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https://hbr.org/2019/09/experience-doesnt-predict-a-new-hires-success (archive)
The paper being discussed: Iddekinge et al. 2019
An excerpt:
Chad H. Van Iddekinge of Florida State University and his colleagues reviewed 81 studies to investigate the link between an employee’s prior work experience and his or her performance in a new organization.
They found no significant correlation between the two. Even when people had completed tasks, held roles, or worked in functions or industries relevant to their current ones, it did not translate into better performance.
The conclusion: Experience doesn’t predict a new hire’s success.
My rough impression is that some EA orgs are better than most firms re: not weighting prior work experience highly, though it's still a factor in a lot of EA hiring processes.
The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings is a broader and (IMO) nice overview of this stuff. Here's a snippet from the central table:
Oh interesting. That does look cool, though it's 20 years old.
Seems like they found a different result than Iddekinge et al. 2019 re: job experience – 0.18 rather than no correlation.
My intuition is that there is some effect from learning how to work a desk job, so I'm inclined to side with Schmidt & Hunter.
They actually have a working paper for an updated version that I was just able to dig up (the links from Google Scholar seem broken ATM): The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 100 Years of Research Findings.
Very valuable piece, and likely worth a separate write up.