Job Experience and Training

A quick survey of any corporate job board will establish that the vast majority of available positions require several years of experience for the candidate to be considered for the job. While there is the age-old conundrum of how exactly one is supposed to get experience if all the available jobs already require experience, my own view is that this trend is a sign of the negative state of the American economy.

In simpler and more prosperous times, companies could afford to pay for their employees' training. However, it is cheaper for a company to hold out for someone who already has the requisite skills for the job in question than to spend money to train someone on the job due to training's status as non-productive (i.e., non-revenue-producing) payroll hours.

But in today's questionable economy, such on-the-job training is as passé as employee pension plans. The net result is that today's job-seeker has an increased personal responsibility to provide his or her own training and to acquire the skills needed to fill whatever narrow niche the desired job satisfies in the overall corporate jigsaw puzzle.

Do you have any experience with this experience trend in the corporate world? Please share your experiences (no pun intended) and thoughts in the comments section.