As life-long employment fades and the workforce becomes increasingly mobile, many companies look to hire skilled, experienced workers to improve productivity quickly. Those workers, however, often bring baggage from prior jobs that can negate the benefits of their prior experience, according to new Wharton research.
Companies might be better off investing in training fresh recruits with little experience in an industry so the companies can have more control over how the new workers adapt to their new employer's corporate strategy and culture. The research found that training may be more productive than paying a premium to hire experienced workers who might come from a different sort of corporate environment.
"Human resources managers will want to [hire] people who worked in a related industry or firm for the skills they bring. That makes sense from a human capital perspective, but we question whether that's all they bring with them. Do they bring other experiences ... positive or negative?" asks Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard, co-author of a paper titled Unpacking Prior Experience: How Career History Affects Job Performance. Rothbard wrote the paper with Gina Dokko of New York University's Stern School of Business and Steffanie L. Wilk of Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.
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