Imagine that there are two external candidates (let’s call them “Tom” and “Harry”) who have applied for a VP-level position with your company. Tom and Harry each work for one of your top competitors right now, and each of them is currently a Director. However, the two men have very different levels of experience.
Tom
has twenty years of total work experience, and all twenty of those years are in
your industry. In comparison, Harry only has eight years of total work
experience, and only four of those years are in your industry. Based on this
limited information, which candidate do you think would be the better person to
hire for your VP-level role?
Many people would assume that Tom would be the better selection, given that he has so much more experience than Harry. However, isn’t it curious why Tom has only reached the Director level after working in your industry for twenty years, while Harry has reached that same level in a much shorter period of time?
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