Iwould try to contribute to the discussion about jobs (paid and even unpaid ones) focusing on the very beginning of the topic and using my personal experience, of course, as a source of thinking and experiences.
As you might see on my profile I have just obtained my PhD so I am currently looking for a job (what a lottery!)…while reading jobs advertising on websites, as you may know, is pretty common to find this kind of request:
“young expert with at least three years of experience”
the issue as you coud imagine is: what do “three years of experience” mean?
this topic is strongly related to the main topic of this mission (the paid work): is it possible to count the years of unpaid or underpaid work (mostly internships and traineeship) as the requested experience for applying?
II would say yes…but I open the question to you all!
The reason why I would say yes is related to the definition of “job”: I think that even volunteeiring should be considered as job experience if it is done in a proper and consistent way.
On the other hand, taking into account the fact that often big companies, NGOs and Institutions base part of their activities on interns: it should mean that they are considered reliable.
The other aspect of the problem is exactly the high level of unpaid work!
I have had the chance to write the job description and the ideal candidate description for some positions. Never once have I required experience: it did not feel realistic, maybe the stuff I do is just too weird and the whole point is that there is no experience to go around, because it is supposed to be, you know, new. So I am really not the one to ask.
But it seems to make sense that interships and volunteering would count as experience. A smart, committed intern or volunteer can learn a great deal in a little time. And really, in the context of an interview it is quite simple to find out if the candidate knows what she’s talking about or has never seen a similar working context.
Experience per se does not mean much to the employer. It is simply a proxy of how much handholding the new recruit will need before she can handle the job at hand independently. I would totally accept somebody who told me “Well, I don’t have that sort of experience actually, but I did learn to [insert impressive activity here] all by myself in about three months.”
I read your message, I found it interesting but I totally forgot to reply…
Well I am afraid you are not the typical Human Resources office manager…even if I would rather prefer to have you as a recruter!
Until now I have no idea about which kind of evaluator read my CV so far, considering that I have never done an interview ( which is also pretty normal considering that it is not a lot of time I have been applying for jobs).
However I am happy to know that you agree with me!
I can’t find the statistics right now but if you look at the most efficient ways to get an highly qualified job, either in Italy or abroad, you can just forget the CVs as a first-contact method. What really works is networking.
By reading your ride I’ve seen you’re really involved in many movements so you should be already in a good position… maybe you just have to expand your connections into more professional circles… or am I oversimplifying it?
well I am afraid you are not oversimplifying! what you just wrote about networking is…what I had written at the end of my reply to Nadia’s post (on this same mission) , but I decided to delete my last sentence. I don’t know exactly why…some sort of feeling that networking is not always “good”.
I hear you, Betta. As an italian, like you, I know that here job seeking is actually… a mess. You find offers like “wanted experienced apprentice”, and you just feel bad.
I agree with the others about networking: it’s way different from recommendation, and the best to discover new opportunities. I feel like you’ll be lucky about it
I think in general the number of years of experience part can be fairly safely ignored. There have been some quite notorious job postings in Computing asking for more years of experience in programming language X, than the programming language had actually been around for.
When I’m reading resume’s I look at what the candidate has done, I’m not really interested in some arbitrary number of years they’ve done it for. I also once applied for and got a job I didn’t have the requisite number of years they asked for. Internships certainly count as experience - that’s the whole point of your doing them, although I fear the main point of offering them these days is that its free labour.
The best advice I can suggest is to try to decide if you want to do the job, and then try to decide why they would want you to do the job. Remember there’s a human being on the other side of the process, who thanks to email now has to plough through a pile of 100 or more resumes. They want to hire somebody, try to make it as easy as possible for them to decide to hire you.
