Are younger people applying less often to jobs?

In my experience, the opposite

What field of work is this referencing?

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Are these "entry level" positions that require 3-5 years direct experience in said field?

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this shite is so frustrating right now.

I just made 34 and yes I know I know there are some things that if I could go back and do over, I would.( maybe more than 'some') But I'm in a place in my life where I'm trying to branch out and find something completely new that I love outside of sales. And many of the jobs, I know for a fact, I could rock them and some I'm actually overqualified for with my abilities imp, but I don't have the "3-5 years" job experience.... Also some of the jobs I looked at, I know if I could just get in front of the hiring manager, I could absolutely sell them on giving me the chance, but that's hard to do these days right out of the gate.....

Oh well I needed that vent. Thanks

Yes, my eight year old hasn't applied for one job yet.

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positions that require 3-5 years direct experience

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I've been told several times these numbers are usually BS to a certain degree. Of course there are some limits. When I did a career change, they wanted 1 year, but since I didn't have that, they came back and offered me another position. But in general, I've always been told that hiring managers write their job descriptions as a wishlist and don't expect everyone to meet every checkmark.

The job market is rough right now, and the hiring process doesn't help. Your resume and application gets screened by a computer first that scans for key words and then it goes to an actual person. I was also there on the entry level with 3-5 years of experience. It's frustrating as hell.

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I've been told several times these numbers are usually BS to a certain degree. Of course there are some limits. When I did a career change, they wanted 1 year, but since I didn't have that, they came back and offered me another position. But in general, I've always been told that hiring managers write their job descriptions as a wishlist and don't expect everyone to meet every checkmark.

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Correct. But what they are doing by creating this wish list is discouraging someone that may actually be qualified for the job to even apply. Not to mention the algorithms for the larger companies that are digitally scanning resumes to screen initial applications don't overlook this information.

I applied for a job last year at the recommendation of a current employee involved in the hiring process. The job had a minimum of 10 years experience. I had 9 post graduation but worked full-time as an intern/fellow in the field for my senior year. The system almost immediately kicked my application out. My contact on the inside had to manually include my resume in the review pool.

Nope

It's better to accept underemployment to get the experience than it is to spend a long period of time unemployed while seeking the "perfect job." Getting experience at a lower level used to be an expectation for almost any job, including professional positions.

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The job market is rough right now, and the hiring process doesn't help. Your resume and application gets screened by a computer first that scans for key words and then it goes to an actual person. I was also there on the entry level with 3-5 years of experience. It's frustrating as hell.

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I applied to about 150 different positions online. A vast majority were larger companies throughout the SE. Got one legit interview with a medium sized local company (Cleco), and two local MEP firms (one of which I was accepted to). That was it.

A SELA favorite en(t)ergy distributor called me about 6 months after I applied for a phone interview (about 2 months into my current job). I did this. During the phone interview, they asked me for an in person interview, but I wasn't willing to take off of work to do it, so it never happened. And I probably only got that call because I have a relative very high up in the company.

Basically, if you're an inexperienced youngin', go ahead and apply to those big corporations, but don't expect anything out of them. Focus on the smaller companies. If you want, cold call them, tell the person that answers that you're very interested in working in that field and ask whom to send your resume to. Don't bother asking for the owner/person in charge of hiring because they're too busy for that shite. On top of your resume, send in some sort of work that shows some competence in the field, or at least shows that you're working your way towards competence. Then, on top of that, find out who runs the small company and send them a handwritten letter about how you would be great for the job.

Best advice I can give (stolen from "What Color is Your Parachute") is, IF you get an interview, write a handwritten letter thanking the people that interviewed you. Each and every one of them. I swear that I did this for 3 jobs, and for the one that I actually got, I found my letter sitting on the desk of a coworker about 2 weeks in.