The “Experience” Catch-22

This morning I thought I would give myself a refresher on what’s currently out there in the entry-level job market. I went to one of the bigger employment search engine websites and searched under the key words: “entry level”, which produced about twenty of what I would describe as viable results. The listings were still fairly typical of the times: sales representative, account executive, management trainee, etc. I clicked on the first posting, which was for a position listed as “Entry Level Outside Sales Representative.” As the title would indicate, it’s sales. (Prior to searching at length for entry-level employment, I had no idea there were so many ways to pronounce “salesman.") Scrolling through the particulars of the job posting, I landed on the “Requirements” section, the first of which was as follows:

"1-2 years of proven Business to Business Sales Success"

Huh? This is a job that literally (literally!) has the words “entry level” within its title, and one of the prerequisites to consideration is one to two years of experience? Surely, we must have conflicting definitions of “entry-level?”

This, in my experience, is actually far more common than you would think. I’ve inquired about dozens of jobs that have put out this same obstruction. How is one supposed to gain experience at the entry-level if one doesn’t have enough experience to be hired at the entry-level? It’s a textbook catch-22 if there ever was one. Sometimes, if a company is feeling particularly ghoulish, they’ll even stash this little paradoxical nugget near the end of the listing, so as to dash your hopes at their absolute fever pitch.

So how does one circumvent this absurdity? Well, you could always lie on your resume I suppose, but you run the risk of being found a fraud at some point, which could ultimately be worse than not getting the job in the first place. If anything, this reaffirms the importance of internships and garnering any sort of practical experience you can as an undergraduate. When the market is this saturated, any sort of upper hand you can establish for yourself is going to help your cause. It doesn’t necessarily have to be experience: establish connections, network, become highly-versed on your desired field, etc. Hell, if you’re feeling really desperate, you could even write a blog.