How to get 3 years experience required for fresh graduate roles?

Question

For all the jobs that are posted these days requires 3 years prior experience for starting role.How will one get experience if no one is willing to hire?Does this mean all new graduates have to do is wait, watch and cry?

philomath_mn · Accepted Answer

Don't worry too much about the listed requirements. If you meet ~25% of them then you have reason to apply (the job listing is usually comically over-specified).
Besides that, if you still have time, internships are critical (some people count these as partial years of experience -- I think that is reasonable).
If you don't have internships or time to get them, then you're on a harder path of networking, finding contract work or a dev-adjacent job to get _something_ on your resume, and working on some portfolio projects (while applying to a lot of jobs).

comprev · Answer

If the role requires 3yrs experience it's evidently not targeted at "fresh" graduates, but those looking to move on from their first job.
Graduate roles are more about learning the ropes of corporate life than anything else, and understanding SWE on a larger scale and how to work as a team on big projects with _both_ financial and time constraints.
There is a large administrative overhead with fresh graduates and this is what organisations are unwilling to invest time with - especially if they know the candidate will bounce in a few years.
Most places I've worked which had graduate roles employed people who did their internships with us. They already knew how _we_ did things so the onboarding was very fast.

DamonHD · Answer

Grow your network and be talking to people you might want to work with well before you graduate. Accumulate some experience and more contacts in holidays or part-time. Or create your own business: I ran one throughout my undergrad course and hired several of my classmates part-time. I have only spent a small time on other people's payrolls since I first left university. You can call some of the shots rather than be a helpless supplicant. But yes, it is hard!

coolvision · Answer

This might be a very US thing, so one could move to a different country for few years. F.ex. in EU, experience can be proven by internships, freelance jobs, opensource projects etc... I've never seen years of job experience required.