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While managers will tell you that they want the best person for the job when hiring, the reality is that, when a resume comes across a manager's desk and contains all the required experience, the best person suddenly means the person with the most experience rather than the person with the personality, work ethic and values most likely to succeed in the organization and in that role.

Listen, experience is great. I am not dismissing its benefits, but I am concerned with how many managers let it override all other factors in the hiring process, especially for roles where the necessary knowledge and skills can easily be taught.

We've all seen it: Across a manager's desk comes a candidate's resume that lists a lot of experience in the industry or role and an abundance of technical skills and knowledge. The manager's eyes widen, his heart starts beating faster, and a large smile spreads across his face. He's just hit the hiring jackpot -- all other considerations be damned. Why the excitement? Because it means that the candidate can contribute right away, requires minimal to no training, and now the manager's labor shortage problem is solved for the short term

In speaking with hiring managers across multiple industries, managers often fulfill their experience addiction by bulking up the minimum experience qualifications -- even though the qualifications are not nearly as necessary as they are made out to be. When hiring someone, you need to focus on the knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors that are required to be successful in the position. Yes, sometimes experience is necessary, but often it is overrated. When we focus solely on experience, we disregard a candidate's potential.

Across the many industries we have worked with, I have seen employees get fired one day and get hired down the street the next, appealing to a manager's experience addiction as a way to remain in a job. The experience addiction means that managers quickly decide who to hire. In turn, they conduct a quick interview, neglect reference checks and have little consideration for the candidate's fit with the team or the company's culture.

So, what is the result of this addiction? Well, we know that experience can come with baggage; bad habits, bad attitudes and complacency about the job can negatively impact the rest of the team's performance and morale. Managers must remember that the decision of whom to hire is one of the most critical decisions they make, because it sends a message to the rest of the team about the manager's priorities. Is it simply about getting the job done, or is it about ensuring the right culture of the team for long-term success?

The result of a manager's experience addiction be the wrong hire and has many costs, some financial and others that go well beyond the numbers. In fact, research suggests that a poor cultural fit eliminates any good that came from a person's experience. If the new hire negatively impacts the team's performance, it is likely that your best people are affected the most. When your strongest team members' professional routines and beliefs are upset by a poor new hire, they know they have choices that will allow them to move on if something is not done to get their team and themselves back on track. Don't sacrifice your best employees because of your experience addiction.

We need to break the experience addiction in the workplace, but how do we overcome it? Consider the following suggestions:
1. Have a great orientation and onboarding program.
The quality of and belief in your orientation (the first one or two days on the job) and onboarding (training and certification to complete a role) goes a long way in avoiding the experience addiction. When you have an effective orientation and onboarding program that the manager is confident with, it sets up their new hires for success. Managers will know they can hire people without experience and that new hires will be contributing the right way in a relatively timely manner.
2. Make the company's values the foundation of the interview process.
From the beginning of the selection process, a candidate should be introduced to and learn about the company's values. Values are the rules by which people will act and interact with each other. The emphasis on these cultural rules will ensure the candidate realizes that how you interact with your team is just as important as the results they deliver. Often, a candidate with a lot of experience but the wrong moral compass will deselect themselves if the company displays strong values.
3. Detail job descriptions without relying on experience.
Ensure the job descriptions only reflect the minimal qualifications. Too many job descriptions are overburdened with excessive qualifications and requirements. Reduce the job description to the minimal experience required, and emphasize the type of person the company or team is looking for. We encourage companies to step out of their comfort zone by putting "no previous experience required" to encourage candidates who might not be a normal consideration to apply.
4. Make the selection process about the team and not about the manager.
One of the best practices we see in organizations is when the employees are involved in the interview process. They are more likely to look for the best fit for their team rather than the person with the most experience. Have a group of employees ask one or two questions individually or as a panel to help determine who will be a positive addition to the team.

The experience addiction is real in many organizations and, at the very least, there needs to be a conversation among the senior leaders about where experience is truly required and where it would just be a nice addition. When we stop being so dependent on experience, organizations can truly focus on finding the right fit over an experienced warm body.

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When It Comes to Hiring, We Need To Break Our Addiction To Experience

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While managers will tell you that they want the best person for the job when hiring, the reality is that, when a resume comes across a manager's desk and contains all the required experience, the best person suddenly means the person with the most experience rather than the person with the personality, work ethic and values most likely to succeed in the organization and in that role.

