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As millions of new graduates enter the job market this spring and summer, many may encounter a potentially frustrating paradox: They need experience to get hired, but they need a job or internship to gain that experience.This paradox is deepening in todays labor market. At Deloitte, we recently released a Global Human Capital Trends report that found that 66% of hiring managers say most recent hires are not fully prepared for their roles, most often due to a lack of experience. Meanwhile, research has shown that a majority of employers have increased experience requirements over the past three years, and many entry-level roles today often require two to five years of prior experience.This can present a virtually impossible situation for young talent. Foot-hold jobs, especially those traditional entry-level roles where workers could grow into an organization, are becoming increasingly hard to find. If organizations want to build sustainable talent pipelines and develop tomorrows leaders, they should rethink what it means to be ready for work and how they help people get there. The Disappearing Entry-Level Job For years, work has been trending towards greater complexity and specialization. It demands judgment, creativity, and adaptabilityenduring human capabilities that are hard to acquire without hands-on experience. AI and automation amplify the issue, consuming many of the routine, repeatable tasks that once formed the core of entry-level roles.Simultaneously, some organizations are flattening their structures to increase agility. But this can have unintended consequences, as they may potentially risk eliminating stepping-stone roles and informal mentorship channels that can help early-career workers grow.This erosion of early-career development doesnt just affect individuals. It could threaten future leadership pipelines and innovation capacity. Thats why organizations need to take action now to close the growing experience gap among tomorrows business leaders. Experience Readiness We need to challenge the assumption that experience or degrees automatically equate to job readiness. They often dont. Human capabilities like empathy, curiosity, and problem-solving are more predictive of success than a bullet point on a résumé. In the AI age, human capabilities are tested just as much as hard skills. Nurturing these capabilities is incredibly important for creating leaders with the resilience and problem-solving skills for any challenge. In 2025, modern workforce development modelslike what we have at Deloitteemphasize three factors: technical skills (such as coding or accounting), human capabilities (such as critical thinking and emotional intelligence), and potential (including adjacent skills or latent abilities that can be nurtured). Yet, hiring systems often filter out high-potential candidates who dont meet what can sometimes be arbitrary experience thresholds. That means career changers, first-generation graduates, or self-taught professionals often struggle to get noticed. Strategies to Close the Experience Gap Fixing the experience gap requires systemic change, from hiring criteria to day-to-day development.1. Adopt Skills-First Hiring and Whole-Person Models: Move beyond degree and tenure filters. Focus on demonstrated skills, motivation, and learning agility. This approach opens doors to candidates who may not follow traditional paths but are ready to grow.2. Invest in Internships and Modern Apprenticeships: Paid internships and apprenticeships offer the context-rich experience grads need to develop. Research from Burning Glass Institute and Strada Education Foundation shows these programs not only reduce underemployment but also improve long-term retention.Theres an unmet demand for these programs, too, as Deloittes Workplace Skills Survey revealed that 57% of employees want more on-the-job observation and shadowing opportunities. Moreover, 61% of workers value mentorship programs as an effective way to build workplace relationships, emphasizing the importance of fostering connections alongside structured development initiatives. 3. Use AI to Accelerate, Not Replace, Early Career Development: AI can simulate on-the-job experience in safe, low-risk environments. Digital playgrounds allow early-career employees to test their decision-making and receive feedback. AI tools can: Prompt reflection with critical questions Synthesize knowledge from experienced colleagues Help users practice judgment via realistic scenarios, including answering client questions during mock presentations When used intentionally, AI becomes an acceleratornot a displacerof new talent development.4. Create Micro-Opportunities for Experiential Learning: Organizations should make it easier for employees to gain experience through short-term projects. Talent marketplaces, internal gig platforms, and simulations allow early-career employees to try new challenges and build confidence incrementally.5. Empower Managers to Develop Talent: Managers still control hiring filters, but theyre often overwhelmed. Deloittes 2025 Human Capital Trends Report shows managers spend just 13% of their time on tasks like hiring and onboarding. And 36% say they arent well prepared to manage people.That has to change. Managers need training and bandwidth to mentor early-career employees. With around 40% of their time dedicated to administrative work or problem-solving, most managers simply lack the time to be the mentors most junior staff need. Formal mentorship, real-time feedback, and inclusive leadership practices help new hires grow and turn potential into performance. From Experience Gaps to Opportunity Gateways The potential risks of inaction are clear: persistent underemployment, shrinking leadership pipelines, and a projected global shortfall of 85 million skilled workers by 2030. These arent future concerns; theyre already weakening competitiveness today.Gen Z, however, is ready. Deloittes 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey shows nearly a third plan to leave their employers within two years, not from disloyalty, but in pursuit of growth, stability, and purpose. Theyre reskilling on their own and eager to contribute. Its time to redefine readinessnot as tenure or credentialsbut as the potentialand agility that comes from well-honed human capabilities. Its time to treat AI and access to apprenticeships as launchpads for early career professionals, not barriers to their ability to gain the experience they need. And its time to equip managers to be talent builders, not just task owners.The class of 2025 doesnt lack talent, but they do often lack access. Its time for organizations to stop asking Wheres the experience? and start creating it.
