A quick story.

I knew a woman who worked at a finance company. While working at the company, she went to school at night and eventually earned her MBA. After she graduated and earned her degree, she walked into her boss’s office and asked for a raise based on her new degree.

Yet the boss instead focused on the money she brought into the company. He pointed out that her output was essentially the same as last year. He declined the raise.

“But wait, people with MBAs command higher salaries,” she said.

“That’s wrong,” the boss said. “People who make more money for the company command higher salaries.”

The Point

The point of all this is that a degree and years of experience, on their own, mean nothing if they don’t improve an employee’s performance. Specifically, in the example above, having an MBA on the resume doesn’t mean the girl deserved a raise. Instead, the new knowledge and skills she gained from earning her MBA should make her a better employee, meaning she’ll bring in more money for the company, which will then lead to a raise.

Now, what if, instead of earning an MBA, she stayed extra hours at work and improved herself that way. Or read books on her own and watched instructional videos on YouTube. Or talked with high-ranking people in the industry. Is that more or less valuable? The answer is in the performance.

So what does this have to do with hiring? The point is years of experience, an advanced degree, etc, doesn’t really matter, per se. What matters is does the person have the ability to do the job.

Before, there weren’t powerful screening tools that could be used to quickly determine that exact question, meaning that organizations were forced to rely on achievements like years of experience and college degrees as filters. But now, with powerful screening tools like VoiceGlance and games that allow employers to quickly determine who really can do the job, the focus shifts on who the person is, not what they did.