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Hiring great employees can be a significant challenge for businesses. Even more difficult is keeping those employees around. In the current landscape of talent wars and job-hopping, retention can seem like a nearly impossible task, but it's one that must be prioritized: Employee turnover can cost organizations tens of thousands of dollars per year.

If you've noticed a couple of team members submitting their resignation, don't panic. There are steps you can take to defend against turnover and keep your staff happy and comfortable enough to stick around. Follow this advice from Forbes Human Resources Council to improve your retention rates.
1. Create Opportunity
Most people seek roles that deliver growth potential and opportunity. Helping employees take advantage of the opportunities around them will create more fulfilling experiences and connections to the company, in turn reducing turnover. - Sara Whitman, Peppercomm
2. A Formula For Retention
Employee retention is multidimensional, so it is important that employers proactively manage the organization's culture including emotional intelligence of leaders, employee appreciation, job stimulation, security and compensation and rewards. A deficiency in one or more of these categories will result in employee turnover. - Ben Weber, Vendor Resource Management
3. Open Communication
The best way for companies to reduce turnover is through open and proactive communication. Ask your employees how the company can better support them and be a place people enjoy working. Once you listen to the feedback, take action to improve the employee experience. Open dialogue on what needs to change, how you'll change it, and the results after the change is key to driving turnover down. - Sarah O'Neill - SHRM-SCP, humano LLC
4. Know And Support Growth Goals
First, understand the employee's goals and offer a career path with clear company expectations to move forward. Second, support that goal by developing skills and knowledge to meet that goal. This can be accomplished by low-cost online learning, mentorship and appropriate internet knowledge content such as YouTube tutorials and Ted Talks. - Kristin Williams, Ultra Mobile
5. A Strong Sense Of Community And Empathy
Employees often overlook the drudgery of some jobs if they feel like their emotional, psychological and basic financial needs are met. If employees feel like they have a community that empathizes with them and is genuinely interested in contributing to their growth, a natural affinity will exist, and will anchor them more strongly to the company. - Angela Nguyen, Ad Exchange Group
6. Trust
Outside of the work environment, your employees are given a certain level of "credit" for understanding how things work and how to behave. However, when your employees enter your workplace they are often bogged down with bureaucracy, needless policies and handbooks, and numerous levels of permission required for the most basic tools. Clear the path and trust your employees. - John Sigmon, johnsigmon.com
7. Growth, Gratitude And Goodwill
Use the "three G's" to retain top talent: Growth is achieved when the environment is conducive to development. Organizations should ensure their employees are provided with ample opportunities to grow and expand. Gratitude is recognition of the unique gifts and contributions each person brings. Goodwill is a culture of transparency, care, dignity, respect and inclusion. - Candice McGlen, Gifted Works, LLC
8. Understand Each Exit
The best defense against employee turnover is understanding why people are leaving in the first place. If you demonstrate a genuine attempt at understanding the "why," people will tell you. Then it is up to the organization to make the necessary changes. - Matt Burns, JYSK
9. An Excellent Onboarding Process
The key is to show employees you care about them before they even start. The recruiting/onboarding experience sets the foundation for successful, long-term relationships with your people. Of course, you should always keep employees your top priority through great benefits, ongoing development and meaningful programs that value them as people. But first impressions matter and make a difference. - Vivian Maza, Ultimate Software
10. Monitoring The Talent Ecosystem
In the hire to retire cycle, quality of hire is the first strong predictor of voluntary turnover. Besides good hiring, monitoring the talent ecosystem continually is important. Understanding the level of engagement, burnout, leaves of absences and areas of organization where manager efficiency needs to be addressed can help you prepare to implement proactive measures for employee attrition. - Ekta Vyas, Ph.D, Stanford Children's Health
11. Engagement is Everything
The best defense against turnover is having truly engaged employees - not just in their work, but in their teams too. When people make connections and enjoy being at work and engaged within a productive team, their efforts and productivity are higher and their intent to stay is, too. Having a great leader who knows how to engage the team is critical and that leader must understand each and every employee - what motivates them, what their career goals are, what they need to stay engaged - and work on that every day. - Megan Bilson, TE Connectivity
12. Corporate Culture And Growth Opportunities
Employee turnover is inevitable as employees' career goals change and new opportunities arise. To minimize turnover, however, organizations should offer a strong and supportive corporate culture that prioritizes inclusivity, collaboration and recognition. Also, companies should offer growth opportunities to ensure employees are able to create and achieve new goals, and roles constantly evolve. - John Feldmann, Insperity

