Help Wanted; Experience Required

I find the classifieds quite entertaining. It's the part of the newspaper I've always read first and studied hardest. The news stories are entirely too long and boring. The sports, with all its stats and funky rules and such just befuddle me. I don't play the stock market and I can't decipher the jargon in the legals. I get plenty of laughs out of life. So, I don't read the funnies. Deaths make me cry so I skip the obituaries.That just leaves me with the classifieds. Those, I get. They're short, sweet and to the point. and what a box of rocks they are! someone's always selling a car, wanting to buy some junk, looking for love, loosing a pet, or offering a job.

But there's a problem in the classifieds, and it can be found right underneath the heading "help wanted." Don't believe me? Ask a college graduate. Ask them why they don't have a job. Ask an "entry level" worker with a "High School Diploma or equivalent" why, not for want of trying or applying, no one calls him back.  Look a little past "help wanted," and you'll find the the reason why. Look for the phrase, "experience required."

I understand the job market is competitive, and I understand that employers want the very best employees working for them. I get that it's a bad economy and businesses need to minimize their risks, but sometimes, I think, employers fumble a bit in their search for the perfect new hire. I think, sometimes, employers get their expectations out of cahoots with reality.

 If a job is truly "Entry Level" and the only education requirement is a "High School Diploma or Equivalent," technically, a high school graduate should qualify. Right? So, why does the description require 1-2 years experience in the field?  If it takes 2 years to get an Associate's degree, 4 years for a Bachelor's, and 6 for a Masters, then why would an employer ask that applicants have as many years worth of work experience as they do of education?  

It doesn't make sense, and I hardly think it's fair. I don't care if an employer wants a certain amount of experience, but I do care about honesty and about being upfront. If a job really requires a master's degree then I wish they would say so. If it isn't truly "entry level" it shouldn't be advertised as such.  It almost seems sometimes that employers want to hire experience in lieu of training; how sad, how sad. Employee hunting this way makes everyone miss out. the job hunter misses yet another opportunity and the employer misses out on someone who, despite their lack of experience, may be the best thing that ever happened to them.

As John Stossel used to say "Gimmie A Break!"