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61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

talent.works

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Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#41

Post by AnimalMuppet »

chroem- wrote: post #9
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

Won't the market sort out whatever this is? Is there a specific unfair mechanism at play that would prevent supply and demand from finding its balance?

The fact that people need a source of income to live, and that they have very little influence on the price of their labor without collective bargaining.

That's not how supply and demand works.

I'm on the supply side of the labor supply-and-demand curve. I set the price that I'm willing to sell my time at. Nobody else sets my price, and I don't set anybody else's price. On the demand side, there are a bunch of employers who each have their own price for what they're willing to pay for a certain set of skills. Each sets their own price. Nobody else sets it for them. In particular, nobody on the supply side can possibly set the price the demand side is willing to pay.

Now, all of what I just said presumes a functioning supply-and-demand market. It breaks down if there's collusion between employers, or in a single-employer situation. Unions may well be needed in such situations. But in a working labor market, demanding more than market price for labor will result in lower demand for labor.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#42

Post by kushalc »

Hey guys, I'm the author of this post! (And also happen to be TalentWorks CEO.) A friend sent me this link, I'm happy to answer any Qs.

Also, we're hiring. :) If you're sick of spending all your hard-earned education and experience to help Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. increase ad CTR by 0.001%, we're working on some pretty cool technical problems. Just email me at kushal@talent.works.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#43

Post by cbhl »

filoleg wrote: post #31
williamscales wrote: post #15

If you go to college and do an internship or research fellowship each summer, you will come out with "3 years" of experience.

Can you actually do that/do people do that? E.g., if someone did a software engineering internship for at least one semester every year of their college (4 years), can they count those years as field/industry experience? Albeit not full 4, but 2-3 years?

The University of Waterloo advertises it as a feature of their co-op program.

Four month work terms alternate with four month school terms. Do six of them before you graduate and you have two years of work experience.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#44

Post by cbhl »

meaydinli wrote: post #20
williamscales wrote: post #15

If you go to college and do an internship or research fellowship each summer, you will come out with "3 years" of experience.

Is it not mandatory for engineering/CS? I had to do 2 internships for my bachelors, and 1 for my masters.

Traditional universities have "summer vacation". :)

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#45

Post by deevolution »

filoleg wrote: post #31
williamscales wrote: post #15

If you go to college and do an internship or research fellowship each summer, you will come out with "3 years" of experience.

Can you actually do that/do people do that? E.g., if someone did a software engineering internship for at least one semester every year of their college (4 years), can they count those years as field/industry experience? Albeit not full 4, but 2-3 years?

I did an internship every summer during college, but only my last 2 internships were software related. A couple of internship barely qualifies you. In retrospect, I should have asked my intern employers to extend the internship part time into the school year. Then, I think i'd be qualified for entry level. I got lucky on my last internship, tho and they hired me. At most I would count 4 summer internships as 1 year of experience.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#46

Post by pagnol »

jamestimmins wrote: post #27

The buried lede here seems to be "In real life, folks need to apply to 150-250 jobs to get a job". I'd be so, so interested to see the breakdown here, and what causes these types of numbers. Are there just enormous numbers of applicants for every job? Are people applying for jobs they aren't qualified for? How does this compare in tech vs the rest of the job market? The signal/noise ratio must be absurdly low if this…

I've similarly always struggled to make sense of these kinds of claims, because in my life so far I was offered a job every time I applied, so I'm wondering if I'm either living in an area where the job market is much less competitive or if I'm aiming too low. It's out of the question that I'm some kind of hotshot, on the contrary my CV is a mess and I dropped out ouf college.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#48

Post by kushalc »

sixdimensional wrote: post #36

There is an interesting catch-22 I've experienced regarding a recommendation the article makes - if you remove things like graduation dates, previous positions / etc. once you reach a certain age (35+ per the article), potential employers now don't have that information. The catch-22 is, if you're not careful, now employers may think you are NOT senior and so you may be able to get a job, however, it might not be app…

Definitely not just a promotion. We're a mission-driven company and a we've explicitly chosen as a company to share our learnings with folks (even if it reduces our competitive edge a tiny bit) because we believe it's important to good. Not quite open source, but maybe open knowledge?

And while it's nowhere near peer-reviewed academic paper quality (we won't be submitting to Nature or NIPS anytime soon), my personal background is ML — everything we write is backed by cold, hard internal data and we try to stick to the facts.

All of that said, yes, people really like our data-driven insights and it does drive traffic. :)

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#49

Post by [deleted] »

filoleg wrote: post #31
williamscales wrote: post #15

If you go to college and do an internship or research fellowship each summer, you will come out with "3 years" of experience.

Can you actually do that/do people do that? E.g., if someone did a software engineering internship for at least one semester every year of their college (4 years), can they count those years as field/industry experience? Albeit not full 4, but 2-3 years?

[deleted]

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#50

Post by ehsanu1 »

pagnol wrote: post #46
jamestimmins wrote: post #27

The buried lede here seems to be "In real life, folks need to apply to 150-250 jobs to get a job". I'd be so, so interested to see the breakdown here, and what causes these types of numbers. Are there just enormous numbers of applicants for every job? Are people applying for jobs they aren't qualified for? How does this compare in tech vs the rest of the job market? The signal/noise ratio must be absurdly low if this…

I've similarly always struggled to make sense of these kinds of claims, because in my life so far I was offered a job every time I applied, so I'm wondering if I'm either living in an area where the job market is much less competitive or if I'm aiming too low. It's out of the question that I'm some kind of hotshot, on the contrary my CV is a mess and I dropped out ouf college.

Probably a function of your industry and where you are.
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