[K-Women Talk] The Density of Experience Outweighs Tenure

Sunkyung Moon, Executive Director at Unico Search

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"Why does that person keep getting opportunities?"

This is one of the most frequently asked questions I hear while meeting countless candidates at the hiring site. Even with similar years of experience and similar career paths, some people are constantly courted by multiple companies, while others remain stuck in the same position for years.

Just like the saying "Luck is 70%, skill is 30%" from the Qing Dynasty writer Pu Songling's collection of stories, "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio," luck does play an important role. However, after reviewing more than 100,000 resumes over many years, I have realized something: opportunities are not distributed equally; instead, they tend to repeatedly go to the same people. The reason is not luck, but rather the result of intentional behavior in the past. Most people faithfully and 'fairly well' complete the work assigned to them, but then stop there. For one or two years, they simply continue doing their work in the same way as before.

On the other hand, some people use the same amount of time in a completely different way. They repeatedly make small improvements, saying things like, "If we change this process, it will be more efficient," or "This data will serve as the standard for the next project," and they diligently record these changes in their own way. By increasing the density of their experiences, they turn one year into what feels like ten. Over time, this difference becomes strikingly clear. The former may be described simply as having "10 years of experience," while the latter is defined by a clear identity as "someone who has solved specific problems in specific ways over 10 years." The era of boasting about 20 years of experience is over. There are now countless talented people who gain industry recognition for their outstanding performance and expertise, even after just five years of work. We are in an age where the density of experience outweighs the length of one’s career. Recruiters prefer people who are "explainable." They look for those who can define the results of their past actions in their own language-candidates for whom it is easy to envision what will happen and what value will be added if they are hired. No matter how exceptional your internal abilities may be, if you cannot explain them, opportunities will be hard to come by.

According to a labor market analysis report published this year by Anthropic, an artificial intelligence (AI) research institute, the hiring rate of people in their early 20s in jobs with high AI exposure decreased by about 14% after the emergence of ChatGPT. In an era where companies do not even recruit certain roles from the start because of AI, the uniqueness of experienced professionals is becoming more and more important. Memories of "working hard" fade, but records of "achieving these results through these actions" remain. In other words, as career opportunities become harder to access, it is increasingly important to consistently record and review your achievements in clear language while you are in your current position. Differentiation of experience is not something that happens overnight. Rather, by going beyond merely "getting the work done" each day and making small efforts to find and record your own logic within your work, you build a growth structure unique to yourself. The small differences in your actions today will, years down the line, distinguish those who are waiting for opportunities from those who receive them.

It has now been well over three and a half years since I began contributing to K-Woman Talk. Recently, I compiled my observations of candidates who have managed to survive until the end-including the records from the columns I have written and the countless resumes I have reviewed-into a single book. I, too, am taking on the challenge of finding my own growth structure as a veteran headhunter by organizing and recording my daily experiences serving as a bridge in the recruitment process.

Luck cannot be controlled. But you can start building a structure to explain yourself today. What explanation about yourself does your resume contain right now?

Sunkyung Moon, Executive Director at Unico Search

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