Entry-Level Job Description Says ‘Experience Required’. How Do You Even Think Through This?

You don’t have to be a career coach to have heard or tried to work through this question. You graduate from college and enthusiastically begin to look for a job, you search the big job boards under the term “entry-level accounting” or “entry-level chemistry” only to find out again and again that a lot of the so-called ‘entry-level’ postings are asking for anywhere from 2 to 5 years of experience. Say what? What's up with that?

Some Perspective

First of all, it is important to remember that some companies have a history of and a well-established practice in hiring folks right out of college. Enterprise Rent-a-Car is historically an example of a company which hires the most, new college graduates of just about any firm in America each year. Of course they love it when they can promote recent grads from their management trainee program right into a job - because you have experience with their company as an intern – but they hire tons of folks with college degrees from business, to psychology, to music; the last time I rented, the person who waited on me had a degree in writing. Other firms like ADP, Fastenal, Cintas, UniFirst, Northwestern Mutual, Prudential Financial, Hertz, TQL, Aflac, and many others, are often seen at college job fairs; they know what they are doing – trying to find soon-to-graduate new hires! The flip side of that coin are the companies who lure well-trained folks from other companies; I won’t mention any names here, but a lot of science-based firms are like this – they like to see their chemists, physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, and even their corporate business folks come in the door with at least a few years of experience; it is just the nature of their companies and not meant to offend new job seekers. Of course, if you are a new grad, and have your heart set on one of these firms, but are not aware of their disposition toward experience, it could be frustrating journey indeed.

Understanding ‘Gravity Problems’ and ‘Anchor Problems’

This article is sort of written in steps. You read the first section and maybe that explains the issue and you change your search based upon that. So maybe the first section compelled you to really focus-in on those firms known for hiring new college grads. Next, let’s talk about two terms coined by professionals in the world of design thinking, and explained in the book Designing Your Life: gravity problems and anchor problems. A gravity problem is a problem that, at face value, you cannot solve; i.e. you neither have the power, nor the authority to solve it. For example, Big Ominous Biopharma Company – BOBC, we’ll call them - only hires chemists with 3 or more years of experience. You can’t change that! It is their corporate hiring practice. You will wear yourself out trying to convince a large biopharma firm that they need to start taking new college grads into their labs. What you can do is reframe the problem. For example, you could ask the question “Do they hire entry-level people into other jobs?” or “Can I intern with the company and if I do so, will they consider hiring those who have interned with that organization?” or “What biopharma companies do, in fact, hire new chemists, so that I can gain the 3 or more requisite years of experience, before applying to BOBC?” So here, we reframe the problem in a way that it becomes more ‘solvable’ or actionable than trying to change the hiring policies of a massive biopharma firm.

In the BOBC example in the last paragraph, we experienced a job seeker who wanted to get into a specific firm, in a specific industry. This is very typical from my experience working with tens of thousands of college students. Call it a dream, call it a goal, call it an aspiration, college students, and a lot of us, have a tendency to pigeon-hole ourselves, thinking over, and over again – possibly through the prompting of faculty, parents, peers, whomever – ‘I am truly and only cut out to do this one, specific thing and if I cannot do this one, specific thing, in this one, specific place, with this one, specific company, I have totally failed at my life, career and goals.’ This is what is known as an anchor problem. We get anchored to one idea for our life, assuming it is the only calling that could possibly make us joyful, successful, or admired by others; having been intrinsically convinced and supported by those around us, our view of the future becomes narrower, and narrower and narrower. Then, when we go to seek that one, specific job, in that one, specific place, with that one, specific company - which doesn’t tend to hire new college grads and they won’t even give us a glance - we are frustrated, angry, ready to give up, maybe even devastated. Design thinking and Krumboltz Happenstance Learning Theory (both with ties to Stanford University, by the way) converge on this point and promote the idea that turning our heads, meeting people, trying stuff, reflecting on that, ideating on multiple, possible career odysseys that might be a good fit for us, brushing up against the job that we want, opening new doors, and learning to recognize that our life has many possibilities are actually the true keys to a joyful career future. It’s not just about learning, it is about action – we have to get out, meet people and try stuff, even if that means taking a first job that we had not originally seen ourselves in.

. . .and Some Companies are Just Hopeful

I recently asked for advice from my LinkedIn network as I am putting together a two-hour preparatory program for students considering interning in the coming year. I asked my network for their advice to students on things they wish they had been taught before their internships. Rachel K., an associate attorney replied “Apply, apply, apply - even if you feel underqualified. Statistically, you're bound to get a hit if you keep swinging.” I would go on to qualify this by saying that you do need to custom craft your resume for the job, each time, since applicant tracking systems are mostly reading your resume and are looking for those keywords from the description; so, you cannot keep sending the ‘same, good ol’ general resume’, that is typically not going to generate interview offers for you. But there is a certain gem here. Some companies are simply aspirational and subscribe to the idea of ‘ask for more than you think you’re going to get.’ So if you are asking the question “Do you mean just go ahead and apply anyway?”, and I suspect you are, then my answer is, “Yes.”, most of the time. Again, if a company has a history of hiring entry-level folks – see the link in paragraph 1 – then sure, apply even if it is asking for a little experience, but if you have evidence that the firm tends to steal their employees from other places, then no, you’re probably not going to have a lot of luck there. By the way, you can find that evidence by looking at multiple LinkedIn profiles of those who already do the job you are interested in. Did they have experience before they were hired? What kind of experience? Connect with them and ask how they got their job!

Networking or Not Working?

Ah the age-old question, ‘Can networking affect this whole scenario?’ Is it possible to get to know a hiring manager or recruiter early in your college career, stay in touch with them and through that relationship convince them to give you a shot, even though their company has a policy for hiring only those with at least 3 years of experience? The answer is, “It depends.” In this case, a firm like Big Huge Massive Business Services Firm (BHMBSF) is not likely to budge because mid and lower level managers, even those with hiring influence, are often still beholden to a higher power – the VP of HR, operations VPs and the computer algorithms that actually help decide who the firm will hire based upon promotion, retention and performance of the existing staff (yes, historical data) – so indeed a lot of these decisions about prior experience are driven by actual company data and not meant to offend or vex new college graduates. So, if a firm has proven to themselves through hard, fast data that those with 3 years experience far outperform new grads, you are likely facing a gravity problem. If you are using the networking approach, you will most likely find it to be more influential in small and medium sized firms - because their policies are more nimble, adaptable - than larger firms who have little history of hiring new grads.

Summing It Up

One study asked older professionals to estimate how many different career lives they think they could have lived and still have been happy. When you talk to older people about this, their responses tend to fall in the 2 to 3 range. When we are younger, it is hard to see the fact that there are many possible, successful version of ‘us’ – especially when we let a dream or a goal become an ultimatum, i.e. I either ‘become’ this one thing, or I have failed.  In some ways, I feel a little messy or dirty typing this. I mean, what kind of a career guy suggests that goals can actually be problematic in certain ways? It’s unAmerican! Hopefully, dear reader, you have considered what I am really talking about here. Avoid getting anchored to too specific of a version of yourself, especially one that is largely incongruent with the real world of work and its hiring practices. We know from the U.S. Census that only about 27% of the 70 million Americans with a bachelor’s degree work in a job that is related to their field of study - yes, only 27%. Not all of those people are working outside of their field because they could not find a job in their field – I would certainly be an example of this. No, a lot of these folks simply turned their heads, looked around, assessed the different versions of themselves, refused to get anchored, refused to waste time and energy on gravity problems, and applied networking in the right way, in the right place and at the right time in a persistent and positive way. Just a few ideas there.

It’s your future. Take charge!