Graduation day is looming and many graduates are struggling to find entry-level jobs. The way things used to be meant that if you graduated with a degree finding a job would be easy. But now graduates are faced with the interesting struggle of needing three to five years of specialized experience to even interview for jobs that are labeled as “entry-level.”

For most students, that means you needed to start your specialized job or internship during your senior year of high school to even have a shot at getting a job after college. When most students probably weren’t accepted to their colleges yet, that poses an issue. Requiring so much experience for a first job is ridiculous. Jobs that are “entry-level” are specifically made for new graduates so they are able to find a job in their field. The competition for entry-level jobs has become intense because while more students are graduating, there are less open jobs than ever before.

Another issue is requiring specialized experience for an entry-level job. If you worked throughout your collegiate career, there’s a good chance you were working a minimum wage job that had no correlation to what you wanted to do in life. The retail jobs, the fast food jobs and the seasonal jobs come in high quantities and managers are willing to work around your school schedule. It’s an easy way to make some extra money, but unless you’re majoring in management or business, these jobs won’t qualify as specialized experience.

These companies are expecting candidates to have all of this experience, but aren’t even offering opportunities to gain that experience through their companies. You used to be able to get an entry-level job in a company and work your way up to the position you wanted, but that hardly exists anymore. Companies want great candidates but aren’t willing to help develop and foster these graduates into the employees they want.

Opinions expressed in The Nevada Sagebrush are solely those of the author and do not necessarily express the views of The Sagebrush or of its staff. Jacey Gonzalez studies journalism and can be reached at jaceygonzalez@sagebrush.unr.edu and on Twitter @NevadaSagebrush.