What's this episode about?
Is the 10,000-hour rule real? Not the way it's usually told. This episode looks at what Anders Ericsson actually found, a 2014 review showing practice explained less than 1% of performance differences in professions, Pascal Siakam's fast rise with the Toronto Raptors, and research showing years of prior experience barely predict performance in a new job.
Key takeaways
The 10,000-hour figure was roughly the average for the best violin students by age 20, not a rule, and Ericsson himself pushed back on it.
Across 88 studies, practice explained about 26% of performance differences in games, 21% in music, 18% in sports and less than 1% in professions (Macnamara et al., 2014).
Pascal Siakam didn't really start playing basketball until 17 or 18, and was the NBA's Most Improved Player and a champion by 2019.
A review of more than 80 studies found a very small relationship between prior work experience and performance in a new job (Van Iddekinge et al., 2019).
Write the skill into the job posting instead of the years, then test that skill live.
Full transcript
Welcome back to Hiring Without Regret. I'm Ashley Wesley.
Last episode, we asked whether your hiring tests actually work. Today, the ingredient everybody thinks they can count: skills.
Here's the call. "Ten years of sales experience" is the ten thousand hour rule wearing a job posting... and it's just as shaky.
Fair point first. Practice matters. Nobody gets good at anything by accident.
Malcolm Gladwell made ten thousand hours famous in Outliers, back in 2008. It came from research by a psychologist named Anders Ericsson on violin students.
Here's the part that didn't make the book cover. Ericsson spent years saying the rule was wrong. Ten thousand was roughly the average for the best violinists by age twenty. Half of them hadn't hit it. The real stars kept going and logged a lot more. In his own book, he basically called ten thousand a nice round number.
Then in 2014, Brooke Macnamara at Princeton and her colleagues pulled together eighty-eight studies on practice and performance. Practice explained about a quarter of the difference between people in games like chess. About a fifth in music. A little less in sports.
And in professions? Less than one percent.
Less than one percent. That's your sales floor.
Now let's go to the Raptors. Pascal Siakam grew up in Cameroon. His family sent him to a seminary. He's said he didn't really start playing basketball until he was seventeen or eighteen.
In 2012, he went to the Basketball Without Borders camp in Johannesburg, raw as could be. Masai Ujiri and the camp staff saw the length and the drive. His agent's description was "a motor for days with a pogo stick."
Four years later, Toronto drafted him twenty-seventh. Three years after that, he was the NBA's Most Improved Player and won a championship.
Nobody would have hired Pascal for his hours. He didn't have them. The Raptors bet on how fast he'd learn, and then they gave him the right reps... the 905, the coaching, the playing time we talked about back in episode five.
So you're the GM. Two candidates for your sales manager role. One has fifteen years. The other has four.
Before you pick, here's the research. In 2019, Chad Van Iddekinge at Florida State and his colleagues reviewed more than eighty studies covering about sixty years of hiring. They found a very small relationship between someone's past experience and how they performed in their new job. For whether people stayed, he said the link was "literally zero."
He's careful, and so am I. Experience isn't worthless. Some jobs really do need it. But years are a stand-in. What you actually want is the skill. Can they run a discovery call? Can they coach a rep who's stuck? Can they forecast without wishful thinking?
Fifteen years can be fifteen years of growth. Or it can be one year, fifteen times.
One more nudge, here in Ontario. Since January first, employers with twenty-five or more people can't put a Canadian experience requirement in a public job posting or its application form. That's one more reason to write down the skill, not the years.
So, Monday. Three moves.
One. Pull up your sales job posting. Every place it says "X years of experience," replace it with the skill you actually need, written as something the person does.
Two. Test that skill live. A short work sample built from your real job, like we covered last episode.
Three. In the interview, ask: "What did you deliberately practise last year, and how do you know you got better?" People who keep improving have an answer. People coasting on their years usually don't.
Next week: knowledge. What a salesperson needs to know walking in the door, and what you can teach them by Friday.
That's the segment. Hire the learner... the hours will come.
Quick note: this is general information, not legal advice. Talk to an employment lawyer before you change how you hire.
Frequently asked questions
Is the 10,000-hour rule true?
Not as a rule. The number came from Anders Ericsson's research on violin students, where 10,000 hours was roughly the average for the best performers by age 20, and half of them hadn't reached it. Practice matters, but a 2014 review of 88 studies found it explained only part of the difference between people, and less than 1% in professions.
Do years of experience predict sales performance?
Not very well. Van Iddekinge and colleagues' 2019 review of more than 80 studies found a very small relationship between prior experience and performance in a new organization. Experience can still matter in some roles, but it's a stand-in for the skills you actually need, so test those skills directly.
Can Ontario employers require Canadian experience in a job posting?
Since January 1, 2026, Ontario employers with 25 or more employees can't include Canadian experience requirements in publicly advertised job postings or their application forms. This is general information, so confirm the details with an employment lawyer.
Work with us
Torn between the candidate with fifteen years and the one with four? We help Ontario owners pick the right sales hire. Our Final Candidate Review validates the match before you make the offer, using documented, job-related evidence, and it’s covered by our handshake guarantee.
References
Employment Standards Act, 2000, S.O. 2000, c. 41, s. 8.3. https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/00e41
Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Little, Brown.
Macnamara, B. N., Hambrick, D. Z., & Oswald, F. L. (2014). Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: A meta-analysis. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1608–1618. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614535810
Pascal Siakam. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_Siakam
Spears, M. J. (2019, May 21). Raptors revelation Pascal Siakam has the spirit our game needs. Andscape. https://andscape.com/features/raptors-revelation-pascal-siakam-has-the-spirit-our-game-needs
Van Iddekinge, C. H., Arnold, J. D., Frieder, R. E., & Roth, P. L. (2019). A meta-analysis of the criterion-related validity of prehire work experience. Personnel Psychology, 72(4), 571–598. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12335
Disclaimer: This episode and page provide general HR and business information, not legal advice. Employment law turns on the specific facts and changes over time. Before acting on anything here, confirm it with an Ontario employment lawyer.
