Experience increasingly no longer a requirement

Employers are less and less likely to ask potential employees for any kind of work experience in job postings. That's according to a data analysis by Indeed.

The number of jobs that explicitly state that no experience is required has increased by nearly 40 percent in a year. The number of job openings for people looking to retrain or lateral entry has also exploded in the past year.

Compared to a year ago, there are now 38 percent more vacancies in which employers have indicated that relevant work experience is not necessarily a requirement. And that is an interesting development according to Arjan Vissers, responsible for strategy at Indeed: "We see in our data that employers are trying out new ways to get good people in this tight labor market," Vissers says. "Finding new employees without experience in the job in question or coming from a different field of work is one of those ways."

Hospitality and sales lead the way

Vissers: "Sectors that experiment with this the most and emphasize in job postings that experience is not required are the hospitality and sales sectors. Certainly the first sector is having a hard time of course and has a hard time retaining people. Not focusing on experience automatically expands the pool of candidates. Traditionally, the hospitality industry has of course been a sector where experience was not always a plus, but the sales sector stands out. It is, of course, a sector where measurable results are key. Experience is secondary to that for employers."

Further training and retraining

Even greater than the proportion of jobs that do not require any track record appears to be the proportion of job postings that outline opportunities for further training. According to Vissers, it is a trend that fits the tight labor market of today: "Especially if we zoom in on the sectors that are now fully committed to retraining, we see that these are the fields of work where the need is high to get good people." Healthcare and education are currently increasingly accommodating lateral entrants. Because of long-term shortages in both sectors, this has been prevalent for some time." The sectors currently most frequently offering work for people willing to retrain are the installation technology and manufacturing sectors. "In these types of technical jobs, 'on-the-job-learning,' and thus hiring lateral entrants or retrainers is something that is more common."

Substantial growth

The increase in job openings for retrainers and lateral entrants, by the way, is not new. Last year, too, the number of jobs for people willing to do so increased significantly. Texts addressed to people who might want to side-channel are also becoming more common each year. "In both cases, the pandemic is clearly the cause of the explosion in increases," Vissers concludes.