Do you ever see job vacancies where they are asking for 2+years work experience for an entry level job post? If you are in the early stages of your career, this can be a frustrating hurdle to get over. In some countries the unemployment rate is too high for new graduates who are graduating in record numbers, because of lack of skills obtained from work experience.
So you cant get a job because you don’t have enough work experience, and you cant get the work experience because they want to hire someone with work experience. Its a catch 22!
In some countries , early career job opportunity challenges are simply because during pandemic a lot of companies either closed or pivoted their business and were therefore not hiring or requiring different skills from employees. This report shows a decrease in work experience opportunities during the pandemic. The juxtaposition of this , is as we all know, the pandemic opened up new industries. One that most people hadn’t trained for.
So, how can you add experience on your CV in this case? Quick answer is it is possible.
Use your college or volunteer work
Whenever you are either doing college projects, doing volunteer work, helping at church or family event, you can list the hard skills and soft skills you have picked up.
Did you lead a project? Were you a spokes person for school project group.? Did you initiate or suggest any changes in your volunteer work that you did? If so, focus on the quantifiable results. what was the problem? why did you make the suggested solution? what action did you take? Did you lead the action plan? What were the results?How did the results benefit the organisation or the team?
Think of the process by answering these questions 1. what was the situation 2.What was task that was needed to resolve the situation? what did you do? what were the results?
What about personal projects or projects you have been part of at work or at home?
An example of how to analyse your personal projects
From my experience , side hustles tend to be things that involve your natural personal interests. Has this been the experience for you?
In your side hustle , the transferable skills you could use on your C.V are , managing the side hustle project from start to finish by pointing out technics you used to keep project delivery to the deadline; any recruitment you undertook (virtual assistance etc).
If there is no opportunity for for work experience, try to create your own.
You might have had work experience , but now, after losing a job during the pandemic, you are now looking for jobs in an industry you don’t have experience in.
What About Employment Gaps
You might just have realised during the pandemic, how important work life balance is to you, so you are looking for hybrid working jobs. And from experience, employers will look at the gap. What surprised me was , although most employers accept that gaps mean the experience you put down is not ‘corporate’ , i find that few accept that the skills are transferable. they are looking for similar skills from a similar job description. And that is a shame but let’s focus on the ones that are open to employment gaps.
Same as before, narrow down what you did during that time. If you are at the beginning of it, then be intentional on the skills you want to develop.
Lack of finances might push you to make quick decisions, but some how i have realised such quick decisions, make the new job even harder.
I have learned more management skills from personal project in employment gaps , than otherwise. Which brings me to the second point.
Outline the what you did to develop the project, networking you had to do, operations you had to develop.
Now write what skills you develop when you do the above.
Last point – Completely Understand and Believe in your abilities
Collate evidence based skills to sell to a potential employer (because it is technically a sales pitch), is like a promise to deliver some thing you have not delivered before. I know i have experienced this, have you?
Ensure you don’t undercharge your services or fail to negotiate pay.
This Venn diagram, is how you can arrive at what your best skills or natural abilities are.
You can check this against what is on the job description. It doesn’t mean you don’t need to improve in them, because you do, in order to get paid for them and be industry relevant.
It means when you are consistent with them , you will tap into delivering in a career you will enjoy.
This is one area that i have realised that is not easy for some of us to add quantifiable value. Especially if you have understood work in a traditional sense i.e apply for a job
Conclusion.
Closed doors open new avenues if pay attention closely enough. A paid opportunity may come late because you have not built credibility yet, but work on your natural talent anyway. Do the thing that you would do even without pay because you enjoy it. Things will eventually come together, as long as you are consistent.