There’s a joke going around that the hardest job to get right now is the entry-level one. You find a role that says “junior” or “graduate” in the title, you get excited, and then you read the requirements: three to five years of experience, a portfolio, proven track record, familiarity with every software that exists. And you think, where exactly was I meant to get that experience, if not from this job?
It’s a real catch-22, and I don’t want to pretend it isn’t. But I also want to say something that took me a long time to believe. You don’t need experience to start. You get experience by starting. The waiting, the “I’ll begin when I’m ready”, is often the thing actually holding you back.
First, the honest part: it really is harder now
I’m not going to give you a “just hustle” speech and ignore reality. The first rung of the career ladder is genuinely disappearing in a lot of fields. One HR platform estimated junior roles have fallen by about 35% in the US since 2023. Plenty of postings labelled entry-level still ask for years of experience. The unemployment rate for recent US college graduates reached about 5.6% in March, near a decade high. And many companies are using AI to do the simple tasks that used to be how junior people learned.
So if you’re struggling to break in, please hear this: it’s not just you. The system has made the door smaller. That’s a policy and business problem, and companies that stop training young people are going to regret it when there’s nobody ready to step up in five years. Some firms are realising this already. IBM, for example, has talked about tripling entry-level hiring in the US this year.
But while we wait for the system to fix itself, you still have a life to build. And this is where I think the old rules can be quietly ignored.
Experience isn’t something you’re given
We talk about experience like it’s a certificate someone hands you after enough time in an office. But really, experience is just what happens when you try something, mess it up, learn and try again. You don’t need permission for that. You can start making things right now.
Want to be a fashion writer? Start writing. A blog, a newsletter, a Substack, long captions on Instagram. Review a collection every week. Want to be a stylist? Style your friends and photograph it. Want to be a designer? Make something, even if it’s a badly sewn tote bag. Want to work in brand strategy? Pick a brand you love and write a one-page plan for how you’d fix its social media. None of this is “real” experience in the eyes of a strict hiring manager. All of it is real experience in the eyes of anyone who actually does the job.
And here’s the secret: a body of work beats a CV almost every time in creative fields. When you can say “here’s what I’ve already made”, you’ve changed the conversation from “can you do this?” to “look, I’m already doing it”.
Fashion is full of people who started without the “right” background
I find this endlessly comforting. Some of the most important names in fashion didn’t come through the traditional route at all. Rei Kawakubo studied fine art and literature, not fashion design, before founding Comme des Garçons. Miuccia Prada studied political science and trained as a mime before she took over her family’s business. Virgil Abloh studied civil engineering and architecture, and built his fashion career by making things, collaborating and putting work out long before anyone gave him a title. Many brilliant stylists, photographers and editors started out assisting, or simply photographing their friends on the street.
None of them waited to feel qualified. They started with what they had, and the qualification came from the work itself.
Why we wait (and why it doesn’t help)
I think a lot of us wait because we’re scared of being bad. We’ve grown up online, where every beginner attempt can be screenshotted and judged. We see the polished final result of other people’s careers and compare it to our first messy draft. So we tell ourselves we’ll start once we’ve taken one more course, read one more book, saved one more month of rent.
But being bad is the entry fee for being good. Every great writer has a folder of terrible early pieces. Every designer has a first collection they’d rather forget. The only way to skip the bad stage is to never start, and then you skip the good stage too.
There’s also something powerful about starting before you feel ready. It teaches you that readiness is mostly a feeling, not a fact. The confidence you’re waiting for usually shows up after you begin, not before.
Practical ways to start when nobody’s hiring you
Make a small project with a clear end. A ten-post series, a five-look styling shoot, a single zine. Finishing something, however small, is worth more than starting ten big things.
Show your process. Post the sketches, drafts and behind-the-scenes, not just the final thing. People love watching someone learn, and it becomes your portfolio over time.
Collaborate sideways. Find people at your level who also want to build something: a photographer friend, a makeup artist friend, a friend who can code. Make things together. Your peers today are your industry tomorrow.
Say yes to small, real work. Helping at a local shop’s event, writing product copy for a friend’s brand, assisting on a shoot for free once (only once, and only if you learn something). Real-world tasks teach things courses can’t.
And when you apply for jobs, don’t let a list of requirements scare you off. Job descriptions are often wish lists. If you have most of it and can show you’re already doing the work, apply anyway.
A gentle word on the unpaid trap
I need to add one caveat, because the creative industries love to take advantage of people who are eager to start. “Start before you’re ready” should never mean “work for free forever”. Building your own projects is one thing. Doing full-time work for a company that profits from it without paying you is something else. Unpaid internships have long locked out people who can’t afford to work for nothing, which is part of why fashion and media still struggle with who gets in. Start on your own terms where you can, and value your time even when others don’t.
The point
The job market might be telling you to come back when you have experience. Lovingly, I’d say: don’t wait for anyone to hand it to you. Go and make some. Write the thing. Shoot the thing. Sew the thing. Launch the tiny, imperfect version.
A year from now, you’ll either have a year of experience or a year of waiting. Only one of those goes on your portfolio. And I promise, the version of you who started messy will be so much further along than the version who waited to be perfect.
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