13. Properly Trained Managers"Employees don't quit their companies, they quit their managers." The best defense against turnover is properly trained managers who know how to effectively onboard, coach, train and develop their staff. Employees want to feel like their manager truly cares about them and their future. Managers should also spend time getting to know their staff on a personal level to build trust and loyalty. - Tana Session, TanaMSession.com
14. Opportunity Knocks
Gone are the days where people work for an organization for 40 years and retire. In order to gain the trust and allegiance of employees, you have to ask what opportunities you offer to grow within the walls of the organization. Does the organization consider growth-oriented and rotational roles for those individuals who want to understand more cross-functional aspects of the business? What conversations do you have about individual goals? How connected are you to their dreams? - Stacie Mallen, CampusLogic
15. Motivating, Not Stifling, Managers
To minimize employee turnover, managers must change their attitudes from managing to motivating. Managers should create an environment to encourage employees to engage. By giving star employees an opportunity to be a part of organizational change, they feel more committed through their contributions. After all, we're all motivated by our own sense of power and feeling of ownership. - Mark Lascola, ON THE MARK
16. Expectation Management
The key to employee happiness and retention is a healthy management of their expectations. Most of the negative interactions employees have with managers revolve around unclear goals or career paths. Leaders should focus on a well-documented hiring and promotion process, and ensuring all employees understand how they are being evaluated so they have a clear, measurable path for growth. - Eli Hamel, Patreon
17. Proactive Customization
Proactively seek information from those who are leaving to learn if they seek to get rid of something negative or to gain something positive. Use that information to tailor your recipe for reducing turnover. Fix broken processes, invest in leadership training, empower people, fix the culture - the answers will vary across organizations, even departments. The best defense against turnover is to proactively ask, listen and act. - Catherine Decker, Outsell
18. Transparent, Trustworthy Leaders
Creating an engaged workplace leads to higher profitability and reduced turnover. Leaders must walk the talk. When employees see leaders holding themselves to high standards, it can inspire trust. Next, focus on transparency and trust employees with information. It builds a collaborative environment and encourages personal investment. Engaged employees are likely to stay. - Thoai Ha, Lynx Innovation

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Want To Keep Your Employees? HR Pros Share Their Best Defense Against Turnover

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Hiring great employees can be a significant challenge for businesses. Even more difficult is keeping those employees around. In the current landscape of talent wars and job-hopping, retention can seem like a nearly impossible task, but it's one that must be prioritized: Employee turnover can cost organizations tens of thousands of dollars per year.

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Image credit: Shannon Fagan | Getty Images

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

There's an inside joke among execs that goes something like this:

A chief financial officer, looking to save costs on training employees, asks the chief executive officer, "What if we spend money on training and they leave?"

To which the CEO responds, "What if we don't and they stay?"
Related: 4 Ways to Train Employees Effectively
Unfortunately, over the last several years, it's the cost-cutting CFOs who have been winning out way too often.

According to Peter Capelli, director of The Wharton School's Center for Human Resources, companies want workers they don't have to educate, and his research has found that employers don't train young workers like they used to.

In 1979, per Capelli, the average young worker received 2.5 weeks of training per year. By 1995, training time fell to just 11 hours.

More recent comparable data has been hard to find, says Capelli, but the Wharton professor says that by 2011 "only a fifth of employees reported receiving on-the-job training from their employers over the past five years."

What's going on here is something that's often called the tragedy of the commons. Society as a whole is better off if workers are properly trained. Trained workers mean more productive ones, which mean more productive companies and greater overall economic output. However, individual companies are better off if they leave the cost of training to their competitors. More companies these days, it seems, want a free ride.
Related: Managers Who Create Growth Opportunities See Greater Employee Engagement
Of course, the consequences for young professionals are tragic and costly: Traditional jobs aren't providing them with new skills and therefore aren't setting them up for success in their careers.

