Let's assume you are the leader of a shipping company and you are in the process of hiring a new captain for one of your ships. The route the ship has to sail on, can be tricky from time to time. So you want to hire a captain with at least 5 years of experience. So you put out a job description with a requirement of at least 5 years of experience as a captain.

You receive 2 resumes. One captain claims to have 5 years of experience, and the other only can account for 3 years. Who do you hire? But wait, the first captain has only been sailing on calm seas for 5 years, the other one has been sailing 3 years on ruff seas. Are you still hiring the same captain now that you know this? But you could not have known this, it's not in his resume.

We tend to measure someones experience in time, like years. But is that the right unit of measurement? And what would be a better unit?