Hey Julius! I believe skills-focused hiring is both more effective and more equitable. Indeed, "years of experience" has been shown to be discriminatory in some cases.

I usually look for mid-level and senior devs as those having at least 1 year of real-world work experience and/or equivalent recent education with the specific tech stack.

I ask them to complete a "choose your own project" take-home assignment with an objective scoring rubric where the candidates own the project they develop and are free to use it for their portfolios or any other purposes.

At the end of the day, I see juniors as those with less than 6-12 months of work experience or equivalent education with the correct technical skills, and I have also seen many candidates with 5-7+ years of full-time work experience apply with none of the required technical skills.