---
title: No Relevant Experience? What Employers Should Check Instead
description: Experience correlates 0.49 with performance under three years on the job and 0.15 after twelve. What to check when a candidate's experience line is blank.
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/covers-2026-10/hiring-without-relevant-experience-cover-en-2026-10.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Method](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en) [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en) [Glossary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/glossary?hsLang=en) [Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

[日本語](https://nobusato.jp/ja/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience)[English](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience)[中文](https://nobusato.jp/zh/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience)

Organizations & Hiring

In this article

1. [What does experience actually buy?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s1)
2. [Experience also brings baggage](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s2)
3. [What to look at when the experience line is blank](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s3)
4. [What I listen for with junior candidates](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s4)
5. [The employer's side of the bill](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s5)

1. [Home](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)
2. [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en)
3. [Organizations & Hiring](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/organizations-hiring)

# No Relevant Experience? What Employers Should Check Instead

What to check when the line is blank

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)7 min read

Contents5

1. [What does experience actually buy?](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s1)
2. [Experience also brings baggage](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s2)
3. [What to look at when the experience line is blank](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s3)
4. [What I listen for with junior candidates](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s4)
5. [The employer's side of the bill](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience#s5)

Relevant experience has a shelf life, and it is shorter than most job postings assume. "Three years in a similar role" is the line nobody argues with, because someone who has done the job should keep outperforming someone who has not. A 1988 meta-analysis of 16,058 workers suggests the edge fades. Among people with under three years on the job, experience correlated 0.49 with performance. Among people with twelve years or more, it was 0.15. So experience mostly buys you the first few years. After that, something else decides who is good.

## What does experience actually buy?

Speed in the early years. Michael McDaniel, Frank Schmidt and John Hunter published the analysis in the Journal of Applied Psychology, pooling 947 samples. Across all of them, the corrected correlation between job experience and job performance was 0.32. Split by the average experience of each sample, it falls step by step.

Experience predicts performance mainly in the first three years, and less than a third as well after twelve

Corrected correlation between job experience and job performance, grouped by the sample's mean years of experience. 947 samples, 16,058 people. Bar length is the value times two. McDaniel, Schmidt and Hunter (1988), Journal of Applied Psychology

- Under 3 years4,490 people

  0.49
- 3 to 6 years5,088 people

  0.32
- 6 to 9 years3,588 people

  0.25
- 9 to 12 years1,274 people

  0.19
- 12 years or more1,618 people

  0.15

The inexperienced hire is behind at the start. Past that stretch, experience stops separating people.

Figure 1. In McDaniel, Schmidt and Hunter's 1988 meta-analysis of 947 samples and 16,058 people, the corrected correlation between job experience and job performance was 0.49 in groups averaging under 3 years of experience, 0.32 at 3 to 6 years, 0.25 at 6 to 9, 0.19 at 9 to 12, and 0.15 at 12 years or more.

One caveat. These are statistically corrected correlations. In the same table the raw observed correlations sit near 0.2 in every group, and the downward slope appears only after the corrections. Read it with that in mind.

Read on the corrected figures, the message is this. Among newcomers, one more year on the job says a lot. Among veterans, a few more years say almost nothing.

The simpler the job, the faster the line drops. The paper splits jobs by cognitive demand. In low-demand jobs the figure goes from 0.54 under three years to 0.12 at twelve or more. In high-demand jobs it goes from 0.42 to 0.16.

For an employer this changes the question. The person without experience is at a disadvantage during the ramp, and you can estimate how long the ramp is and what it costs. How good they will be in year three was never something the experience line could tell you.

## Experience also brings baggage

An experienced hire arrives with knowledge and skill, and with the previous employer's habits. The first helps. The second sometimes works against them.

