Recruiting: Fresh Graduates vs. Seasoned Candidates

You are out of college. You may have little to no work experience in your field. What would make employers hire you instead of a seasoned applicant? And vice-versa.

I remember when I was still at college, trying to find my first job in the field.  I had lots of difficulties getting at least a phone interview. In fact, I had my resume posted in tens of sites but my phone hardly ever rang.

The other difficulty I used to encounter, was that for every job I was interested in, I needed to have at least a year of experience. My question back in those days was “how am I supposed to start my professional career if no one would take someone without any work experience?”. It was paradoxical. In order to -literally- start working in my field I needed to have previous experience.

Companies have two radical approaches to this situation:

• They look for experienced workers to avoid spending time and resources training the new hire

or

• They look for fresh graduates to mold them to the company’s liking

By hiring experienced workers, not only companies save time training the candidate but also enables the candidate to jump right into his duties. The decision to hire seasoned staff will usually depend on the type of job -i.e: hierarchical, urgent need to cover a position-, organizational culture and familiarity of the candidate with the industry. An Services company may not hire an experienced worker who’s coming from the Manufacturing or Non-For-Profit  industry.

By taking fresh graduates and inexperienced workers, the company will have to invest time and resources into training the person. The advantage is that the candidate, once trained, will have the company’s culture and way of doing business sewn to his self. In other words, the person won’t be contaminated by other companies’ cultures and skills (which may be detrimental to performance on the job).

Whether you just finished college and looking for a job or you have lots of experience but are still having difficulties finding a job,  the most important thing you need to know is where to look. Try to learn as much about the prospective company as possible before applying to avoid wasting your ammo. Targeting your search is paramount.

Since I have specialized in two different areas of my field I started with diverse approaches.

Internships are an excellent way to acquire experience while -possibly- making a few bucks. This is how you build up experience to jump into jobs that require previous experience. Money is not important here -unless you have urging reasons-. Your focus should be on Experience, NOT Money. If you need the money, some internships can offer enough flexibility to have a part-time job aside from it. To learn more about why internships are important for your career, take a look at this 7 reasons.

If your University has Job Placement Offices or organizes Job Fairs then tap into this resources to find jobs where no previous experience is needed. Universities are usually the places where big corporations look for talented individuals. They are not looking for experience, they look for raw diamonds they can facet to their needs.

Last by not least, start early. Don’t wait until you graduate to start looking for a job. Starting your career early will give you an edge against competing candidates and will buy you time to gain experience for when the time comes. It will also alleviate the pressure of transitioning from student to unemployed professional. Moreover, it also sends a strong message to employers: “wild partying and college craze is in your past, you are serious now” (or at least that’s the message that it’s conveyed .

Image credit, PSK & Associates

Article by Fernando

This is my blog - I write about careers, talent management and organizational development. I've been featured at Monster.com, Alltop, WeBlogBetter and BloggingPro among others. I hope you leave this blog with more than you arrived and I look forward to discussing your ideas and projects with you. See you in the comments section.

Fernando has written 230 awesome articles for us at Fernando Tarnogol – Careers Blog

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