Our recent post revealing that candidates are required to have an average of three years of experience to get hired for an entry-level position stirred up some debate on social media. (You can read that story here.)
How can a job be ‘entry-level’ if you already have to have three years of experience to do it? And where can you gain that experience in the first place? It’s tough. That is why the unemployment rate for young people is consistently much higher than the overall average. Your first jobs are the most difficult to get hired for.
To shed more light on the situation, we took a deeper dive into the data to see just how much experience is typically required in job postings by industry. (This research was conducted by the team at TalentWorks who studied the content from 100,000 job ads. You can read the details of the study and their methodology here.)
How many years of experience you need to get hired for entry-level jobs by sector
| Fast Food Workers | 1.24 years |
| Dispatch & Operations | 1.50 years |
| Retail Sales Rep | 1.59 years |
| Drafting, Engineering, Mapping Tech | 1.63 years |
| Other Sales years | 1.68 years |
| Other Office Support Specialist | 1.72 years |
| Services Sales Rep | 1.74 years |
| Info & Record Clerks | 1.89 years |
| Bartenders & Waiters | 1.90 years |
| Legal Support Workers | 1.94 years |
| Physical & Social Science Technician | 1.99 years |
| Secretary & Admin Assistant | 2.01 years |
| Media Production Specialist | 2.10 years |
| Sales Rep years | 2.12 years |
| Protective Service Workers | 2.25 years |
| Nursing/Home Health | 2.27 years |
| Media/Comms/PR | 2.42 years |
| Financial Specialist | 2.58 years |
| Health Technicians | 2.67 years |
| Healthcare Support | 2.67 years |
| Financial Clerk | 2.73 years |
| Business Operations Specialist | 2.86 years |
| Physical Scientist | 2.93 years |
| Engineer | 2.97 years |
| Counselors, Social Workers | 2.98 years |
| Designers & Visual Artists | 3.30 years |
| Admin Support Supervisor | 3.36 years |
| Lawyers & Judges | 3.73 years |
| Computer Occupation | 3.82 years |
| Math/Science Occupation | 3.91 years |
| Other Teacher/Instructor | 4.26 years |
| Medical Practitioner | 5.07 years |
So, where can you get your first few crucial years of experience? How can you get started? Another study of recent college and university graduates recently uncovered the most common first jobs they end up working in their first few years after leaving school. The good news is, we have positions open for all of those roles available right now on CareerBeacon.
The other key takeaway is that you usually only need to have about 50 per cent or the requirements listed in a job posting in order to land an interview. So, if you are confident that you can do the job – even if you don’t quite have all of the experience requested – then apply anyway and state your case.
Source: TalentWorks: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience.
