Experience is for Wussies

I’m not getting my MBA because I love business. I’m getting my MBA because it was easier than working. It’s not that I’m looking for an easy way through life- God knows that I sure haven’t been a slacker. The path to Managerial Accounting started when I tried to get a job. Educated at the Honors College of the Florida State System, the number 3 high school in the nation, and with some hard-core graduate work and internships I went into my search fairly cocky that I would find my dream job.

Six months later I was starting to rethink my, well, my everything. Why wasn’t anyone calling me? I had a resume (with a super cute template), experience in a variety of academic avenues, and even had some killer references. I started to look through the jobs and see if there was something I was missing. I noticed something. All the jobs I was applying for; marketing, administrative, research, warehouse forklift operator; required 3-5 years experience. Actually, 3-5 years experience OR an MBA. Well, I said to myself, “It would take me 2 years to get the MBA or I could have a crappy entry level job for five years.” So sign me up for deferred student loans and get me a Trapper Keeper- I’m a grad student.

Maybe it’s a little escapist. Maybe I should have taken the harder road of standing outside a housing development with a little sign shaped like an arrow. Maybe my destiny should have included answering the phones at a small development firm until someone in buying quit, paving the road to a soulless corporate future. Which begs the question, how much does experience matter?

That is exactly what Time Magazine asked this week in “Does Experience Matter in a President?” by David Von Drehle. Since the squabbling over qualifications is always a major part of any election year, it’s no big surprise that Obama has been the focus of the “you’re too green” argument this time around. What is the most interesting aspect of the article is a graph showing the experience level of all the former presidents. A few specifics stand out- Abraham Lincoln was among the least experienced presidents, but he served between two of the most experienced (Buchanan and Johnson) and accomplished more that either of the two more experienced men. Chester A. Arthur had no experience when he became VP under Garfield. Then Garfield was assassinated and he found himself leader of the free world. Taylor, Grant, and Eisenhower had never been elected to any office, local or otherwise, and had only been army generals before they took office. Even Roosevelt was among our less experienced presidents and out of our founding fathers; Washington was by far the least experienced.

“Experience, in other words, gets its value from the person who has it” says Von Drehle. Experience means nothing if one doesn’t know how to use it. A companion article details the program at Florida State that studies human performance. They use a robot in a hospital setting to test nurses of various years experience in crisis situations. What they found is that the number of years experience is not an indicator of performance. The novice nurse and the experience nurse made the same mistake, but the experienced nurse killed her patient more quickly.

What all this means is that companies out there are hiring based on characteristics they think you can only get through a certain number of experiences. My MBA is nothing more that letting them think that business school is gong to make a difference in the kind of person I am. Sure I’ll learn about Activity Based Costing and how to convert Euros to Dollars, but it isn’t going to teach me time management, interpersonal skills, or any of those other blanket skills requested on Monster.com. It’s hard to prove yourself when no one will give you a shot. Fortunately for America, we haven’t required 3-5 years experience or an MBA- we might have missed out on some of our greatest leaders.