Category:
E-Commerce
After months of rigorous searching, youve found your ideal executive candidate. They tick every box on paper and seem perfect in interviews. But then reality hits: Your Cinderella candidate isnt prepared for the real-world challenges of the role. Now what? A popular study highlights just how commonand costlythis scenario is. A 2015 research report from Corporate Executive Board found that 50% to 70% of leadership hires fail within 18 months. And that can cost the company one-half to twice the hires annual salary, according to a 2019 Gallup report. Given the high levels of remuneration, the financial impact can be even more severe at the executive level. As someone who has navigated countless executive searches, Ive seen how easy it is to fall into the trap of searching for a Cinderella candidatesomeone who appears to match a meticulously defined set of qualifications perfectly. And even if the ideal candidate does exist, they may not be interested in your opportunity or ready for a career move. Compounding these challenges, you have noncompete agreements that further shrink the available talent pool. Setting the ideal candidate bar high can help, but an overly rigid vision often results in a long, drawn-out search with diminishing returns. When we accept that perfection on paper rarely translates into perfection in practice, we create opportunities to find strong candidates who bring real, tangible strengths to the table, even if they dont check every box. To find the right hire and mitigate leadership turnover, we must rethink how we define, evaluate, and select leadership candidates. The following insights will help broaden your approach: 1. The right leader is a catalyst, not a title Rather than locking into overly specific C-suite qualifications, consider the characteristics of transformational leaders that your team genuinely needs. While technical skills matter, you should emphasize broader competencies like adaptability, decision-making in ambiguity, and the ability to motivate diverse teams. These qualities often predict long-term success better than niche expertise. Consider leaders with transferable skills. They can bring fresh insights and a broader understanding of how to drive success in evolving environments. To implement this shift in your recruitment strategy, broaden your search criteria. Identify three competencies that you need to navigate the companys evolving needs, and build the ideal candidate profile around them. Instead of seeking candidates with narrow expertise, look for ones who have thrived in roles requiring agility, like leading R&D initiatives or driving organizational change amid disruption. This approach allows you to attract versatile leaders who are ready to innovate and guide your organization through periods of uncertainty and change. 2. Culture isnt one size fits all To achieve a balance in hiring for cultural fit versus hiring for skills, employ structured assessments that translate fit into measurable attributes. Tools like DISC profiles or situational interviews provide concrete data on qualities such as empathy, resilience, and adaptability, allowing hiring teams to evaluate whether candidates align with company culture in objective terms. This avoids the common pitfalls of hiring based on intuition alone and helps avoid overreliance on subjective notions of the perfect candidate. For senior leadership roles like COOs, scenario-based interviews should focus on how candidates have successfully navigated complex challenges related to people, processes, and change management. Ask how theyve implemented large-scale organizational changes or optimized operations to drive efficiency. These structured assessments reveal a candidates approach to strategic problem-solving and their leadership style. In turn, this ensures they can align with the companys vision and foster a high-performing culture. 3. Cross-functional input is key When creating an ideal candidate profile for a role that requires strong cross-departmental collaboration, include perspectives from various departments in the hiring process, such as finance, HR, operations, and product development. By aligning on core characteristics of leaders who inspire and unify, hiring managers gain a comprehensive view of each candidates potential impact across teams. For instance, used vehicle retailer CarMax involves leaders from product management, engineering, and customer experience to evaluate candidates for roles within its technology and innovation teams. Each team member provides insights into collaborative skills that they need for meeting customer needs and delivering fast solutions across functions. Utilizing these teams in the hiring process helps ensure that selected leaders can build relationships, bridge departmental divides, and facilitate cohesive, organization-wide success. 4. The perfect candidate is a myth The perfect candidate is a myth that often leads hiring managers to overlook leaders with qualities like resilience and learning agility. In executive hiring, finding the right cultural fit often outweighs industry expertise alone. Sure, technical knowledge is essential, and you can use that for a candidate in the room. But ultimately, you should make sure that the candidate aligns with the companys values, vision, and culture. Leaders who seamlessly align with the companys culture tend to engage teams more effectively, navigate challenges agilely, and drive change in ways that feel authentic to the organization. A high-performing C-suite hinges less on perfect matches than on leaders who can innovate within an evolving landscape. Hiring for sustainable success requires shifting from rigid, idealized profiles to assessing candidates for resilience, adaptability, and alignment with the core values of the organization.
