AUTOFORUM

Experience does not always confirm competence

Sep 01, 2026 by Gerhard Lourens, Skills Development Specialist at Future Skills Development (FSD).

Experience does not always confirm competence

Opinion piece by Gerhard Lourens, Skills Development Specialist at Future Skills Development (FSD).

Ten years in automotive sales looks impressive on a CV. But does ten years in the industry automatically mean ten years of development? It is a fair question in a business where “experience required”, still carries enormous weight. Experience matters. It brings judgement, customer exposure, market knowledge and the ability to recognise situations that cannot be learned from a manual. But experience and competence are not the same thing. Competence is about what a person can demonstrate today.

That distinction matters because the job has moved on. The modern sales executive works with digital leads, CRM systems, online research, increasingly sophisticated vehicle technology and customers who may have compared several models before they ever enter a showroom.

A career history tells us where somebody has worked. It does not automatically tell us whether their skills have kept pace. There is evidence that employers are already feeling this gap.

merSETA’s Sector Skills Plan 2025/26 records 236 hard-to-fill vacancies for “Motorised Vehicle or Caravan Salespeople” where the stated reason was that candidates lacked specific skills. Across the hard-to-fill vacancies recorded in that section of the report, 54% were attributed to candidates not having the right experience and 42% to candidates lacking specific skills. Qualifications accounted for only 3%.

Those figures should not be read as an argument against experience. In fact, they suggest the opposite: employers want relevant experience, but they also need the skills to go with it.

The wider workplace is moving in the same direction. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 says employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030. Technological literacy is among the skills expected to grow in importance, alongside analytical thinking, resilience, flexibility and lifelong learning.

So, what should “experienced” mean in an automotive dealership today?

• Can the salesperson manage leads consistently and use the CRM properly?

• Can they conduct a meaningful needs analysis rather than jump straight into a product presentation?

• Can they explain value without immediately reaching for discount?

• Can they communicate professionally by telephone, email, WhatsApp and face-to-face?

• Can they adapt to new vehicle technology, prospect when showroom traffic is quiet and follow up with discipline?

Those are observable behaviors. They can be coached, measured and improved.

The danger is not experience. The danger is allowing years served to become a substitute for development.

A salesperson who was excellent five years ago may still be excellent today. But that should be evident in current behaviour, adaptability and results, not simply assumed from the number of years on a CV.

Perhaps recruitment and performance discussions should therefore move beyond one familiar question: “How many years’ experience do you have, to what skills have you mastered?”

A better question may be: “What can you do today, and how willing are you to keep learning tomorrow?”

Experience remains valuable.

But in a changing automotive industry, competence is what turns experience into performance.

SOURCE REFERENCES

merSETA, Sector Skills Plan 2025/26 - Occupational Shortages and Skills Gaps, pp. 49-51.

World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025 - Skills Outlook.