Finding a Job Without Prior Work Experience
How Job Seekers Can Go from Inexperienced to Employed
Aug 21, 2009
No matter what reason job seekers have for looking for an employment opportunity – lay off, changing career directions, recent high school or college grad – a lack of on-the-job work experience should not be a limitation. Instead, job seekers without prior work experience in the field of their choice need to rethink how they approach the application process.
Landing a Job Without Prior Work Experience
According to writer Larry Stybel at Harvard Business Review, getting a job without the proper work experience can wind up being a Catch-22. Knowing this, he decided that after years as a clinical psychologist in community mental health, he wanted to become a business consultant; however, business leaders did not see a connection between his current career and the business world.
After meeting a business owner who wanted to market a new product, Stybel made the gutsy move of offering his services two days a week for two months to telemarket the product, not in exchange for money, but in exchange for the title Business Development Associate along with introductions to some of the business owner’s associates.
The move paid off. The introductions and new title on his resume resulted in Stybel landing a position with a talent management-consulting firm.
What Job Seekers Can Do to Market Themselves
Not everyone looking for a new employment opportunity will have a college degree and work experience as a psychologist. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t have some skill, knowledge, or experience they have to offer a business owner in need of assistance.
To market a seemingly unrelated background doesn’t take guts, it takes creativity and the willingness to look at what the individual brings to the table. It may also mean doing what Stybel did, thereby gaining some additional work experience to perfect a resume.
To do this job seekers should begin by taking an honest look at their best qualities, areas of knowledge and personal experiences that provide them with talents they can market. They should consider how they might express this information on a resume as well as in the job interview. And where there are gaps or areas that require fine tuning, like Stybel, they should be willing to go out and gain additional experience.
Consider the freelance writer. Most people who write for a living do so based on their areas of expertise and knowledge gathered over a lifetime. However, while not every writer knows something about every topic, all writers can obtain further knowledge and experience either through online research, reading books and periodicals, interviewing experts, taking a class, volunteering their time or even going out and participating in an activity related to the topic they want to write about. And those who are not sure what they need to do to break into a specific career or industry may want to look into informational interviewing.
The whole idea is that job seekers should never be satisfied to sit back and be told they don’t have the requisite knowledge or experience. There are too many avenues available today to not take advantage of learning. And many, like the option Stybel chose, cost no more than a commitment of time and energy.
For job seekers who are currently spending their days looking for a new employment opportunity, it’s time to consider how some of that time might be redirected to enhancing business knowledge and work experience. Then they will be able to find that new job without necessarily having years of prior work experience.
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