Solveiga Grudienė: Hiring is changing, and experience is no longer enough

As the labor market becomes more active in autumn, an old paradox returns: employers say they cannot find suitable workers, while candidates say attractive offers are scarce. The article argues that part of the problem lies in how employers define the ideal candidate.

Requirements such as five years of experience, sector-specific background or knowledge of a particular tool are not automatically wrong. But they do not always predict who will perform best over the long term. Work itself is changing, with artificial intelligence reshaping both the tools people use and the tasks they perform.

Organizations must also adjust to changing economic and geopolitical conditions, customer expectations, working arrangements and employees’ expectations about careers. That makes the ability to learn quickly, adopt new methods, retrain and adapt increasingly important.

Experience still matters. It shows what a person can bring to an organization on the first day, while potential indicates how that person may grow as the job changes. The problem begins when past experience becomes such a high threshold that candidates from adjacent fields are rejected despite having a strong professional foundation and the ability to learn quickly.

The article says employers should separate what a role genuinely requires at the start from what a new hire can learn within a few months. They should also avoid relying on a candidate’s claim that they are a fast learner. Instead, with selection processes becoming shorter, employers need to decide what is most important to learn about a candidate within limited time.