Unsurprisingly, young workers aren't happy with their employers, so they're leaving -- constantly. Disengaged from their jobs unlike any other generation and seeking new skills, they're job-hopping. In 2015, according to Gallup, millennials changed jobs three times more often than older generations. Gallup estimates that turnover costs the U.S. economy $30.5 billion per year.

More options available

As depressing as those stats can sound, the truth is that recent grads and young workers have more options to learn skills and craft their careers on their own.

Since 2011, when Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, began to gain public attention, their popularity has grown exponentially. Last year, by one estimate, 23 million people signed up to take their first MOOC. All told, since 2011, more than 800 universities have offered over 9,000 courses to 81 million registered users, according to the same report.

Sure, MOOC students want to enrich themselves for enrichment sake but learning work-relevant skills are a key motivation, according to multiple studies.
Related: Your Top Employees Are Learning New Skills on Their Own Time. Here's What You Should Do.
Going their own way

For many recent graduates, expectations of entering the workforce haven't matched up with reality; Gallup found that millennials are less "engaged" with their full-time jobs than any generation before them.

But, there are a lot of reasons for hope. Enabled by new technologies, today's young professionals have more opportunities than ever before to train themselves and be their own bosses. And, it turns out, millennials have already gotten the message: According to Upwork's Freelancing in America 2017 report, young workers -- unhappy with full-time jobs and aware of the fact that employers won't train them -- are increasingly choosing to go their own ways, becoming their own bosses and training themselves.

The report also found that almost half of millennials (47 percent to be exact) have freelanced over the past 12 months -- a participation rate higher than any other generation. And 56 percent of those millennial freelancers have participated in skill-related education within the last six months (versus 35 percent of gen- Xers and 28 percent of baby boomers), according to the survey.

And to be clear, the vast majority of millennial freelancers are doing so because they want to. Sixty-four percent of them say they started freelancing more by choice, not necessity.
Related: Why So Many Businesses Mess Up Employee Development
The takeaway for hiring managers

This trend means that reaching today's talented youth is transforming before our own eyes. Put simply, to leverage the skills of many of the most talented, self-driven young workers, businesses increasingly require different hiring strategies.

Many HR departments have taken notice. Half of U.S. companies are using freelancers, according to Upwork's 2018 Future Workforce Report. That's up 16 percentage points from the same time last year.

For those who haven't taken notice, as a new graduating class enters the workforce, now's the perfect time to rethink your hiring strategy -- because if you don't, you'll miss out on some of the best talent.

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Young Workers No Longer Get the On-the-Job Training They Need -- So They're Finding It Elsewhere

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. There's an inside joke among execs that goes something like this: A chief financial officer, looking to save costs on training employees, asks the chief executive officer, "What if we spend money on training and they leave?"

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​How a job analysis can increase your recruiting success - The Business Journals

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Many hiring managers have found themselves in a sea of job applicants, feeling uncertain of the exact specifics of a job, and wondering whether any of the candidates would actually be successful. A job analysis might help, since its very function is to nail down clear expectations and requirements for specific jobs.

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The pick-up in economic growth over the past year has raised employees' expectations of higher pay and richer benefits, new research by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and other recent studies show.

As SHRM Online reported (" Survey: Respect at Work Boosts Job Satisfaction"), overall employee satisfaction is at its highest level in 10 years, with 88 percent of employees saying they are satisfied with their job. The findings are from SHRM's 2016 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement survey, conducted in late 2015 and released on April 18. The top three drivers of job satisfaction cited were respectful treatment of employees at all levels, compensation/pay and benefits.

More workers are looking to recoup raises and bonuses missed during the 2008-09 recession and the years of tepid growth that followed-a period also marked by health care premium increases and reductions in employee benefits, the findings suggest.

"Compared with last year, compensation appears to be rising in importance in relation to other factors," said Evren Esen, director of SHRM's survey programs. "Many workers over the last decade have been frustrated by stagnant wage growth. Younger workers may be particularly focused on compensation as they pay off college loans and try to establish their savings so they can purchase homes and start families. So while factors such as respectful treatment and trust remain important, compensation is a critical job satisfaction factor-especially among Millennial and Gen X employees."

This may explain why employees rated compensation/pay the second most important contributor to job satisfaction, jumping from the fourth position in 2014.

