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Your question brings out three qualities : (a) professional experience, (b) educational qualifications and (c) knowledge and/or skills. If you have a close look, you will find that the first two are ways of acquiring the third - that is, through experience and education you acquire knowledge and skills. for recruiters, in a limited time span, it is very difficult to assess your knowledge and skills but very easy to ascertain your experience and educational qualifications with the help of documents. unfortunately, you cannot provide any documents to prove your 'knowledge and skills'. but we must understand that it is knowledge and skills that ultimately ensure that you are a contributor in the organisation when employed.
I think it depends on the skill you are looking for, In general if you are looking for machine operators then you should go for experienced guys and if you are looking for marketing & sales professions then I would say education and knowledge should be preferred.
But experience should not be restricted only to operator profiles as in almost all lead positions and top management position education and knowledge doesn’t not matter much than result oriented experience.
Knowledge and certifications only helps in flow of different thoughts.
If that's your binary then I feel you are looking for glass in the sand ie you can find it there, but it will take a really long time. How about looking to character and seeing who fits the job, the work environment where the business wants to go, and who might truly respect/enjoy her/his colleagues and be respected/welcomed by them.