Experience is a measure of how well-seasoned your Characters have become. You gain Experience as you complete many different types of tasks, goals, and accomplishments. Experience is gained as you learn, try, fail or succeed. Therefore, you will gain Experience both in moments of victory and in moments of defeat.
As you increase in Experience, you will gain Character Levels, which in turn make you better at your Jobs and able to gain more Talents. Overall, a veteran character with more Experience is more valuable than a green recruit.
Gaining Experience
Experienced can be gained for almost any accomplishment or failure. Almost all Experience awards are distributed among the crew in a communal fashion. If an Exploration mission goes successfully, it is because the crew worked together as a team to pull off the risky expedition. The only case in which Experience awards are given to specific individuals is in victorious crew combats, in which those survivors who risked their lives directly reap the entire gain.
Certain Traits can increase or decrease an individual's rate of Experience gain.
Talents and Experience
Using Talents, such as those that discover Contacts, increase profits from trading, or prevent failures in Skill Saves do not directly generate Experience. Your crew may gain Experience for the accomplishment that the Talent was involved in (making a very profitable trade on an Exchange) but the Experience is not caused by the Talent, nor does the owner of the Talent gain any special Experience award.
In the case of Talents that prevent a Skill Save failure, Experience is not awarded. In most cases, if the Skill Save had been passed normally, Experience would be awarded. Therefore, relying too much on Talents that prevent Skill Save failures will not lead to the most optimal gain of Experience awards for your crew.