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How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

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Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#61

Post by xyzzyz »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #57
hysan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real answer, which is alluded to in your post, is that the years requirement is simply a mechanism to reduce risk and blame for the person hiring you. There are a few things to consider in these situations: 1. He is already being interviewed despite satisfying the years experience requirement. This means they are willing to ignore that requirement. (or I misread this and he never made it to an interview) 2. All n…

Do hirers give feedback? When I was suddenly dropped from dropbox's interview process, and asked for feedback, I didn't get a response until my friend working there went and bugged HR, and then the response that did get sent was "we have no comment".

There is no incentive for them to give you such information, especially since it only helps you sue them.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#63

Post by SimHacker »

tedunangst wrote: post #11
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

The top rated answer though is pretty priceless. The easy way to over come the experience requirement, is to put in the time. But the relevant response is that when you don't know what you don't know, you're not nearly as effective as you think you are. I remember being so depressed at Intel one day when I figured out I was tons smarter than this senior engineer I was working with but I didn't have a shot at his job…

Was your story supposed to conclude with "then I got his job and realized how hard it was" or were you really smarter?

Chuck's the real deal. ;)

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#64

Post by Morg »

yuhong wrote: post #28
imjk wrote: post #3

As an employer, I give you this advice: Just apply. We make exceptions for smart or motivated people all the time. After all, your resume's gonna be viewed by a human who'll give it a subjective assessment. If by chance the company you're applying to is so rigid in their standards that they can only make decision based on objective measures, it's probably not a company that you want to be at.

This is why IMO the current US anti-discrimination laws are fundamentally flawed, BTW.

like all discriminatory anti-discrimination laws ... I don't see how you can fight discrimination with positive discrimination tbqh.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#65

Post by Morg »

wavephorm wrote: post #8

I just love when job ads require 2-3 years work experience, but also have a requirements list so long that would take 10+ years of dedication in 7 completely different, or contradictory, disciplines to qualify for the position. Now Hiring: Visual Studio/.NET + Ruby on Rails developers with Oracle DBA and jQuery UI experience, XSL and Adobe Illustrator experience a plus

I'd say it depends. I could easily say sysadmin, Xen virt, SQL server, postgreSQL, jQ, Illustrator, python, java, html5/css3, extensive hardware understanding, infrastructure design and I've been working for 5 years or something... The difference is it's my passion and I was in hardware and computers way before it became my job.

What in my opinion doesn't match with those offers is their part of the bargain - they want a super motivated multitool expert . for peanuts ...

By the way. you have to realize that's all resumé warfare, they think you're going to exaggerate and they hope at best that you can code .Net, have touched RoR twice, used Toad for Oracle three times and had to implement a very small web frontend for basic purposes - and maybe that you had to design birthday cards in Illustrator.

Seems more likely with 2-3 years experience, doesn't it ?

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#66

Post by Morg »

nahname wrote: post #37
jaredsohn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Number of years of experience is easy to determine Only if defined in a naive way (i.e. ignore personal projects, work experience during middle school/high school/college, have some arbitrary way of interpreting what it means to have experience in a particular language.)

You can certainly make the number more or less meaningful by including a comparison against what the individual accomplished over that period. Regardless, the question was an individual's number wasn't high enough.

EITHER you made something great OR you have nothing to show and then it's really personal

In the end, once you have something to show, noone cares about your resumé and they all want you on board because you have shown that you can deliver and are a low-risk, high-return investment.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#67

Post by louischatriot »

csallen wrote: post #9

I think the op's point was completely ignored: Different people progress at different rates. When you're in high school, you have roughly the same amount of schooling experience as your peers. That doesn't change the fact that you may be taking advanced classes while they take remedial ones. It's easy to accuse the op of arrogance. And who knows, maybe he is arrogant. But in the end, that's just an ad hominem and is…

I totally agree: people do capitalize on experience at different speeds. That said, I think the op fails to put himself into the company's shoes. As one comment said, false positives hurt a lot, so these kinds of company will try to avoid them at all costs, even if it means weeding out very good candidates. Management consulting firms do that a lot for example.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#68

Post by polymatter »

Peroni wrote: post #60

This will be buried but I'll throw it out there anyway. In the UK it's actually illegal to specify a minimum number of years of experience. The issue is that no-one enforces the rule unless someone kicks up a stink. In the UK, if you are rejected for a position implicitly because you didn't have the minimum number of years of experience you can claim compensation through the employment tribunal on the grounds of age…

Not doubting you in any way, but do you have a reference for that? Is it part of the Equality Act 2010?

I'd like to be able to say this with some authority (without it sounding like "this guy on the internet told me").

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#69

Post by stfu »

tokenadult wrote: post #47

The original StackExchange thread is an interesting read. For the job applicant (any job applicant), the problem is always how to make an affirmative case that an employer ought to offer the job to you and not to someone else. The commenters on StackExchange and here on HN are mostly commenting from that perspective, that the job applicant has to figure out how to excel over other job applicants in making a strong ca…

I am still skeptical about the IQ tests and job-skill tests. They both seem to look at things at a very narrow timeframe. One could potentially have a high IQ and be great at a specific task, but it seems to say very little how this person is going to perform in future tasks - i.e. a brilliant mind, facing a challenging job skill task, might become highly bored or sloppy when settling in the day-to-day work frame. But I guess statistics and outliners have one way or another a problematic relationship.

Re: How to overcome “years of experience” requirements when applying for jobs

#70

Post by Peroni »

polymatter wrote: post #68
Peroni wrote: post #60

This will be buried but I'll throw it out there anyway. In the UK it's actually illegal to specify a minimum number of years of experience. The issue is that no-one enforces the rule unless someone kicks up a stink. In the UK, if you are rejected for a position implicitly because you didn't have the minimum number of years of experience you can claim compensation through the employment tribunal on the grounds of age…

Not doubting you in any way, but do you have a reference for that? Is it part of the Equality Act 2010? I'd like to be able to say this with some authority (without it sounding like "this guy on the internet told me").

Sure. Some citations:

[1] http://www.xperthr.co.uk/faqs/topics/6,62/age-discrimination...

[2] http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1046

[3] http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=10...

[4] http://www.rightsatwork.co.uk/employment-law/age-discriminat...

[5] Anecdotal: http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/03/26/45050/look...

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