I meet 1 in a 100 candidates, who actually fit the bill, but are very hard to find.