Skill should trump years of experience

Years of Experience. Why are we so caught up on years of experience? It does not mean more skillful, it does not mean better, all it means is they may have been doing it longer. Yet time and time again managers and recruiters use years of experience as a way of ignoring candidates who may actually be better. I know several people who have only have 3-4 years of experience, yet they are better and know more than people in the same field with 10+ years of experience. Yet we are still taking experience over skill. It makes no sense and something we need to change or we are just going to continue to overlook great candidates and lose out.