What’s Trending: The Job Experience Paradox

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When a new college grad starts looking for a job they might expect that an entry-level job is coming somewhere along the lines after earning their degree. A big problem, a degree is sometimes not enough to get a job. Even if this is a requirement, there is no guarantee that this is the only requirement. 

If they need a job to get experience, but jobs don’t hire unless they have experience, what can they do?

This is called the job experience paradox, and it’s more common than not. Want to see how you can beat it and why not only recent grads should worry about it? Keep reading.

VidCruiter

In a piece for VidCruiter, Adejoke Adeboyego explores how entry-level jobs have changed. According to an investigation by SHRM, employers now tend to ask for 2-3 years of experience for 61% of full-time jobs. This means that new graduates need to have appropriate work experience to actually work in their field.

Thus enters the Job Experience Paradox. What is it, you might ask? The easy answer is the need for experience to get a job, but you need a job to get the experience. A classic chicken-or-egg paradox.

So, what can you do to get the experience when you’ve already finished university? This conundrum has puzzled many graduates who were preparing themselves to enter a field, only to realize that the one thing they can’t get is the experience missing.

Adeboyego suggests that the best strategy is to present different projects and actionable skills as work experience. Understanding that the point of university is to build the necessary skills, whether soft or hard, to achieve success in the workplace is key. So, highlighting a skill set, like a particular software you master or other relevant achievements, can help you open doors.

“You can present these as work experience on your resume, highlighting relevant skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, communication, data management, etc., on your resume and how these skills were applied to get the work done.”

Soft skills can be defined as those that cannot be quantified, while hard skills can be tested. According to ZipRecruiter and LinkedIn studies, soft skills are crucial for hiring new graduates and usually help people get promoted faster.

Another path forward is internships and volunteering, where you can get hands-on experience for your resume, gain new skills that can’t be taught in an academic environment, and give back to the community. An additional option that is available to anyone in their career is to build their network.

LinkedIn Articles

In a LinkedIn article, Kody Smith, a project manager at SolutionStream, lays out a clear and actionable plan to overcome the experience paradox. He developed the RPAN strategy, which consists of four steps to follow.

This stands for:

• Research
• Plan
• Apply
• Network

The first step is to research the industry you want to join. Learn all you can about it, but not in an academic way. Instead, focus on the current trends, news, and insights that could help you out. For this, you must follow industry leaders, publications, newsletters, and more thought leaders. Once you have the knowledge, you need to plan a project or volunteering opportunity that showcases your relevant skills. After that, apply all of the above to improve your stand when you’re ready to network.

The second article was penned by Ephraim Mbube, a Microsoft Cybersecurity Analyst, who argues for employers to give a chance to unproven talent. He acknowledges the usual talking points of the experience requirements, but also points out that employers usually try to wriggle out of offering entry-level positions as a

“[F]resh graduates often bring unique strengths, including adaptability, enthusiasm, technological proficiency, and innovative thinking. They may lack direct work experience but compensate with transferable skills developed through internships, coursework, research projects, or extracurricular activities.”

Now, he provides a convincing series of reasons why employers should give graduates a chance. These include fresh perspectives, tech savviness, enthusiasm and eagerness, and ultimately, moldability. Think about it, it’s like having a new hire without any of the bad habits workers pick up along the way.

But having this mentality isn’t easy; as such, he suggests four steps for grads and employers to bridge the experience paradox gap. These are:

• Employers should focus on skills, adaptability, and willingness to learn as requirements for entry-level jobs.
• Companies should also have well-structured onboarding programs at all levels. The lack of these is just a bullet on the foot, as growing a company usually means having more workers.
• Grads should highlight these as relevant experience from volunteering, projects, or freelance work rather than just relying on education.
• Both can build bonds through networking and mentorship programs.

Unwritten Business Guide

In the Unwritten Business Guide, a guide on Substack by Austin Strong, Sr. Director of Strategy at Weave, and Jason Alleger, VP of Marketing at Enso Rings, they present a new method for solving the conundrum, the snowball method.

Now, they point out that even though a lot of entry-level employees face this paradox, this isn’t just a graduate problem—whenever you want to grow in your experience, you might face a similar problem. Imagine you want to become a manager, but you’ve never managed people before—there you face the experience paradox. Having a strategy, thus, is essential to grow at any point in your career.

“So how do you break through the Paradox? At its core, the short answer is that you have to convince someone to take a bet on you.”

There are two main paths:

1. To grow within a company, or the snowball method. The point of this is to prove to your boss or other superior that you’re ready for more responsibility.
2. To move into a different department (or company), or to make a lateral move.

The takeaway

The job experience paradox is not just something that recent grads face, at any point of your career when you need to prove you’ve got what it takes to take the reins. Still, this paradox can be broken by amassing experience, even if it’s not directly put upon you. Going out of your way to search for growth opportunities, like volunteering or freelance work, can help you while in university or even later in your career.