Category:
E-Commerce
The last two years have been one of the toughest job markets Ive seen in decades. This isnt like 2020 or 2021, where after the initial phase of the pandemic receded, jobs quickly reappeared. This one has been slow and unrelentingmarket volatility causing uncertainty, and digital transformation of workplaces, and AI taking over jobs faster than you can read the headlines. These days, it feels like youre sending your resume into the abyss. Sound familiar? I see it every day as a recruiter and career coach: talented job-seekers submitting application after application into what feels like a black hole. Weeks turn into months. The silence is deafening. Each passing day without a response chips away at your confidence, your bank account, and your sense of professional identity. Luckily, through my work, Ive also developed tried-and-true strategies for standing out no matter the market conditions. Here are three powerful steps to reinvigorate your job search. 1. Reclaim Your Value Whether youve just gotten laid off or have already been job searching for months, your self-esteem probably isnt the strongest. You may be feeling bitter, angry, and doubtful of your professional value. Being in that kind of mindset while trying to find a job wont allow you to show up as your best self. For example, I recently worked with a very successful leader who had steered a company over the last several years with enormous success, each year hitting higher and higher revenue targets and winning some of the most sought-after projects in the industry. As the economy shifted, those revenues took a hitand he was let go because of a spreadsheet decision. He was blindsided and stepped into his job search doubting himself. When working with job seekers who are struggling, we always start with a simple but powerful exercise: documenting significant achievements from their career. Not just responsibilitiesactual metrics and results, problems solved, value delivered. I’ll ask people to think about things they’ve done that they’re really proud of. I make them dig deep to detail what they do really well, what gets them fired up, and ask them how their colleagues and clients would describe working with them. As they reconnect with their expertise, things they havent thought of for a while, I see their faces light up and confidence starting to return. You can do this with a career coach, your partner, a best friend, even a colleague who knows you welljust ask them to take notes about what youre telling them to read back to you at the end. Working through these questions with my executive client helped remind him of the successes he was responsible for and the resilience he showed in a tough market. Those reminders allowed him to work through his disappointment, prepare for how he’d talk about the challenges when asked, and enter his job search with renewed confidence in what he had to offer. This isnt just about feeling better; its about how you show up. When you remember your professional value, you communicate with clarity and conviction. Your entire energy changes, and people take notice. 2. Stop Trying to Be Everything to Everyone When desperation sets in, the instinct is to cast a bigger net. The thinking is, by applying to more jobs, youll have better odds of landing something. This approach feels logical, but produces the opposite of what you hope for. Sure, youll be busy applying to things, but because youre not the expert, you likely wont get responses, so all that busy work will lead to frustration and burnout. I recently worked with a client who was going on two years of being out of work. The longer his job search went on, the more he began applying to a broader set of roles, thinking it would increase his chances of landing something. Heres the counterintuitive truth: The more you narrow your focus and lean into your specific expertise, the more responses youll receive. When I tell people this, their initial response is anxiety; they dont want to limit their options. But when you stop trying to appeal to everyone and boldly claim your niche, everything changes. Applications that once disappeared suddenly generate responses. Interviews that went nowhere convert to eager follow-ups. When youre interviewing for a role where you are the expert, thats the interview youre going to ace. When I work with clients to understand how theyre speaking about themselves, we dig deep into what truly distinguishes them. We return to some of those questions from above that uncover their unique approach and what motivates and energizes them. Then we look at the roles theyre applying to and narrow their focus to roles and companies where their specific and unique expertise is sought after. We look at their job application materials and see if theyre making statements that many others could equally say and ensure that we get quite specific. When I read their new narrative back to them, all of it in their own words, many remark that they got chillstheyre finally hearing their professional value articulated in a way that feels authentically powerful and totally unique. When I reminded my client of his incredibly niche expertiseskills that very few people possessand focused all his job-seeking efforts on companies who could benefit from him, things immediately began to shift. Within one day, he landed an interview. Two days later, he was meeting the leadership team. Companies want to hire the expert. Show them that its you. 3. Show That You’re The Solution Theyre Looking For The interview is your last chance to not just show why youre great, but show why youre exactly the solution an employer has been looking for. Ive seen so many clients underperform in interviews because theyre not giving themselves enough credit. But a few simple shifts can transform that: Think offense, not defense. The minute you start justifying why youre right for the role, youve already lost it. Interviewers can feel defensiveness. Own the narrative before that happens by confidently articulating how your experience directly addresses the role’s most critical requirements before doubts can surface. Use high-impact storytelling. Give specific examples demonstrating how your experience solves exactly what they need. When you paint these pictures vividly, you allow the interviewer to truly see how effective you will be on day-one. Rehearse your stories before your interview so they are memorable. Embrace transparent confidence. Nothing undermines trust faster than pretending to know everything. When you confidently acknowledge what you know and dont know, you establish genuine credibility. If they really like you and you satisfy most requirements, chances are they can evolve the role around you and fill in the gaps. Take your time. Less is often more. Really listen to what they are asking you, pause, and take a moment to reflect so you can give a considered response. If it’s a really tough question, you can even tell the interviewer you’d like a moment to think through your response. It buys you a few seconds to really compose a well-thought out answer and it never fails to impress an interviewer. Thy’ll remember the great answers and they often remark how much they enjoyed how reflective you were in wanting to answer it well. Simple Job Application Changes, Profound Results The strategies Ive shared may seem straightforward, or even obvious. But when implemented with consistency and conviction, they transform job searches from no traction to multiple interviews and competing job offers. These strategies work not because theyre complicated, but because they align with a fundamental truth: Employers arent looking for generic candidates; theyre looking for the expert to solve their problem, now. When you reconnect with your expertise, focus your efforts, and communicate your value with clarity and confidence, you become that solution. You transform from just another resume in the pile to exactly what theyve been searching for.
Category:
E-Commerce
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