grumpy

This conundrum of employers wanting experience but not offering positions for people to gain experience occurs in every industry.

The basic reason for employers is money and risk: hiring someone without experience means a need to pay them and train them (i.e. cost) in a period when they are less productive (i.e. less return for the cost). Then there is risk for the employer: either the person does not work out (in which case the investment is wasted) or they take employment elsewhere (in which case investment benefits a competitor).

Contrary to popular belief, universities, colleges, etc are not required to offer training that makes someone immediately employable. An educational institution is about giving foundational knowledge, not about forcing people to apply those basics in any particular way. Even if the educational institutions do seek to make people employable, it is difficult because (particularly in IT) the industry follows short-term fads. A three year course in a discipline with "state of the art" that changes every couple of years will, almost certainly, have covered some things not relevant to employers when students have completed their study.

The net effect is that it is up to a potential employee to proactively do things to prove their worth and accept responsibility for their own professional development. Nobody else (parents, educators, employers) has that responsibility. Some common ways to address that are;

1) Find the rare employer who is prepared to invest in a new employee without experience and accept the risk of losing that employee once they become valuable. This often implies taking a job with government or public service (or in academia) but some larger companies also do it.

2) Get top grades from a top educational institution: this can sometimes make employers more willing to accept the risk due to inexperience. The catch is, different employers have different ideas of what is a good education (both institutions and subjects).

3) Swallow your pride and accept basic entry jobs (eg help desk) but, once in that job, proactively seek out additional work that goes beyond the job description and aim to do it well. In short, build up experience by doing better work than you are paid for. If this is noticed by your employer, it can get the foot in for a promotion (very few people are promoted to a position on the basis of potential: they are usually promoted on the basis of already working at that level and being valuable enough that the employer doesn't want to lose the employee). If it is not noticed by the employer, you have a claim of experience and demonstrated self-motivation when applying for a job that requires experience.