P.S. ...: Experience: An Infinite Regress

Like most college seniors, one of my deepest, most pathetic fears is the idea of graduating jobless and unemployable. When searching for jobs, there are several recommended steps — have a good resume, make it clean and organized and somewhat worth reading and have said resume include good other jobs and internships, termed “past experience.”

How do we define experience? Philosophically, experience is extremely difficult to circumscribe, but tends to relate to “practical contact with, or an observation of, a series of facts and or events.” In the ever unyielding job search, experience means holding other jobs — specifically, jobs that pertain to what you are applying for. Twenty-five years ago, the idea of an entry-level job was pretty self-explanatory; you apply during or just out of college, and work your way up the ranks with limited 'experience' save what you amassed from various responsibilities, coursework, internships — which used to instead simply be called 'jobs' — and so on.

Today, reports of even the most basic entry-level job postings requiring extensive 'experience’ in a related field are causing an outcry. This outcry isn’t necessarily unsubstantiated. In 2016, University of Pennsylvania Professor of Economics Matthew Bidwell explored the relationship between the supply and demand sides of the talent marketplace. In his paper "Unpacking Human Capital: Exploring the Role of Experience and Education in Shaping Access to Jobs,” Bidwell created a two-by-two matrix using data from over 3 million U.S. job postings; one of his key discoveries was that virtually all jobs with high education requirements (i.e. four-year bachelor’s degree and above) also had significant experience requirements (i.e. two years or more of relevant work experience). On average, non-senior-level jobs requiring bachelor’s degrees also required four to five years of relevant experience, with some asking for up to 11 years.

Some argue that the lack of truly 'entry-level' positions for graduates is due to cost-cutting within large corporations during the Great Recession, while others argue that employers simply expect more of 'multitasking' millennials — requiring students as young as 18 to have prior work experience before applying to internships. With an abundance of workers to choose from, employers are more demanding than ever before, slashing apprenticeship and management training programs — policies and programs that are institutionalized and incentivized in Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavian countries, each of which having low unemployment as a result — instead expecting prospective workers to be able to fill a specialized role right away and without any training time.

Problematically, job experience is rarely transitive, as job titles — and responsibilities — have become increasingly overtly specialized and hiring teams tend to neglect that skills amassed in one field (say tech for example) may very easily apply to skills needed in advertising, environment, media or even in health care. As students, we are faced with numerous ‘experiences’ that enrich and prepare us for the complexities of work and of life. Unfortunately, these experiences are rarely quantifiable. More unfortunately, they are rarely marketable either.