Employers and hiring managers have things tough at the moment. The Great Resignation, while slowing, has still seen record numbers of employees quitting their jobs, many to move to new career fields altogether. That’s spurred the debate again: do I hire someone inexperienced and train them, or leave that position open until I find someone more experienced to fill it?

Related: Great Resignation Will Include a Massive Wave of Diversity Employees

The truth is, there are risks and potential rewards to hiring inexperienced workers. Here are some things to consider.

The Skills Gap

First, you can’t do a Google search about recruiting or visit an HR website without seeing some kind of article about the the skills gap. But when it comes to hiring someone inexperienced, there are two considerations that apply to skills:

• Does this potential employee have the hard skills (job-specific skills) needed to perform the tasks related to this job, or will they need extensive training?
• If they do need training, does the candidate have the soft skills (leadership, teamwork, flexibility, ability to learn new things) needed to be successful in this position?

You could call this addressing of the skills gap really asking: “Is this person trainable?” Do they have the ability to learn the skills needed to master this position? How much will it take to get them up to speed?

An experienced candidate will almost always come up to speed more quickly. However, with the skills they bring can come old habits you might want them to break, and training you will need to undo and reform. This is why the underlying skills are so important. Just because someone has experience in your field does not mean they have the underlying skills to do the job.

It’s good to think outside the box when assessing skills, but ensuring the candidate has the basic skills needed to learn and perform in the position is vital.

The Dual Cost of Training

There are at least two costs of employee training, and a potential third we will address in another section. The first two are time and money. It’s not just the time you will be paying the new hire while they are training, but the time you will be paying a trainer to spend with them and bring them up to speed.

In other words, to train, you have to pull a productive employee from their work to train the new employee. It is unlikely (unless the new employee catches on right away) that the two of them together will equal the production of the single productive employee, let alone the production of two equally productive employees. This means other employees must also adjust the way they are using their time to make up the difference to your clients or customers.

All this costs money. You’re paying two employees, but really more like 2.5 employees (or maybe more) to do the job of one, at least for a short period of time. The less skilled the candidate, the higher this cost tends to be.

And if they quit during the training process? You have to start all over again. For some industries, training is one of the most expensive things you will do as a business. Can you afford to train someone who is inexperienced?

But more importantly, are there other dangers?

Is it Safe?

An inexperienced employee is more likely to make mistakes. The cost of those mistakes in some industries, like manufacturing, service, and construction can involve personal and company risk as well. An injury, damage to a product, and more can result in costs beyond monetary ones to reputation or worse.

Is it safe to hire someone who is inexperienced in these industries? The question goes back to the section about skills: does the candidate have the basic skills to avoid injury on the job, and to avoid injuring others or damaging property?

This also speaks to training. How much training will the candidate need before you feel they are “safe” on the job? Is it worth it to wait for someone more experienced?

Short- and Long-Term Productivity

While we touched on this in the section on training, it bears repeating again. The cost of training in time and money must also factor in the cost of loss of productivity, and how much longer that will take for someone inexperienced over someone with experience.

Obviously, the sooner you get someone up to speed, the sooner productivity not only goes back to normal but ideally increases. It’s a huge risk when hiring someone without experience.

Turnover?

Finally, when we talk about these risks, one of the largest is turnover. Someone with experience already knows the field, and in most cases is likely to stay longer. An inexperienced candidate might find they simply don’t like this type of job, this field, or this company, and is more likely to quit quickly and move on.

Again, the emphasis for someone without experience is, “Do they have the soft skills needed for this job?” If so, they may stay and be a great long-term employee. But if they don’t, that turnover can be much more costly than waiting for a more experienced candidate.

Does this mean you should never give inexperienced workers a shot? Not at all. Sometimes the risk pays off in big ways. However, it's important that you are calculating those risks, and that you understand the very real potential costs. Hiring those with experience doesn’t eliminate those risks, but it does lower them. And sometimes that is the best you can do.