Gina Dokko, Steffanie Wilk and Nancy Rothbard tested this in a 2009 paper in Organization Science. They studied two claims call centers at a large US property and casualty insurer, analyzing 771 applicants and the 197 of them who were hired. People with more prior experience in the occupation had more of the knowledge and skill the job needed, and performed better because of it. Once knowledge and skill were held constant, though, the direct effect of prior experience on performance was negative.

The authors' explanation, roughly, is that people carry over routines and ways of thinking from the old workplace, and these do not always fit the new one. Two further results are worth keeping. The knowledge advantage from prior experience shrank the longer someone stayed at the firm. And the negative effect was smaller for people who were more adaptable or who felt they fit the culture.

My reading: the person without experience is missing the knowledge, and is also missing the part that would have to be unlearned. You can teach the first. Undoing the second in an experienced hire is often the harder job.

## What to look at when the experience line is blank

Look for the things experience was supposed to prove, and get the evidence somewhere else. A blank line still leaves plenty to check.

Start with learning speed, and take only events as evidence. Which fields has this person crossed into before? Each time, how many months from knowing nothing to working alone? How did they learn: from a mentor, from reading, from getting it wrong once? "I'm a fast learner" goes unrecorded. A sentence with a date in it gets written down, something like "four months after the transfer I was producing the report myself." Someone who has crossed over two or three times and found their feet within months each time will, I think, probably do it again.

Then watch how they take apart a problem they have never seen. Hand over a real one from the role. Whether the answer is right hardly matters; they have not done the job, so a miss is normal. Listen to the order. What information do they ask for first? What do they assume? Where do they say "I don't know that, I would ask so-and-so"? A person who guesses an answer and a person who splits the problem first will, I think, look very different once they are in the job.

Last come the two inner layers of the [four layers](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method-four-layers?hsLang=en): Core, Patterns, Equipment, Context. Equipment is the only layer that can clearly be built after joining, and "no experience" means part of Equipment is empty. Empty can be filled. Core hardly changes and Patterns are hard to change, so when Equipment is thin those two get a stricter look than usual: the real reason behind past job changes, and how the person decided under pressure. I described how I read them in [After the resume screen: what I look for in an interview](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-i-look-for-in-interviews?hsLang=en).

## What I listen for with junior candidates

There is one question I always ask in interviews: what was the work experience you struggled with most, what did you learn, and what would be different if you did it again? With junior candidates I judge only the telling, whether they can make the event clear. I listen mainly for the sequence and for the scope they were personally responsible for. I don't expect numbers.

Sequence and scope can be told without any industry experience. What happened first and what came after. Which part was theirs and which belonged to someone else. A person new to the field has no results in it to show, but everyone has been through one hard thing.

## The employer's side of the bill

The cost of hiring without experience falls on the employer, and it falls early. Read on McDaniel's corrected numbers, the widest gap is in the first three years.

So dropping "relevant experience" from a posting depends on a few plain questions. Who teaches this person, and for how long? Who covers their work in the meantime? What should they be doing alone by which month? If you can answer, the requirement can go, and I laid out the order and the price of relaxing requirements in [Can't Find the Right Hire? Which Requirement to Relax First](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/which-requirement-to-relax-first?hsLang=en).

This matters more in Japan than elsewhere, I think, because a new subsidiary is usually the team with the least spare capacity to train anyone. If nobody on the ground has the hours, keep the requirement and take the longer search. Hiring someone untrained and then leaving them alone costs more than waiting.

Sources (as of November 2026)

- [McDaniel, Schmidt & Hunter, "Job experience correlates of job performance," Journal of Applied Psychology 73(2), 1988](https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.73.2.327)
- [Dokko, Wilk & Rothbard, "Unpacking Prior Experience: How Career History Affects Job Performance," Organization Science 20(1), 2009](https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1080.0357)

---

Author

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

Launching in Japan, starting with people and systems. I write about building organizations, sales teams and technology organizations in Japan, in English, Japanese and Chinese.

