How can I get experience if I can't get a job?

If the students graduating from Alfred University on May 18 are expecting a world-is-your-oyster type speech from speaker, AIG CEO and Alfred alumnus Robert Benmosche, then they may want to put on headphones during his portion of the ceremony.

When I was 22 and graduating from college, there were a couple paths to take. The first path was to follow my dreams, a dangerous idea because the dreams of a 22-year-old are pretty underdeveloped. Yet, this is what our baby boomer parents often tell us to do. David Brooks does the subject a great deal of justice in an OpEd in which he explains, “Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life.”

Does your company thank job applicants for their time and try to give them a good experience? If not, you should reconsider. Consider what 4,000 respondents told CareerBuilder in a recent survey: A third of respondents said they’d be less inclined to purchase from a company that didn’t respond to their application. 42% say they’d never again seek employment from a company they felt had mishandled their application. 56% say a good experience – even if they weren’t hired – would lead them to consider seeking a job with the company again.

Does your company thank job applicants for their time and try to give them a good experience? If not, you should reconsider. Consider what 4,000 respondents told CareerBuilder in a recent survey: A third of respondents said they’d be less inclined to purchase from a company that didn’t respond to their application. 42% say they’d never again seek employment from a company they felt had mishandled their application. 56% say a good experience – even if they weren’t hired – would lead them to consider seeking a job with the company again.

Madison Avenue isn't just made up of Mad Men. Women have had a hand in creating some of the most iconic ads in America, from the Alfac Duck to Old Spice's "man your man could smell like" to Allstate's Mayhem. And yet they only make up 3 percent of creative directors industry-wide.

Put an expert up against a group of non-experts working together, and who'll come up with the better idea? You might be surprised.

Have you ever tried to get a job where you were told that you had all the right skills but lacked experience? It's a Catch-22: You can't get the job without experience, and you can't get experience without getting the job. But how important is experience, and should it be such a critical asset for hiring managers?