Someone has to be first
I find the phrase entry level strangely revealing. It promises an entrance, then the conversation often turns to the evidence that someone has already been inside. I am not claiming that every junior job requires years of experience. I am asking who is supposed to create experience when each individual employer would prefer that another employer had done it first.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics separates education, related work experience, and training on the job when describing occupations. That distinction is useful. A person can arrive with preparation and still need training. Needing training does not prove that the preparation was worthless. It proves that a workplace contains knowledge specific to the work.
Training has a cost
I understand the employer’s difficulty. A new colleague requires time from people who already have responsibilities. Mistakes can create real costs. A small organization may have little room to absorb them. Saying that employers should train people does not make those constraints imaginary.
But avoiding a cost is not the same as eliminating it. If nobody wants to provide the first serious opportunity, the cost moves onto applicants, schools, families, and unpaid time. People with more financial room can keep collecting signals. People without it may need to take whichever work pays now. The resulting difference in a résumé can be mistaken for a pure difference in ability.
This is why I dislike hiring processes that demand elaborate evidence without asking how the evidence could reasonably have been produced. A personal project can demonstrate curiosity. It does not tell the entire story of someone’s potential, and its polish may partly reflect the hours they could afford to spend outside other obligations.
Build a smaller doorway
My preference is for a more explicit bargain. Define the tasks a junior person should be able to learn. Give them bounded responsibility, a named reviewer, and time to improve. Assess the relevant skill with a proportionate exercise or existing work. Pay for substantial trial work. Make the standard clear enough that a candidate can understand what the organization is actually asking for.
This is not charity. It is an investment with uncertain returns, like many other investments businesses already make. Some people will leave. Some will grow into colleagues the organization could not have hired fully formed. Treating every departure as proof that training was a mistake would make development impossible anywhere.
A labour market cannot keep consuming experience that nobody is willing to produce. The entrance has to exist somewhere. I would rather see employers compete over how well they help people become useful than only over how cheaply they can purchase evidence that someone else already did.