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)[Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

## More in this column

1. 01[How to Score Modesty in Japanese Candidates](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/scoring-modesty-in-japanese-candidates?hsLang=en)7 min
   
   Western samples inflate self-assessments by 0.87 standard deviations; East Asian samples by zero. Scored literally, ...
2. 02[Real Failure or Safe Failure? Reading the Interview Answer](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/real-failure-or-safe-failure?hsLang=en)8 min
   
   Over 90% of student job candidates fake to some degree in interviews. To tell a real failure from a safe one, ask what ...
3. 03[Why a Good Recruiter Sometimes Tells You Not to Move](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/why-good-recruiters-say-stay?hsLang=en)7 min
   
   Recruiters in Japan are paid on the hire, yet good ones sometimes say stay. Refunds, public six-month leaver counts and ...

[Column guide: Organizations & Hiring](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/guide-organizations-and-hiring?hsLang=en) · [Glossary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/glossary?hsLang=en) · [The method behind the articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en)

[← All articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en)

## Writing about launching in Japan, in three languages.

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Get in touch](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

Nobu Sato

Writing about launching in Japan, in three languages.

[info@nobusato.jp](mailto:info@nobusato.jp) [Substack](https://nobusato.substack.com)[Newsletter](https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-japan-entry-memo-7519750783555518464/)[Medium](https://medium.com/@nobusato5888)[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/realnobusato/)[X](https://x.com/nobusato5888) [RSS](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/rss.xml?hsLang=en)

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)[Method](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/method?hsLang=en)[Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en)[Glossary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/glossary?hsLang=en)[Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

Views here are my own and don’t represent any organization I work or have worked for.

© 2026 Nobu Sato. All rights reserved.·[Privacy and disclaimer](https://nobusato.jp/en/privacy?hsLang=en)

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BreadcrumbList",
  "itemListElement" : [ {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en",
    "name" : "Home",
    "position" : 1
  }, {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog",
    "name" : "Articles",
    "position" : 2
  }, {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/organizations-hiring",
    "name" : "Organizations & Hiring",
    "position" : 3
  }, {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience",
    "name" : "No Relevant Experience? What Employers Should Check Instead",
    "position" : 4
  } ]
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience",
  "@type" : "WebPage",
  "about" : {
    "@type" : "Thing",
    "name" : "Organizations & Hiring"
  },
  "author" : {
    "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/#person"
  },
  "description" : "Experience correlates 0.49 with performance under three years on the job and 0.15 after twelve. What to check when a candidate's experience line is blank.",
  "inLanguage" : "en",
  "isPartOf" : {
    "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog",
    "@type" : "Blog",
    "name" : "Articles"
  },
  "keywords" : "Organizations & Hiring",
  "name" : "No Relevant Experience? What Employers Should Check Instead",
  "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience"
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/#person",
  "@type" : "Person",
  "alternateName" : [ "佐藤伸明", "Nobu Sato", "左滕" ],
  "description" : "Japan market launches: organization, sales and technology",
  "knowsAbout" : [ "Japan market entry", "Organization design", "Talent acquisition", "Sales organization building", "Technology organization building", "Japanese labor law" ],
  "name" : "Nobu Sato",
  "sameAs" : [ "https://www.linkedin.com/in/realnobusato/", "https://x.com/nobusato5888" ],
  "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/profile"
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Nobu Sato",
    "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/author/nobu-sato"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2026-11-12T05:51:39.291Z",
  "datePublished" : "2026-11-12T05:51:39.000Z",
  "headline" : "No Relevant Experience? What Employers Should Check Instead",
  "image" : [ "https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/covers-2026-10/hiring-without-relevant-experience-cover-en-2026-10.png" ],
  "mainEntityOfPage" : {
    "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/hiring-without-relevant-experience",
    "@type" : "WebPage"
  },
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/seo/logo-nobusato-2026-10.png"
    },
    "name" : "nobusato.jp"
  }
}
```