This sum­mer I ran into a prob­lem that many peo­ple have been strug­gling with more and more.

Employers aren’t accept­ing peo­ple off the street like many appli­cants hope. Employers requir­ing expe­ri­ence for jobs expect the can­di­date to have expe­ri­ence for the job before being hired. It’s a Catch-22; with­out expe­ri­ence you can’t get a job, and you can’t get expe­ri­ence with­out a job. So how does a per­son get expe­ri­ence for a job if the employ­ers will not hire any­one in the first place?

A con­cern that should be on every col­lege student’s mind that hopes to have job secu­rity when they grad­u­ate. As of right now, more than two mil­lion col­lege grad­u­ates are unem­ployed and 18.8 per­cent of peo­ple younger than 25 do not have a job.

To me, get­ting a job today requires more luck than actual qual­i­fi­ca­tions. For the employ­ment I applied for this sum­mer I either had expe­ri­ence in the field or the job wasn’t requir­ing expe­ri­ence. I applied to 15 places with­out any pos­i­tive response, often call­ing back, and even­tu­ally mak­ing a nui­sance of myself. Employers often choose peo­ple that are known by cur­rent employees.

This may be a good busi­ness tac­tic, but gives those who are not known by work­ers no chance at all to gain the oppor­tu­nity to obtain any expe­ri­ence. Who you know is a key when search­ing for a job. Facebook has never been more help­ful when try­ing to get a job. I had at least 10 friends who were work­ing at a place that needed to hire people.

Getting a job with­out prior expe­ri­ence requires a lot of patience and some cre­ativ­ity. Compiling a resume of all your expe­ri­ence and achieve­ments may sound cliché and old school, but it shows you are seri­ous about the job. Still there’s a lot more to the search than just hop­ing for a call back after fill­ing out an appli­ca­tion. Be per­sis­tent, why wait for the employer to call back. Inquire about the job posi­tion, if your appli­ca­tion had been reviewed, and ask why you were not hired. That is a good way to get insight.

If this does not work, ask your friends, class­mates that you are close with, or some­one you know that you would not mind work­ing with if they know of any open­ings at their job. If that does not work, you can always try sell­ing your­self to an employer, which be humil­i­at­ing, but the worst answer a poten­tial employer can give is a no.

Perfect tim­ing and a lit­tle luck may land you a new job. Optimism, a lit­tle per­sis­tence and a high self-esteem are key when search­ing for employ­ment in today’s mar­ket. After all, I man­aged find a job for the sum­mer. n