Episode 108
The truth about years of experience in your job search
11 min listen
Episode 77
11 min listen
Listen to the Episode
Episode Summary
Struggling with how to tackle the truth about years of experience in your job search? Wondering what to do if you think you don’t have enough years of experience or too much experience? This episode dives into shifting your focus from the number of years to the relevance of your experience when applying for jobs. You’ll learn valuable strategies for analyzing job descriptions in detail, allowing them to highlight their most relevant skills and experiences.
Discover practical tips for tailoring resumes and portfolios to catch a hiring manager’s eye by emphasizing specific examples that match job requirements. The episode also addresses the challenge of being perceived as overqualified and offers insights on presenting oneself effectively regardless of extensive experience.
Meaningful stories, including a standout example of a candidate with just one year of experience landing a job over more seasoned applicants, provide real-world context. If you’re navigating a job search and wondering how to make your experience count, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help refine your approach and improve your chances of landing interviews.
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Discussion Questions About The Episode
- How do you currently approach job descriptions, and what changes might you make after hearing Sarah's perspective?
- Have you ever felt that your years of experience, whether too few or too many, have impacted your job search negatively? How did you navigate this challenge, and what strategies from the episode might you adopt moving forward?
- What techniques or tools do you think would help you in identifying and highlighting the most relevant experiences and skills on your resume or portfolio?
- Can you recall a time when you customized your application materials for a job? What was the outcome, and how might you improve this process in the future?
- How do you think you can better articulate your own experiences and skills in your job applications to make a stronger impression?
Episode Notes & Links
Episode Transcript
Sarah Doody [00:00:02]: Hey, friend. Today’s episode is all about how to deal with your years of experience in your job search. And specifically, I wanna focus on 2 topics. And the first is about should you apply for a job based on your years of experience? And the Sarah topic I wanna cover is how do you deal with this challenge of potentially being seen as overqualified as a result of your years of experience. So if you have been working for a while and feel like this might be a challenge for you, then you definitely want to save this episode or keep listening. Alright. So when it comes to your job search and applying to jobs, the 1 thing I want you to take away from this episode is that it’s not about your years of experience. It is about how relevant your experience is.
Sarah Doody [00:01:09]: This is super important because so many people at all stages of their careers, like, whether you are seeking your first job and you’re frustrated because many job descriptions say 3 to 5 years experience, but chicken and egg situation, how do I get experience if no 1 will hire me? So what do I do if I have 0 or 1 years of experience? On the other side of things, if you have 20 years of experience, you might be worried about applying to jobs because you’re worried they will think you seem overqualified or that your salary expectations are going to be much higher than what they have budgeted. But this idea and mindset shift of forgetting about the years of experience and focusing on how relevant your experience is, is really, really important. So let’s think about an example. Let’s say you are applying for a job. You’re looking for a job to apply to, actually. So you’re looking for a job. You come across a job description. The first change I want you to start making is not deciding whether or not you’re going to apply based on the years of experience.
Sarah Doody [00:02:29]: So let’s just get that out of the way. What I really want you to do is look through the job description, and I I really say study it, and I mean that. I mean to read it 2 or 3 times. And don’t just skim it, actually read it. It might even be worth taking a highlighter, whether that’s in your, on your computer or literally printing it out. But as you’re reading it, you want to be looking for things that are mentioned in the job description that you have done in the past and that you have examples or stories that you could include to demonstrate that. And that is really important. So read and study the job description and look for things that they’ve mentioned that you have done and that you have stories to back up the fact that you’ve actually done those things.
