Experience

"The concept of 'experience' is all crap!" That was the statement made by an acquaintance of mine recently. He was basically referring to the 'experience' criteria that most companies set while hiring people. It surprised me (albeit pleasantly), as it was coming from a person who'd worked for around a decade, and was successful. He added, "Experience only gives you confidence, and does not show you what is right or what is wrong". I feel experience doesn't even give you confidence, but it just creates an illusion of being confident. It is something that you rely upon to seem confident. It is similar to bookish knowledge, which without making you truly knowledgeable, just makes you feel confident, only because you know more than the other person. Whereas in the true sense, you just become aware of facts that already exist, and do not learn anything new. And in most cases, you end up forgetting the same things later, if you do not constantly update yourself on the same, or if you are not in constant touch with the same. If we take a view from the 'negative' perspective, it could be said that experience / knowledge limits your thinking, and you become less open to new ideas, and less adaptive to change. This is because you would tend to cling to the experience that you already have, as it is the ONLY source of your confidence. A person who is truly confident of himself does not mind unlearning a few things, or changing his/her point of view. He/she does not rely on experience/knowledge for confidence. To take an example, for a person who is highly experienced in the financial sector, to take up a job in a totally different field, say sports, or fine arts, would be very difficult (if he is not self-confident in the true sense). He would find it very difficult to adapt to his new field of work, and would resist any new learning. For a person who does not rely on his past experience, although it might take time to learn the ropes, he would at least not resist any new learning. To sum it up, experience is great, only if you do not cling to it.