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--- Horace Smith <hsmithtx -at- earthlink -dot- net> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> With regard to a recent thread, I find it difficult to believe that
> anyone would hire someone with no experience.
I suppose that depends on what counts as experience. Personally, I
would say that someone who has specific training in school--either
college or a good vocational/technical school--has no real-world
experience, even if they've been very well trained. But, if I have an
opening for someone junior, I would fill it with such a person. They're
not totally lacking in any experience of process, tools, and
techniques, but I don't consider them experienced as TWs; that's why I
would say they have no experience.
But everybody had "no experience" at some point in their careers. How
you gonna get any if no one will hire you to get some? I know that
we've had several posts over time that have discussed how you can get
some experience by doing volunteer work or other freebies that you can
share with a prospective employer in lieu of actual job experience, but
that's really a stop-gap. There is no substitute for experience.
Training can only take you so far. Same for 'interships'. As valuable
as those can be, they're not the same as real world experience.
So I guess you're right in that few people get hired with NO
qualifications, including even the pseudo-experience of the classroom,
but all of us needed that first real job to get that first real
experience. All of us got hired for that first job, otherwise we'd be
starving, like the "real writers" do. <g>
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