Recently I've spoken to several groups of law students about the importance of networking and its benefits for recent grads and new lawyers. When I spoke at Notre Dame's law school, the program was aptly titled, "Networking for New Lawyers." Due to these recent discussions, I've been paying particular attention to material and advice geared towards entry level candidates. I recently came across a short piece, actually a response to a question to the author, which focuses on the "years of experience" requirements that are often present in job postings. The piece appeared on bnet, part of the CBS interactive network and is linked above and throughout this post.
The question posed to the author, are years of experience requirements fair to young workers? It's frustrating as a new grad or a young worker looking for opportunities when everything out there seems to require some minimum threshold of experience. The truth of the matter is, today's market is an employer's market. Hiring inexperienced talent is an expensive business to be in. This piece paints this picture perfectly: "So, when a manager has gobs of time and cash and all that, she's willing to take the risk of hiring someone without enough experience and train him herself. When deadlines are tight, finances are tighter, and stress levels are high, she wants to hire someone that someone else has trained."
In the legal industry, as well as others, there is added pressure from clients. There have been grumblings the past couple of years, particularly in biglaw, that in a depressed economy, clients are paying closer attention to their legal bills and are not willing to pay the cost of training new lawyers. The pressure has been to add lateral hires and not recent grads in need of training. Law schools, like a lot of academic programs, generally don't teach students the necessary skills needed to survive in the work force. The author highlights this point rather bluntly: "Sorry to say, but universities generally stink at teaching skills that help you survive in the workplace."
The years of experience requirement is out there to reduce the amount of training a new hire will need. There are two suggestions given by the article to combat this. First, she focuses on internships. Your internships are experience and can be used to meet lower experience thresholds. This is an important point, taking a summer job in college that has nothing to do with your desired career because it pays well, or you like doing it, or some other reason, may hamper your post-graduation efforts. This is good advice, but sometimes finding an internship is just as hard as finding a job.
"So, what's a younger worker to do? Same thing as an old worker: Network." Networking for the less experienced can seemingly be more difficult. You don't have the experience, and more importantly you don't have the industry contacts that someone who has been in the game for years has. But this should not discourage the recent grad or young worker. Networking is even more important to them because there is no "experience" to fall back on. Networking is a way to separate yourself from the general working population. When looking for that first job, or even a second or third, the most important thing you have might be the right personal referral. A referral from a trusted source is often the easiest way for a recruiter or employer to differentiate a potential hire from the masses of applicants. Several years ago I posted regarding personal referrals, that brief post can be found here and is worth revisiting.
So, years of experience hurdles are not prohibitive, they are just annoying. Often they are there for a reason, but in the current employment market, they seem to be there more often than not in order to minimize the amount of training. Use you network to surpass those hurdles, and more importantly, use your network to find opportunities that aren't public postings.
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