Qualification vs experience

The emphasis in this article in relation to the word ‘qualification’, will be on educational qualifications. There are many people who are successful for reasons of ‘qualifications’ other than academics. These types of qualifications lie within the realm of nepotism, biases, prejudices and favoritism. To dwell on these elements, I would take a pause, and disregard them at this point in time.

Nature has made all men equal or similar but by education they are vastly different. Education is not a final product that results in either a certificate, diploma or degree, or even assurance of landing a job, it is an unending journey of learning.

Every assignment or Job entails the possession of certain minimum educational qualifications. This requirement cuts across all businesses, industries, general commerce and trading activities. Politicians only have exempted themselves from these requirements of academic credentials. Often, we see politicians being given portfolios that have no relevance to their academic qualifications (if any). However in the business world the effort is always to find people who would have the requisite educational background to fit the demands of the assignment. The exceptions to this rule are a rarity. No square pegs in round holes, as is commonly found, in politics.

Education is not merely attending formal schools/ universities; it must have within its ambit the element of relevance. This is critical because too much irrelevant is also taught at schools. Upon my own reflection I realise that a lot of time was wasted in learning about subjects that offered no relevance to my profession. Henry Adams, made an apt observation, nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts. The need is always to make education that translates into practical application. Only when it is relevant, it opens up the doors of opportunity. It does not confer immediate success. Schooling has to be amply supplemented by experience and wisdom.

In the selection of a candidate, the area of criticality is, who does the hiring for an available position. The manager who wishes to hire must have the background to be able to ask pertinent questions. In, hiring a management trainee, say in a pharmaceutical firm, it would be unfair to both interviewer and the interviewee, if the marketing director conducts the interview of the pharmacist trainee. This dilemma can become extremely serious if the hiring are for senior/experienced positions. In such situations, the interviewer must have both relevant education plus the relevant experience, to make a meaningful assessment of the candidate. Readers may drive themselves into imagination of who would have interviewed pilots of our national airline who were later discovered to possess no formal aeronautical/science qualifications! They were great flyers. I don’t know!

The interviews for CSS officers are normally conducted by a panel; the expectation is that the panel would comprise persons who are subject matter experts in their given fields, by way of having received formal education and training, coupled with those who have under their belt varied experience. A member by virtue of being a grade 21/22 officer, belonging to the audit and finance services, should not be part of the panel that selects diplomats or Foreign Service officials. That would be a great disservice to the nation. A cursory review of our current state of affairs is a fair indication of this malaise of occupation being in complete disconnect with the years of schooling/college and university.

There are medical doctors (MBBS degree holders), who are either politicians or bureaucrats. It is not to suggest that they are not good at what they are assigned, it is to bring home the point that our education system lacks focus. The inherent talent is not exploited by the education received. It is another matter that an important and limited seat of a medical college is denied to may be a more worthy student, who may have had the potential to do and excel in medical sciences. An opportunity wasted.

My brother who is a banker narrated to me that during his training as an MTO of a large bank, he was posted, along with some batch mates, to a branch, in the old area of Karachi, for practical training. He said, two days had elapsed since their reporting, during which neither the manager nor the operations manager (second officer, as they were called then), even accepted or recognised their presence. For almost 3 days, the four of them kept twiddling their thumbs. Now, both these individuals, the manager and operation manager, who were refusing to train , had much lesser academic qualifications than the management trainees -- in view of which, they were either severely guarding their knowledge base or were scared to engage in conversation; whatever the reason, there was no communication. On the fourth day they (MTO’s) dared to ask the operation manager, why they were not being assigned any tasks; he angrily retorted, ‘you expect to learn banking in 4 weeks, of what I have learnt in two decades!’ Sheepishly and beggingly, they said, ‘sir, if you don’t teach, how will we learn?’ He took pity upon them. The operations manager proclaimed that the MTO’s by turn, must go to the kitchen and make tea for their manager himself and some ‘select staff’ three times a day; and if they do so, then after 6pm, he would sit with them and ‘teach them banking’. The agreed formula, once enacted, allowed for regular meetings, in which, my brother says, was much learning -- very different from the academics; it was learning from ‘experience’. Disparities in educational backgrounds create a severe sense of fear of losing control over information and knowledge, especially the one that is gathered at the operating desk. Qualifications or education shouldn’t ever be confused with upbringing.

Not by academics, but only by experience of crossing a river, one can say that the crocodile has a lump on his snout. Practical experience cannot be acquired in a limited laboratory but only in the world of business. Unfortunately, experience cannot be had from the shelf, google, or from the Net, by the restless youth. Neither can it be bought or traded, it can be however offered as a bribe as described by the experience of my brother. Experience is hence most unteachable. You have to undergo it. Only those who have burnt their mouth with hot tea will forever blow his/her next cup. The consequence of acquiring experience is also best explained by the idiomatic phrase, even a rope scares a person who has been bitten by a snake.

Said at a convention in the US, in 1775, ‘I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past’.

To acquire knowledge beyond the book, it is best to spend time in the company of those who are 35 years old or so. Acquisition of experience allows for full use of natural instincts and talents. It is believed by all sages that spending time across a table in conversation with wise men is far better than decades of studies of books. In isolation, education and qualification is a mere key to opening the doors to the gardens of opportunity; to successfully exploit the opportunity, the available knowledge has to be adequately backed by experience.

The mother of wisdom is experience. Challenges bring experience and experience sprouts wisdom. It is often difficult to discover and distinguish what is better, experience without learning or learning without experience. An epigram of great wisdom says he who neglects to drink of the spring of experience is likely to die of thirst in the desert of ignorance.

There is no possibility or a way to inherit experience, it must be had! Experience is non-transferable and non-negotiable. However it possesses equality of being shareable. In conclusion, I will borrow the admirable words of Lord Alfred Tennyson, ‘Other’s follies teach us not, nor much their wisdom teaches; And most, of sterling worth is what; Our own experience preaches’.

The writer is a senior banker and a freelance columnist