How can you have experience when it’s your first job?

Applying to entry-level positions is strange. Some of them are less than great and don’t mention experience at all, and others are amazing, claim to be “great for recent grads!” and then ask for three years of experience. How can a recent graduate have three years of industry experience? The answer is complicated.

As noted by TalentWorks, after analyzing a random sample of 95,363 jobs, they “discovered that 61% of all full-time ‘entry-level’ jobs require three plus years of experience.”

And that’s not all; the study goes on to note that, “for entry-level jobs, the amount of work experience required to get a job has been steadily increasing at 2.8% per year.” That means in the next half-decade or so, recent grads will find entry-level jobs asking for around four years of experience.

So then, what is a recent grad supposed to do to get one of these mythical entry-level jobs? Let’s dig in. (more…)