You Don't Need No "Experience" For Your First Job. Do You?

• What is your work experience?
• Tell me about your last job.
• Have you ever worked on this role before?

Who on earth asks such questions to a fresher? Wait....! We human species do. And these questions are being raised to everybody everywhere. The problem is - companies and recruiters don't understand that there has to be a first time once.

OK so I'm a freelancer and an engineering student right now. Lately, due to lockdown, all of us had some spare time, so I decided to apply for internships. I went on to various platforms and applied to various internships (both startups and big companies) and all of them had this similar question - Tell us about your last internship. Like seriously? I had already mentioned everything on resume and that I'm completely fresher but still the question thrown to me in the next round is about work experience. Then I talked to multiple people who had applied for their first jobs and internships recently, and they also had to face the same problem.

Now coming back to the question, Do you really need to have some experience while applying for your first internship / job? Answer is NO. And even if you think it's yes, then tell me if it's possible practically. You can be asked to show your work samples, and that how you would make a good fit for the role, why should you be hired and hundred other questions but not this.

No doubt that experience plays a vital role in your overall carrier but that also comes from the later part of it. And if you're not given a chance to work for the first time, you will end up having zero experience. Your potential cannot necessarily be measured by the experience you have but determination.

So Dear Recruiters and HRs, kindly normalise the "no work experience" culture for freshers and first timers. See if they have potential to do something relevant, give them tasks to perform, take multiple tests and interviews then give them the opportunity. But don't make a verdict just because they have no experience. You can judge a student on the basis of his/her work experience only if somebody had given them one.

And Dear Applicants, please mention if you don't have any past work experience in your resume. There is nothing to hide and it's better to be crystal clear in front of your recruiters. How would they know that it's your first time if you don't mention the same?

Finally if it happens or happened to you, you need to talk about it. This is how things get normalised. Just remember "Work Is Worship" not work experience is.