Experience vs (: Attitude & Aptitude :)

I enjoy job interviews!

Sure, there could be an opportunity for moving to new environment where I can utilize my skills and learn something new.

But, they also tell me what are the things I am missing - a faster way to orient myself with the current trends- so cool!

Some of the questions that I am commonly asked in these interviews are:

• “how many years of experience in x, y, z” ,
• “how many projects in x, y, z”,
• “how many…”

Then, when I speak of the projects I did to solve the problems, I seem to confuse them with my professional background in IT that lacks the borderline (10 + years...)!

Should "experience" be the only criterion in evaluating one's potential match for a job?

Well, in my opinion "experience" should not be the sole factor in evaluation of talent, or in filtering. Experience without an Attitude to update (Learn) simulates a "Closed System" as in Second Law of Thermodynamics. A common expression of this beautiful physical law is : Entropy (chaos) in a closed system always increases. Chaos and Productivity are hard to go hand-in-hand.

An Attitude to Learn, e.g., acquiring certifications, does not really help much unless one has the Aptitude to apply the knowledge to solve a problem!

Based on the scale of "experience", I hardly qualify for what I am doing today. But I dived into the wonderful world of Information Technology (IT) with an attitude to learn and an aptitude for solving problems. It seems like the missing ingredient of "experience" did not stop me from what I enjoyed doing (Fig. 1)!

This, by no means, is disrespect for "experience". Experience is always there to guide us. Experience is equally important in productivity.

In my case, I have tried to fill that void ( of experience ) by expedite learning with help of #simulation. Of course no one would trust their #ActiveDirectory or production #cloud environment to a newbie. But, I simulate most of the environments, create real life #problems in them, and #solve them by in-depth #troubleshooting. It provides me confidence ( enough experience ) to demonstrate to my teams to solve a real life problem as I did in some of my projects.

I am thankful to my teams, in my short journey in IT, who have evaluated me for all those amazing projects by trusting on my attitude to learn and aptitude to solve problems.