Seventy-seven percent of new grads think employers want too much experience for entry-level jobs. The other twenty-three percent lied on the survey.
The complaint goes like this: businesses demand three years of experience for roles labeled "entry-level." Kids graduate. Kids apply. Kids get rejected. Kids tweet about the Kafkaesque nightmare of needing experience to get experience. Nobody hires them. The cycle continues until they're thirty-five and bitter.
Here's what they're not saying. The job market doesn't owe you a warm-up lap. You're not entitled to a starter position because you showed up with a diploma and a pulse. Employers don't exist to give you your first experience. They exist to make money. If someone else already has the experience, that person gets the job. You get to keep refreshing LinkedIn.
The phrase "entry-level" never meant "we'll train you from scratch." It meant "this is the lowest rung we're willing to pay you for." The bar isn't too high. You're just standing at the wrong bar.
Every generation thinks they invented this problem. They didn't. The guy who wanted to be a blacksmith in 1820 also needed three years as an apprentice before anyone let him near the anvil. He just didn't have Twitter to complain about it.
The survey doesn't say what these grads studied. Doesn't say what jobs they applied for. Doesn't say if they tried internships, freelancing, or anything that might've given them the experience they're now demanding someone else provide. Just says they feel locked out. Rough.
No job is willing to give you that first experience, they say. Correct. That's why it's called work and not charity.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
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