People need to stop reading 3 years of professional experience as 3 years of technical experience. So long as you've been in the work world for 3 years already, doing contracts or whatever, then you have 3 years of experience. You can have 3 years at McDonalds.<p>Also, a college grad should not shy away from applying to such positions. If a job appeals to you, you should apply and let them tell you you don't qualify.<p>Mostly that clause is added to weed away wannabes.
Others have said this, but what they mean is that the pay will be poor regardless of the qualifications requested.<p>The point is that employers are now very comfortable with paying experienced people poorly; this works well to serve their interests as it keeps wages depressed, saving costs. The trick is getting the job-seekers to be comfortable with being undervalued-- and so, job seekers are told implicitly that they are not valuable (they don't have enough experience to get an entry level job or that the experience they already have doesn't take them above entry level), in the hopes that they start to believe the putdowns and settle for a weak opportunity. This malice hurts everyone except employers; recent grads are "too inexperienced" to get their first job, and people who are just finishing up their first or even second job are most likely forced to take another job at the same level before they can move up.<p>I have applied to these mid-level (yet advertised as entry level) jobs and was eminently qualified for a few, resulting in interviews. The cherry on top is that the interviewers tried to imply that I was unqualified. To reiterate, the employers attempted to minimize the experience I had even though it was enough to get the interview. I am sure that this regrettable behavior was posturing designed to somehow result in lower wages paid out. This has happened to me multiple times!<p>The career ladder is being pulled up behind the people who made it to the middle level first. Of course, this is just another damned instance of eating the young to feed the old.
This is so relevant to me. Mainly the years of experience part.<p>I've always been a technical minded person who dabbles in coding for side projects. I've come to a point in my career where I want my side work, coding (web to be specific), to actually be my professional career.<p>I'm willing to take a significant pay cut to do so and I've been searching Indeed, LinkedIn, and Angel for weeks now.<p>For the record I am in Boston. Not only are junior postings so rare, but when I do find them, they are as this article describes: "2-3 years+ professional experience and proficient in at least one of the following".<p>I get Boston is wildly competitive now, so do I accept this as the junior/entry expectations? So I'll never be qualified unless I go to a bootcamp? Do I just grind and start my own business or large portfolio on the side?<p>Or is there agreement that these junior requirements are too aggressive in this space?
<i>Then the bomb dropped. Every entry level position I looked at required 3+ years of experience;</i><p>It's amazing how many job ads contain statements in plain, black-and-white English that make no sense whatsoever, either in the real world or just in terms of logical self-consistency. Another one of my favorites is:<p><i>Minimum of 3-5 years ...</i><p>Why not just say "Minimum of 3 years"? Does the person who wrote this really not understand that they're saying?<p>One has to wonder.
There are 2 subplots this article has yet to unfold, which will only be revealed on the other side of the hiring process, after landing a seemingly desirable job.<p><pre><code> 1. HR's fortifications, subversive booby traps and
no-mans-land designed to repel applications by
way of sinister salary negotiations, that leave
behind a simmering animosity even after getting
hired.
2. On the other side of the wall, all of your co-
workers turn out to be fantastically retarded,
including your own boss and boss' bosses, largely
due to HR's low-ball tactics, leaving you with
the startling realization that the job description
and hiring interrogation (ahem! interview) was
all smoke and mirrors.
</code></pre>
See also:<p><a href="http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...</a>
I am a big fan of finding work through referrals, though that obviously doesn't work for the initial position.<p>An alternative I'd consider is the pain letter and addressing hiring managers directly, as outlined here: <a href="http://www.humanworkplace.com/whats-pain-letter/" rel="nofollow">http://www.humanworkplace.com/whats-pain-letter/</a><p>I know when I was hiring junior folks (for a small company), I would have been blown away by the larger perspective a pain letter indicates.
I've always read requirements for tech jobs to be a laundry list of things that are "nice to haves". Read "requirements" as "skills we're interested in," even if they have an explicit section for bonus talents.<p>This is especially true for junior and/or entry level roles. Every place I've seen just has an eternally published "opening" on theirs careers section. They keep it there so that when they finally decide that they're ready to hire, they'll have a ready-made pool to of résumés from which to draw.<p>If you're not experienced enough, you'll be able to tell from a specific, well written job description. If it's full of buzz words and meaningless fluff, they're not looking for someone specific and you should apply.
I think the commonality of "three years experience" is probably more a function of the author searching for jobs in the design side of industry. The fact that portfolio requirements come as a shock and are seen as a burden suggests unfamiliarity with design culture. Filtering people based on their commitment or non-commitment to aesthetics is legitimate here...and design aesthetics aren't about resolution.<p>Anyway, the portfolio requirement is meant to balance the experience requirement.
Man, some of you kids should have been around in the late 1990's bubble.<p>"Wow, you can spell 'internet' without sticking an A in there? Here is a job!"<p>Didn't go so well for those people when it burst.<p>But that's nothing to say of the surrounding jobs. I was in this company that blew up to something like a 3:1 ratio of sales/marketing to developers. Eek!<p>Company parties had live bands and free booze, with unlimited repeats (no two-drink-vouchers bullshit).
Pure UX Designers are s dying breed. I know a bunch of designers and they confirm this. You need to know how to code on top of UX design. Finding pure UX design jobs are hard and in 5 years it might be extinct. It's just the nature of the industry unfortunately n
"3+ years" is a filter for people who give up or have self-doubt. We put that on our job postings because it filters out people who don't think they are qualified. People with 1 year experience applying to a 3+ year position DO get their resumes glanced at (the reason I say 1 is because we rarely hire a straight up college grad, because we want someone who has a month of working in an office that understands the difference between the college sensitivity bubble and real life)<p>A tough realization for the entry-level people: You're not special and your "skills" are meaningless. Entry-level hiring is a crapshoot. You just hope you get someone that is capable of learning so you don't waste 3 months of training and then have to go back to hiring the next useless entry-level person.<p>My words of advice: If you're reading a job posting, you're not going to get the job. People get jobs by meeting other human beings. If you want to deal with jobs online, throw a bunch of random buzzwords on your linkedIn profile and wait for the recruiter swarm to come vett your bullshit.