How to Get Work Experience If You Have Never Worked

One of the oldest paradoxes in the working world is how to get experience working if you have never worked.  The frustrating part, particularly for young people entering the workforce for the first time is how to get experience working when you have never worked BUT needing to work to get that valuable work experience!

It is the chicken and egg paradox gone wild.  Which comes first: working to get work experience or having work experience to get a job.

The answer is to have work experience.  And not just work experience, but relevant work experience. 

So, if you have never worked before, how do you get the experience employers want?  The most obvious way is to get “starter” jobs that do not require experience.  Things like working in retail stores or fast-food restaurants where employees are not expected to have any work experience and are trained on the job. 

But, if you don’t want to take one of these jobs that often pay poorly and have challenging hours, what can you do?  We have talked before about transferable skills and learning on the job.  Couple these two ideas with some important information on your resume and you can jump ahead of many others in the workforce, even if you do not have work experience.

The secret is to take whatever life experiences you have, demonstrate how they are relevant to the job you are seeking (in other words, how they are transferable skills) and show that you have skills in learning on the job to fill in any gaps you have in your skills.

How do you do this?  Let’s take a young student who has never worked.  The most basic things can be seen as skills if you state them properly.  A student could state that he or she is a loyal son or daughter, a hard worker in school and reliable at doing chores around the house like taking out the trash or cutting the grass.  These might seem to be logical and unnecessary to state to an employer, but there are two things to consider.  Firstly, an employer may have little or no expectations of a teenager, so any experience may very well be viewed positively.  Secondly, the skills involved in being a good student or at taking out the trash are so seemingly basic that many people would not bother to list them at all and so if they are listed on a resume, that may differentiate a candidate enough make them successful in getting the job.

There are a variety of other skills that could be used such as:  sports played, babysitting, clubs, volunteering, church groups and charity work.

Even if you have never been paid for any of these things, there are a variety of skills you learn from them that could be used as experience. 

For example:

Sports:  Learned leadership as the captain of my soccer team.

OR

Learned teamwork and delegation skills playing for my school baseball team.

Babysitting: Learned responsibility and negotiation taking care of two children under 5 years old.

Clubs:  Learned planning and strategy playing in the chess club.

                OR

                Learned critical analytical and organizational skills on the debate team.

There are numerous examples, but the point is to take whatever life experiences a candidate has and to relate them to the position being applied for.  It is irrelevant whether the experience was received from being paid, volunteering or a club.  If a candidate can demonstrate that they have experience that can be used to make them better at the job in question, then that is a positive point in their favor that can certainly help them get the job.

In doing this, a person who has never worked can be on the same level as a person with work experience and have a very good chance at getting a job.