Sarah Doody [00:03:29]: And then once you are finished this exercise, you know, if you only have 2 things highlighted in the entire job description, perhaps you’re not really qualified even though maybe you meet the years of experience. On the other side, if you’ve highlighted almost the entire job description because nearly every single thing that’s mentioned is something that you’ve done and you have a story or example that you could talk about in an interview, then more than likely, you are an excellent, excellent fit for that role. And that’s what you wanna do before you decide if you’re going to apply. Now, after you’ve done that exercise, if you’re going to apply for the job, here is the thing that you absolutely cannot skip. In order for people to see that you are qualified for that job, you need to tailor or adjust your resume or portfolio, if you have 1, so that the stories that you have about things you’ve worked on in the past, those stories need to be standing out with a spotlight on them instantly. You do not want recruiters and hiring managers to have to hunt and connect the dots on their own to realize you are a great candidate. Why? Because they are super busy. They’re spending seconds initially on your resume and LinkedIn.
Sarah Doody [00:05:11]: However, if as they’re quickly doing that first glance through your resume, LinkedIn portfolio, we catch their attention, then they’re gonna spend more time on it. So how can we as related to the resume and portfolio because we can’t customize our LinkedIn. But for the resume and portfolio, customizing or tailoring those career materials might mean removing some bullet points that don’t relate to the job description. It could be reordering bullet points on your resume or the order of projects in your portfolio so that the bullets that relate most to what is mentioned in the job description are higher up in the list of bullets. You might be rewording bullet points or headlines or phrases in your portfolio so that you are using very similar, if not exact language from the job description so that they are more likely to identify you as someone that has that exact experience that they’re looking for, because that’s really what what people are doing. They are looking through all the candidates and trying to find the ones that best meet the job description. So if you take the time to, number 1, study that job description, and then number 2, tweak and tailor and reorganize and potentially rewrite some of the information on your resume and portfolio. You are going to then be giving them these stories and examples of how you have done things that they’re looking for on the job description in your past roles.
Sarah Doody [00:07:06]: That is super, super, super important. 1 of the most important things you can do and 1 of the most overlooked things that candidates do. Now 1 of the things to remember is that in that, studying step of the job description, As I said, you have to use your own judgment. I can’t just tell you, like, if you meet x percent of the things on the job description. It’s a little subjective here. So that’s why I say, like, mindfully, highlight the job description so you can literally see, wow. I need, like, half the things on here or 3 quarters of the things on here. But if you only have stories for 1 thing on the job description, your 20 years of experience isn’t gonna matter.
Sarah Doody [00:07:55]: Right? So that is the mindset shift I want you to make. Stop focusing on years of experience and start focusing on how relevant your experience is. And I wanna leave you with a little story of this playing out in real life. I was on LinkedIn a couple of years ago, and I saw a post by a hiring manager who said they were hiring for, a role that in the job description, I think it had said probably 3 to 5 years of experience. But they said someone applied with I think it was 1 year of experience, essentially their first professional job, let’s say. And they said that person stood out from other people who had significantly more years of experience because that person with 1 year of experience did an excellent job at articulating examples of the skills that they were looking for in the job description. And they were articulating those things on their resume, in their portfolio, etcetera. And despite having less years of experience than other candidates, the hiring manager said that candidate with less we gotta fix that.
Sarah Doody [00:09:18]: That candidate with fewer years of experience stood out because they had examples and stories, and they did a good job at articulating those. So I wanna leave you with that. When you take the time to be intentional about the content, the information on your resume, on your LinkedIn, on your portfolio, etcetera, people will notice. Because having done hiring in the past myself, a lot of people skip this step. And that’s why I often say the bar to stand out is actually quite low as a candidate. And if you just do these things, you are more likely to stand out. Alright. I hope that gives you something new to think about concerning job descriptions and how to decide if you are going to apply for a job or not because chances are many of you are applying to a lot of jobs that if you’re honest with yourself, if you really studied the job description, you might find you probably weren’t qualified for to begin with.
Sarah Doody [00:10:32]: And maybe that’s why you’re not getting interviews. So I challenge you to use this approach, study the job description, highlight the things mentioned that you have exact stories for, tailor your materials, and let me know what happens. Alright. That is all for today. Hope you have a great rest of your day, and I will see you in another episode.