Expertise is understood as a combination of experience and skill in a field.
The notion of expertise is used to refer to the combination of experience and expertise . Whoever has expertise in a subject, therefore, has knowledge derived from practice extended over time and the ability to develop certain actions.
Two meanings
It is interesting to note that the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) recognizes another meaning of expertise: it is a localism that is used in Venezuela to refer to expert evidence . The Association of Academies of the Spanish Language , however, does include in its Dictionary of Americanisms the meaning of expertise as the quality that arises from the meeting of accumulated knowledge and skill .
This use of expertise, the most common, comes from the English expertise . At a general level, it can be said that a specialist who accumulates many years of work or activity has expertise in his field. The Anglo-Saxon term appears in many media in our language, but the Urgent Spanish Foundation (Fundéu) advises against its use, prioritizing alternatives such as experience, expertise and expertise .
Example situations
Suppose that an actor with more than thirty years of professional career has played villains in twenty-five films . With this background , it can be said that he has the expertise to take on the roles of evil characters . On the contrary, if you have never participated in a comedy, it could indicate that you lack expertise in said film genre.
On the other hand, a sports journalist who was present at four Olympic Games , chronicling the competitions and interviewing the protagonists, has experience in covering this type of events . It is expected, therefore, that he can perform efficiently in each new Olympics because he knows its organization and its characteristics.
Hierarchical relationship with «experience»
As with other terms that include more than one concept in their meaning, when talking about expertise we cannot help but think about experience , as well as skill . But these last two can give rise to different interpretations, since skill can come naturally, through an innate talent, but the same does not happen with experience: it is only accumulated with the repetition of one or more activities in a long period, which usually does not last hours or days, but rather years.
Expertise includes experience, but the opposite is not always true.
Therefore, we could affirm that expertise cannot exist without experience, although the opposite situation can exist. Returning to the example of the actor with extensive experience playing antagonistic roles, given that his work has been praised by critics, we can also say that he has special skill, so it is correct to say that he has proven expertise in the field. Using the hierarchy just expressed, it is also true that he has great experience playing a villain. However, if the opinion about your talent was unfavorable or negative, you would only have experience, but not expertise.
The example of the sports journalist presents us with another pair of terms that exhibit a similar hierarchy, since one of them includes the other in its definition: it is effectiveness and efficiency . According to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, we see that the first is defined as the "ability to achieve the desired or expected effect", while the second completes this idea by adding that the use of resources for said purpose is "the minimum possible". In this way, we can conclude that an effective person in the kitchen, for example, is capable of preparing the dishes they want, while an efficient person does it in less time and with less energy expenditure. Someone who is inefficient is not always ineffective , but on the contrary, both qualities are cancelled.