When asked about different parts of their compensation package, workers indicated somewhat lower satisfaction levels than for overall job satisfaction:

"Top talent may soon be looking elsewhere for opportunities if they do not feel like they are being adequately rewarded," noted Christina Lee, SHRM's researcher for total rewards strategies and project leader of the report.

Benefit Satisfaction

Sixty percent of employees rated benefits as a very important contributor to job satisfaction, keeping benefits in the No. 3 position. But just over two-thirds (68 percent) of employees indicated that they were satisfied with their benefits.

"As the economy continues to improve and job seekers become more confident in securing new positions, organizations must design competitive benefits packages to attract and retain top talent," said Lee.

Employees responded as shown below when asked how satisfied they were with specific benefits:

SHRM's comprehensive 2016 Employee Benefits report, which will delve into changes employers are making with their benefit mix, will be released in June at the SHRM 2016 Annual Conference & Exposition in Washington, D.C.

Pay and Benefit Restlessness

Separate research conducted by the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) in Washington, D.C., found that most U.S. workers are satisfied with their employer-provided health coverage, but that there is a long-term trend toward wanting more cash and fewer benefits.

The March 2016 report, Views on Employment-Based Health Benefits, uses data from 2013-15 surveys that EBRI conducted with market researchers at Washington, D.C.-based Greenwald & Associates. Fully one-third of employees would change their current mix of wages and health benefits if they could, the researchers found, which may reflect an intensifying desire for real wage growth.

There appears to be a longer-term trend toward a preference for fewer health benefits and higher wages, the report noted. Between 2012 and 2015, the percentage of workers reporting that they were satisfied with their health benefits fell from 74 percent to 66 percent. At the same time, the percentage reporting that they would rather have fewer health benefits and higher wages doubled, increasing from 10 percent to 20 percent.

"While workers say having a choice of health plans is important and that they would like more choices, most workers express confidence that their employers or unions have selected the best available health plan," the report said. "Moreover, they are not as confident in their ability to choose the best available plan if their employers or unions did, in fact, stop offering coverage."

Not Just Pay

While both the SHRM and EBRI studies point to growing interest in higher pay, other findings highlight the close tie between employer recognition and employee job satisfaction.

BambooHR, a software provider based in Lindon, Utah, recently polled more than 1,000 U.S.-based employees and found that simple employee recognition, a higher title (even without a raise) and employee perks are often as effective as higher pay in driving satisfaction. Among the findings reported in the firm's April report Rewards and Recognition: What's Really Driving Employee Engagement and Career Advancement:

* 1 in 5 employees-a minority, but not an insignificant number-would prefer to receive a promotion to a higher title even with no raise, as opposed to a 3 percent raise in salary with no promotion to a higher title.

* Nearly one-third of employees would rather be recognized for their work accomplishments in a companywide e-mail from an executive than receive a bonus of $500 that isn't openly publicized by a superior to their co-workers.

Rusty Lindquist, vice president of human capital management strategy at BambooHR, recently told SHRM Online it's not surprising money remains workers' No. 1 choice of reward. "It's the primary reason most people work, after all. What is surprising, though, is just how much nonmonetary recognition actually means. What our survey showed was that a full 20 percent of employees would actually prefer a title promotion over a 3 percent raise. That means increasing the satisfaction of 20 percent of your company is within reach without ever touching your pocketbook."

He added, "This is a beacon of hope for many organizations, who simply aren't in a position to give financial rewards or increased salaries, but who still care a great deal about their employees and want to make them happy."

In other findings from the BambooHR survey, when asked to rank what signified a career advancement to them, women were more likely to cite "more money" and "a higher title" than their male colleagues. Meanwhile, men ranked "more direct reports," "expanded responsibility" and "more face time with company executives" higher than women did.

Tellingly, 94 percent of employees who received positive recognition from a supervisor for their performance "daily or more often" were satisfied or very satisfied with their job-a number that progressively declined as recognition decreased.

Stephen Miller, CEBS, is an online editor/manager for SHRM. Follow me on Twitter.

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Better Pay and Benefits Loom Large in Job Satisfaction

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The pick-up in economic growth over the past year has raised employees' expectations of higher pay and richer benefits, new research by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and other recent studies show.