Why so many entry-level jobs aren’t entry-level

If Mihir Goyenka had as much experience working as he does applying to jobs, he might be nearing retirement.

Instead, the 23-year-old with undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science is hunting for his first tech job and running into a problem: Many of the roles he comes across require someone with two to three years of experience.

“That’s really frustrating for entry-level job seekers like me,” Goyenka told B-17.

He’s applied for thousands of positions since beginning his search for a full-time role in August 2023, he said. Many employers want experience with certain technologies, Goyenka said. Others just want some sort of professional know-how.

Either way, such requirements are making it harder for Goyenka, who lives in Bellevue, Washington, to start his career.

He’s not alone.

Many employers, particularly in industries like tech with a surplus of available workers, are demanding more of those who apply for starter corporate jobs, labor market experts told B-17.

Some are asking for more because they can. Even though overall US unemployment remains low, a good many people with experience are out of work.

In addition, some bosses have been slow to hire. At times this past summer, US employers brought on workers at the slowest rate — excluding the start of the pandemic — since 2013, when the economy was still climbing out of the Great Recession. In August, the rate of workers quitting their jobs slipped below 2% for the first time since June 2020.

“A lack of healthy turnover prevents workers from getting onto & moving up the career ladder,” Daniel Zhao, lead economist at Glassdoor, wrote on LinkedIn.

Goyenka, who graduated from Arizona State University in May, says he’s one of those would-be employees.

In the case of tech, it’s no surprise that companies would opt to hire those who have done well more than complete classwork, according to Mona Mourshed, founding CEO of Generation, a nonprofit network focused on economic mobility.

She told B-17 that the number of openings for entry-level tech roles has been declining for about three years in the US, Europe, and multiple emerging markets.

More experienced workers are sometimes willing to downshift to lesser roles if they’ve been laid off, Mourshed said. Some employers prefer it that way, she added — because they can get a bargain rate on someone who might have several years of experience.

Generation found in a survey that 94% of employers required that applicants for entry-level tech jobs have experience working in a related field. The sampling, completed in early 2023, involved employers in eight countries, including the US and the UK, hiring for technology positions across over a dozen industries.

“The entry-level job has vanished in many ways,” Mourshed said.

Managers don’t want to babysit

For its survey, Generation gathered data from some 1,300 employers from November 2022 to January 2023 on what they required regarding work experience and formal education.

Mourshed noted that during the pandemic — and after — people in fields like tech often worked from home. At the same time, many managers have reported feeling stressed out. That’s one reason, she said, why having workers who required less guidance was ideal for many bosses.

“They had very strong preferences to hire people who were more stand-alone, who they felt wouldn’t require as much oversight, because everyone is working remotely,” Mourshed said.

Some companies have also been holding onto fewer middle managers, she said.

“When you have an insufficient middle layer, then what you begin to do is to increase the requirements of the entry-level,” Mourshed said.

She also said that even as the pandemic eased its grip, many employers didn’t relax requirements for their starter tech hires.

“It never went back,” Mourshed said.

Beyond raising their standards for entry-level positions, some employers in various industries simply aren’t posting as many of these jobs.

For every 1 million listings on Indeed, the share of entry-level roles fell 6.9% between August 2022 and August 2024, a spokesperson told B-17In its analysis, Indeed categorized starter jobs as requiring no more than a year of experience or preferring no more than two years of experience.

Jason Henninger is a managing director at Heller Search, a recruiting firm focused on executive tech leaders. In a prior role, he spent more than 15 years filling staff-level tech jobs. Henninger said that, for years now, many employers have been ratcheting up what they expect from those seeking starter positions.

Employers that dangle remote work as an option have extra leverage, he said.

“Maybe you don’t have to take a shot on a fresh college grad or someone that has one year of experience because someone has five years’ experience and will be willing to take that same amount of pay because they can sit in their own home,” Henninger said.

Corey Moss-Pech is an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State University and author of the forthcoming book “Major Trade-Offs,” which examines the relationship between students’ majors and entry-level jobs. He told B-17that, in many industries, frontline clerical jobs, which long served as springboards to higher positions, have been hollowed out.

Moss-Pech also noted that with schools offering more degrees in areas like data science, there’s greater competition.

“Many more people now have the kinds of skills that the tech companies want,” Moss-Pech said.

It’s not all bad news

Jennifer Neef, director of the career center at the University of Illinois, told B-17 that she hasn’t seen a drop in interest from employers hoping to fill tech roles.

She said a recent event on the school’s flagship Urbana-Champaign campus for those seeking jobs in fields like science, tech, data analytics, and engineering drew more than 300 employers and some 8,700 students over two days.

About 1,500 software engineering positions — full-time roles and internships — are posted on a job board the school runs, Neef said. Nearly half of the postings have five or fewer applicants, and about 15% have no applicants.

Neef said one reason some students might feel stymied in their search for a first job is that many tend to focus on companies with strong consumer brands. Yet, she added, there is an enormous opportunity with small to midsize employers.

In a typical year, only about 100 employers would hire five or more graduating Illini, Neef said. Yet, some 2,500 smaller employers tend to hire fewer than five of the university’s grads.

“That’s always where the bulk of the jobs are,” she said, referring to small and midsize employers. In some cases, students aren’t aware of them because the employers are regional, Neef said.

“Students may not perceive them to be as prestigious, but they have opportunities,” she said.

Hunting for experience

After struggling with his job search after college, Rod Danan went on to become a career coach. Then, in 2021, he started a company called Prentus that uses artificial intelligence and other tools designed to help job seekers land roles faster.

Danan told B-17 that many of the students that he works with are struggling to find internships because many employers appear to be trimming the programs that could help train the next generation.

Numbers from Handshake, a job site for college students, show employers pulled back last summer. The number of available internships created on Handshake dropped 7.5% from May 2023 to May 2024, according to the company. Tech internships fell by 13.6%, while professional services slots slid by 15.8%, a spokesperson told B-17.

Danan hears about a dearth of internships from job seekers.

“People need the experience before they graduate, but those fancy internships that people were always getting — and were always available — are no longer there,” he said.

Neef, from the University of Illinois, recommends that those looking to kick-start their careers highlight relevant coursework, capstone projects, and part-time jobs.

“There are a lot of advantages that they can bring to the labor market with those kinds of experiences,” Neef said.

To add bullets to his résumé, Goyenka, the Arizona State grad, recently started volunteering as a web developer at a nonprofit.

Goyenka said the tight job market has pushed him to network and take part in events like hackathons. Ultimately, he said, it will come down to an employer taking a chance.

“If you don’t have juniors willing to learn, how do you get them into senior positions where they’re good senior engineers?” he said. “Everyone starts at a lower level at some point.”