Well the example about computing (is not at all my field so for me they are not notorious!) is very “examplificative” and I thank you for sharing this…well it’s also pretty fun but there is another point, behind : the very fact that someone posted a job asking for an objectively impossible amount of experience makes me feel that some recruters are not exactly precise!
one of the things I am disappointed about is the feeling that people reading CVs might not be the actual recruter; of course it’s not an hypotesis: in two different occasions in two completely different contexts and fields, while doing an internship I have been asked my advisor to look at a certain amount of CVs, make a summary to let the comittee evaluate them (it was, in both the cases, about scholarships). I did my best, but being at the candidates palces I would not appreciate that it was an intern evaluating (honestly I could say that my evaluation was more consistent than what the supervisor would have done…but still!)
Thanks for the advice…I will ignore the number of years of experience part!
I’ve come across an article in which the author explores the difficulties of matching work and talent or skills. The article itself I think is less interesting than the discussions in the comments from both recruiters, hiring managers and people who are or have been looking for employment. I wonder if there are any points in there that you think are worth highlighting or exploring further ?
Some points I see in popping up in the discussion highlighted by the quotes:
On how to set up feeds so appropriate ads find their way to you. It’s very practical and hands on so more useful than the generic job hunt advice I’ve come across before: How to Curate Your Own Personal Job Feed
Thank you for the interesting link. The most interesting part is the one on LinkedIn and twitter (I am not a Twitter addicted but I had never known that people can use twitter for job seeking).
By the way my issue, at the beginning ot this mission, was not to better understand how to find a job (well I am actualy looking for a job…but I am not -yet-desperate ;D ). My issue was to understand what “job” means…which is, Nadia, pretty close to the “conversation” we have had on your mission report “Job, no Thanks!”
As always, the comments are better than the article…
I’m not sure any general conclusion can really be drawn beyond, hiring is hard, finding a job is hard, and that both are extremely time consuming if you approach them properly. Also there’s a lot of specific instances that people are generalising rather badly from. For example a lot of jobs really are highly specialised, and require very real skills. Would we want people to hire brain surgeons or nuclear power station engineers by thinking “creatively about their candidate potential”? I rather suspect not.
Then there’s the I have X years in real estate, general management, MBA, etc. crowd, for whom I have some sympathy, but they unfortunately have to face the harsh reality that the need for people doing those jobs has been sharply reduced by technology. (I’d have more sympathy, but I don’t recall hearing all that much from that general class of people when the people getting disintermediated by technology were coal miners, factory workers, etc.)
I do think that as a society and employers need to think a lot harder about training though. A lot of companies seem to have stopped doing this, which is a mistake on their part, but it’s one of those short term cost, long term gain things - and of course, companys that do, run the risk of training people who then get poached by company’s that don’t. Tax breaks for education may be one way to address that.
Of course none hires a brain surgeon on the biais of creativity…but I would rather say that a brain surgeon is not someone to be hired! Recruitment works differently in this case.
I agree with you with the fact the that kind of people complains because they are now the victims but they didn’t when the victims were miners or factory workers!
However whatever is the context the issue is not hire or be recruited, I feel like the issue is the general approach to the very idea of job!
I have the same questions every time I need to review my CV. Most of my work experience is unpaid or underpaid… I consider myself as the “queen of internships”… (lol). I have done around 5-6 short or longer internships. Everytime I go to an interview, employers ask me “why you haven’t settled down in one job?” and of course my answer is “I would like to find something that really inspires me to settle” and then thinking “I want to do different things and be independant of a place. Can a permanent job offer me that? If settled down for more than one - two years means quitting my independance?” …
I really can’t give answers…
Coming back to your initial question, I think the perception of what “job” is and if volunteerism and internships count, depends a lot on the cultural mindset of people and the nature of your field. In Greece I think there is a taboo about having a paid job related to what you are applying for… In UK, I have applied in different areas and none of them asked me for relevant working experience ( I supppose my enthousiasm, there, counts more…). Fortunately in my field (social media & communication) “portfolio” and cases count more than paid working experience.
What do you think about this location-based definition?
I definitely agree with you. I am pretty sure that the location counts a lot. however I would also add that context is extremely relevant too as well as the field you are in (as you said about yours).
