Or Equivalent Experience - by Ryan Baker - norabble
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Or Equivalent Experience<br>Lazy Mistakes in Hiring and the Truth Behind Jobs Data
Ryan Baker<br>May 26, 2026
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My start in software was early. By my junior year of high school I was already developing software professionally. When others were finishing their second year of college, I was the CTO of a small software company. I wrote most of the software for a company we’d grow to about $10m in annual sales, had 2 other developers working for me, and also managed a 5 person QA/Support team.<br>With that in mind, I have a reaction to seeing so many job postings in the software industry that look like this:<br>norabble is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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Bachelors degree or equivalent experience
10+ years of experience building software
The first line is the requirement. The second line is a fig leaf — a way of technically not lying while still signaling what the process actually rewards. It was always a questionable practice, but AI is supercharging the impacts of this mistake.<br>The Logical Problem
Let’s start with the plain English issue, which is almost embarrassing once you see it.<br>From a logical point of view, these statements are redundant. 10+ years of experience will always be equivalent experience. There is no interpretation under which a decade of real-world engineering doesn’t constitute equivalent experience to a four-year degree.<br>The problem runs deeper than embarrassing logic. The reality is that equivalence is probably fiction. Most hiring managers, I’d wager, didn’t author this language and don’t think about it. But it activates biases in recruitment teams, offering a lazy shortcut, and sending the wrong message.<br>Automation and AI are Supercharging this Mistake
This was always a mistake, but it’s becoming more critical. Recruitment teams scanning resumes will be drawn toward an education section more readily than to calculating the equivalent experience. Automated tools in applicant tracking systems (ATS), including AI, have the same weakness, often more so.<br>How is a typical large language model (LLM) going to process these statements? The degree is a binary, well-defined data point with a clear answer. “Equivalent experience” is the opposite: fuzzy, context-dependent, requiring judgment. Even if the LLM evaluates the two statements correctly, it could make another mistake, treating the “or” as an “and”, or treating the two statements as components of an overall “closest match”.<br>These mistakes could cause a filter to fail, or it could cause a lower score. If the three clauses are processed independently, the degree holder gets 3 points, other candidates 2. If qualifications aren’t scored equally, one earlier in the list will usually get more weight. Even if a system doesn’t intentionally add a scoring system, a reasoning model could create one on its own.<br>More advanced systems are less likely to make these mistakes, but recruitment teams may not use the most advanced systems. This might be motivated by cost, or adoption started before systems advanced. They may even be non-AI, simple text analysis.<br>In this environment where job postings get hundreds of applicants, because every applicant is applying for hundreds of positions, a naive filter or scoring system can have a dramatic impact. The more nuanced aspects of a resume that should make you a top candidate, may never get processed. That means fewer interviews, dramatically reducing the probability of a successful interview.<br>What should you do?
The simplest thing to do is remove any such text from job descriptions. Since they are duplicative, and creating unintended effects, just delete them. And it’s not just those “or equivalents”. You should rethink degree requirements in general.<br>That’s not enough though.<br>Our analysis makes clear that successful adoption of Skills-Based Hiring involves more than simply stripping language from job postings. To hire for skills, firms will need to implement robust and intentional changes in their hiring practices – and change is hard. Still, despite the limited progress to-date, our analysis shows that, for those who embrace it, skills-based hiring goes beyond corporate virtue signaling. It yields tangible, measurable value. Skills-Based Hiring boosts retention among non-degreed workers hired into roles that formerly asked for degrees. At Skills-Based Hiring Leader firms, non-degreed workers have a retention rate 10 percentage points higher than their degree-holder colleagues. Workers benefit as well. Non-degreed workers hired into roles that previously required degrees experience a 25 percent salary increase on average.<br>Harvard Business School and Burning Glass Institute: Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice (2024)
If you’re not deliberate about this when working with your recruitment team, you may...