Why every JD requires 2 years of work experience?
I’ve ranted about it as much as you have. Over and over again, I’ve wondered why every company prefers candidates with previous work experience. Wondered why your skills and only your skills aren’t good enough to get you in. Every rejection would only fuel my distaste against this biased culture.
Until one day…
I was reluctant but mom forced me to go along. And I am glad she did. Because it was at this family function that I met Wise Uncle. Since Wise Uncle was from the IT industry, we had a lot to talk about. He held a senior position at his company and having spent most of his life in the industry, knew a lot about it. At one point in the conversation I posed this question. And his answer changed my beliefs.
“Dipam, I can understand your feelings, your angst. You’ve been working as a software developer for 3 months now, even though you don’t really enjoy doing it. However, you’ve learnt some valuable things, things that are going to be the same in every company you work at.
You now know how different the software development life cycle is from what we do at college. And spending time in a company only teaches you how to do it well. You learn how the process works, how to raise pull requests, how to communicate your thoughts and ideas clearly. You learn how to work well as part of a team, what your role is at different stages of the life cycle, and the most common tools used in the industry. And it is these experiences that make a candidate with previous work experience more valuable than the others.
As far as the skills are concerned, of course they are essential, but we anyway give training inside our company for those skills. Hence, we prefer people who know about the software development life cycle, because that makes our lives much more easier. You might not like your work right now. However, your experiences will matter a lot in the future.”
I’ve never thought about interviews in the same way again.
If you have any thoughts on it, let me know in the comments section below.
~happy learning.
