I have seen many companies investing their millions of dollars in hiring experienced professionals for their company. Though I understand the need for hiring experienced professionals, I think that companies should invest more dollars in hiring fresh graduates. For example: if you already have few senior engineers in your team, you should not look for more senior engineers. You should instead think of hiring fresh talents. Following are few reasons, why I would hire fresh graduates over experienced professionals.
Lowering costs: This is one of the primary reasons why most of the companies hire fresh graduates. On an average, fresh graduates cost 20-40% less than an experienced individual. I am not saying to hire them just because they are cheap, there are various other cost benefits for hiring graduates. For example: You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars in the talent search program. You can partner with some of the local universities in your areas, and take benefit of their career center, which will be more than happy to find out a talent match for you. Or you can participate in Career Fairs of few schools and interview people right there and then. This will also reduce all the traveling and lodging costs, which you might end up paying for inviting an experienced person for an interview.
Easy to train: Imagine, if you hire an experienced professional, who seems to provide you all the answers that you require. But have you ever considered the cost of re-teaching him your culture? Since the person is experienced, he would be familiar with the culture of the last company that he worked for. So, before even teaching him your culture, you need to make sure that he forgets some of the aspects of his old culture, and dwells in with your existing culture. On the other hand, if you hire a fresh graduate then you don’t have to reteach him anything. He will basically learn everything from the beginning, and grow with your company. It’s like writing something on an empty white board, you can write anything without rubbing off any previous prints. Thus, unless you are looking for someone from a different culture/company to come and change your existing team dynamics and your existing work practices, I would recommend you to hire someone fresh and new.
I hope these tips will help understand the importance of hiring a fresh graduate in comparison of an experienced professional. Let me know, if you have any other reasons why you would prefer hiring a fresh graduate instead of an experienced professional. Please feel free to share your opinion here. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Bhavin Gandhi's Blog 
Paul
March 4, 2013 at 6:03 AM
Frankly, why not hire trained monkeys? They would work for peanuts and you could train them, too.
Bhavin Gandhi
March 6, 2013 at 12:25 PM
@Paul: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on my article.
I was not meaning to say that you could hire anyone. Of course, you need to interview them for their existing skill-sets. But yeah! If you hire inexperienced employees, there is more growth potential for them. After all, you can only have few Staff Engineer positions in your company. Right?
Though I am not diminishing contribution of experienced employees (look out for my other blogs, where I talk about why you should hire experienced employees), I am saying that you should hire inexperienced employees (or fresh graduates) to get the similar amount of work done with some training.
Do visit my other blogs to find out more reasons about why one should hire fresh graduates.
Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi
Dang Hoang Hung
June 15, 2014 at 8:08 PM
Have you considered the cost for tranning the fresh graduates.
Bhavin Gandhi
June 20, 2014 at 3:57 PM
@Dang: You are right in that sense. It will require some time and money to train fresh graduates, but they bring a completely different perspective to the table. Like every coin, there are positives and negatives to both the aspects. If you hire fresh graduates, you have more chance to retain them and get benefited from their different perspective, while experienced employees will cost more but they can also be beneficial in other ways.
Thanks for your feedback, Dang. I appreciate you reading my blog and providing your ideas. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi
Akshera
July 24, 2014 at 12:13 AM
Hey Bhavin, this was a great read on why we should be hiring more recent graduates. In addition to what you mentioned, I would also like to add that another advantage is that fresh graduates are up to date with the latest technology. That tends to come in handy when some of us in the corporate world have got a little rusty with our technology skills. Having a new perspective and some detailed knowledge provided by a fresh graduate can help you immensely. We have more such tips on why we think hiring a fresh graduate is a great idea ! They are listed here: http://blog.bayt.com/2014/07/six-reasons-you-should-be-hiring-fresh-graduates/
Bhavin Gandhi
August 6, 2014 at 1:47 PM
@Akshera: Thanks for your valuable feedback. I do agree with your argument here. Fresh graduates do bring completely new perspective to the table with up-to-date skill-sets. But I have to say, most of the experienced employees these days, are also aware of continuous improvements in their skill-sets, and hence, they keep on getting educated while working.
Thanks for your feedback, Akshera. – Bhavin Gandhi