Lately, I have noticed a trend in companies; I often hear about it from my friends, people on twitter, job boards, social boards, you name it. Companies often use the term “Entry-Level” for some of their job postings but they are anything but entry level. Many job postings (for basically any industry) promote entry level positions; however, when examined closely, the job requires 3-5 years of experience. To me, this seems like an oxymoron of sorts, a hypocritical idea, how can a company request someone who has 3-5 years experience and advertise said position as “entry level”? I see this all the time for developer positions on the web. I have viewed job ads for “entry level junior developer”, yet when I click into the position, I see “3+ years experience building websites”. In addition, the job postings may ask for e-commerce development, app development, experience with Json libraries, angular and, on top of everything else, 20 examples of previous employers and work experience. Developers have the ability to learn a majority of this stuff on their own, but whatever happened to on the job training and learning while you work? When a position is entry level doesn’t that assume you are here to gain knowledge and work your way up?

The official definition of “entry level” is as follows:

“of, pertaining to, or filling a low-level job in which an employee may gain experience or skills”

This is what defines entry level. Companies should take a minute to reflect on how they are misusing the phrase “entry level” because it can be very misleading when a company is advertising a low level position, supposedly seeking new-to-the-workforce hires, then require years of prior experience and a vast knowledge base. Entry level positions should allow new hires to gain knowledge that will benefit them and help develop their future career paths or further their standing within the company. Hopefully, this will change because, a lot of the opinions I view online, including the opinions of my personal team of developers, believe that the current system in place for applying for entry level positions is skewed and misleading. Especially, when they are being told they don’t have enough experience to get a low end, entry level job. I can only hope this type of incorrectness changes in the future because it discourages a lot of job searchers and potential new hires from even looking into companies that may be a perfect fit because of required experience that is not in line with the position they want to apply for. But, for now, we will have to wait and see how this pans out in the future.