Experience is important, but not everything
Experience is important, but not everything
I'm going to tell you a tale of two people.
One is an up-and-coming professional, who is 22 years old as of writing this post, while the other is a more seasoned professional, with a lot more years of experience under their belt.
You are tasked with choosing one of them to start working for you next year when working in their field resumes.
Who do you choose?
If your answer is the second individual, then don't ever apply for a hiring manager position at Red Bull Racing (or any F1 team for that matter), because you just missed out on having Max Verstappen racing in your team. Substitute Max Verstappen for your favorite up-and-coming sports player and you get the same idea.
Of course, the likes of Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, Kylian Mbappe, etc. are the exceptions, not the rule. But that doesn't mean you have to dismiss people with lesser experience simply based on their years of work.
I know that first-hand. I have interviewed people with 10+ years of experience and they have failed the technical challenge. And I've interviewed people with less experience than I have, who showed me new and innovative ways to solve the technical challenge before them. Experience means nothing if you can't do your job properly.
Of course, you can never ask a junior developer to serve the role of a senior one. That being said though, once you reach a certain level, the lines between the values of different candidates become blurrier and blurrier.
What I am saying though is that you need to look beyond the years of experience the candidate you are interviewing has. If you see that he has built his own stuff, try talking to him/her more to see if he is bluffing or if he actually made it. Because if someone is able to create a project of his own, in a framework he has just learned, and the project is live and working well... Why exactly would you want to reject him/her because he doesn't tick an arbitrary box?
A good software developer is one that can build something that runs smoothly. Be it a Vue.JS plugin or an entire website, it's all up to what he can actually do with the tools. Sure, good software developers with a lot of experience can do it better than mid-level ones, if the senior devs in question are actually competent. But when someone promising shows on your radar (even with less experience), try giving that candidate a chance to talk to the hiring manager. Especially in these times, are you so certain you want to pass up on that opportunity that easily?