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For young people trying to break into work, the biggest contradiction of all is being told you need experience to get a job, while being denied the very opportunities that would let you build it.
I don’t suppose it’s much consolation, but this isn’t a new problem. One of the earliest references I can find is the 1978 book Want a job? Get some experience. Want experience? Get a job by Don Berliner. So if this feels like a frustratingly modern contradiction, it isn’t. Young people have been stuck in this loop for decades.
Part of the problem is how narrowly we tend to define experience. The question is not always ‘how do I magically get experience?’ but ‘how do I recognise and present the experience I already have?’ That shift matters, because waiting for someone to hand you the perfect first role isn’t a strategy. Learning how to spot value in what you’ve already done and articulate that is far more useful.
So, what can you do about it? There’s no silver bullet, but there are ways to make yourself a stronger candidate.
when you graduate from college and realize that you need 20 years of experience to get a job pic.twitter.com/3v2Jpuma5j https://t.co/V1G9FtCKSa
— kira 👾 (@kirawontmiss) April 3, 2026
Start by building whatever experience you can. Internships, part-time jobs, freelance work, volunteering, student leadership roles, and project work all count. Obviously, the closer these experiences are to the work you want to do, the better, but all experience has value if you can explain what it taught you.
That also means taking transferable skills seriously. You develop them in more places than you think: at school, university, or college; through sport, hobbies, societies, volunteering, caring responsibilities, or casual work. Teamwork, organisation, communication, initiative, problem-solving – these are often the things employers are really trying to measure, even if they describe them in the language of paid work experience.
