Here's a True Story from nearly 30 years ago that still rings true today.
When I was 19, I abandoned my 3-year long computer science degree after just 1 semester when I realised I wasn't going to learn anything I didn't already know until third year. I decided I would get a job first so by the time everyone else was graduating, I'd have 2 years experience under my belt. I thought I was getting ahead of the game.
I spent the next 6 months applying for hundreds of "entry level" IT jobs. Nothing so grand as the mythical "junior SOC analyst" people aspire to today, this was real shit kicker work - Level 1 help desk, desktop support, IT department errand boy. The kind of stuff which any high school kid with a passing interest in computers would be more than capable of doing.
I got lots of "interviews", but they were all with recruiters. Once or twice a week I would put on a nice shirt and make a 3-hour long round trip on PT into the Sydney CBD to talk to a recruiter, thinking I was going to a real interview, only to be told once sitting down that I wasn't really suitable for the position I'd applied for - because I didn't have any prior experience.
The implied paradox of the situation blew my mind. This was the most basic, brain dead, bottom of the food chain, entry level job in all of IT. At this point in history, the computer literacy of 95% of the population was barely sufficient to turn it off and on again. Getting on the Internet still needed a dial up modem. High school children were literally the most computer literate people in the entire population. If you couldn't do this job without prior experience, how did anyone ever get experience to get started in the first place?
Recruiters just shrugged and smiled when I challenged them on this. "It's not fair, but it's the way it is", they would say. Many had the audacity to suggest I spend about $16000 on a MCSE certification, which seemed to the be "gold ticket" into IT work at the time.
After 6 months of doing this ridiculous dance, I was fed up, and quite frankly, desperate. I emailed an older guy I knew who was working as a sysadmin for a big name player in the IT/Telco space at the time, essentially begging for him to let me come and do unpaid work experience with him, as a way to try and break through the "prior experience paradox".
I got lucky. I got so lucky. It really cannot be over stated how lucky I was.
"Call me now", was the 1 line email I got in response. The timing was almost perfect. It just so happened that the guy who was managing the help desk at this company was swamped and needed someone to palm off all the grunt work to. My friend set up an interview for me. AFAIK, I was the only person interviewed, and it seemed pretty perfunctory. I was hired on the spot.
Objectively, it was horribly exploitative, and even naive as I was at 19, I knew it. I got paid $10/hour cash in hand as an independent contractor. I had to issue invoices to get paid (mostly so my boss could write off the cost of my "wages" as a business expense). I didn't get sick pay or any other entitlements. I was thrown in the deep end without any real supervision or support. People in the office got told to come to me with their problems and I just had to figure them out and fix them. I spent a lot of time on newsgroups and mailing lists trawling for answers.
I didn't care about any of that. The opportunity was worth way more than money I was making. I learned so much in the 9 months or so that I worked there, it literally set me up for the rest of my career (well, until now, that's another story). Most importantly, I now had a job I could put on my CV to break the prior experience paradox. I figured out that the real trick to finding a job (as with many other things in life) was about who you know, not what you know.
The story doesn't end there though. The older guy who helped me land the job in the first place didn't just get me the job. He kept me in it. He drove 20 minutes out of his way every day to pick me up on his way to work, and drove me home again in the evenings. In the car rides to and from the office, he told me all sorts of interesting stuff and I picked up lots of nuggets of tech-wisdom. I know what CIDR is because he told me to look it up. Though he never really set out to be, he became the mentor I needed to help me navigate my first tech job as a naive 19 year old.
Before I wrap up, I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting the best way into the workforce is to allow yourself to be exploited by a dodgy employer. If you're in such a situation, I encourage you to speak to someone older and wiser than you that you trust about how to deal with it. In my case, I made what i thought was the best choice available to me at the time given the circumstances (I had a lot of other shit going on), and even in hindsight, I don't regret it. Life isn't fair, you just have to make the most of the cards you're dealt, so to speak.
The main thing is, I don't want the ugly side of this story to take away from the real underlying lessons I hope you will learn:
Yes, the prior experience paradox is real, and as real today as it was then. Trying to find a job within the "rules of the system" (i.e. public job ads and recruiters) is a labyrinth few people find their way through. Honestly, I think it's a complete waste of time. If you're struggling to find your first job, people you know are your best, and realistically, your only bet.
For those of us who found our way into the industry somehow, we owe a debt to the ones who paved the way for us, gave us a leg up, or opened a door. It's not a debt you pay back buying beers, it's an obligation you pay forward. Find someone that needs the same help you needed back when you were starting out, and drag them onto the path. Drag them. Lift them. Carry them.
To the one that carried me when I was at my most desperate, I can honestly never thank you enough.