Re:A sign of buisness culture failure (Score 1)

The company I work for hires candidates with no experience all the time (and they've turned into some of our highest performers). However, it's all about the interview in those cases. If you have no work experience, the interview becomes about gauging your passion for IT. We do not have the budget to train every new hire on every technology we use - besides, most "professional" training we've brought in is pretty much worthless in the long run. Instead, we just purchased a corporate subscription to Safari Books - you're basically expected to learn the technologies on the job, leveraging online resources and the more experienced developers to round out your understanding. If you can't show an interest in programming outside of what you had to do for school, you're not going to get hired.

The other thing I'd offer as advice is that I never get entry level resumes from HR. They just don't pass them along - I don't even see the applications. All of our entry level folks came from IT staffing firms - it's obviously not ideal to be working a short term contract, but you've got to get your foot in the door somehow, and they do have the appropriate connections to find you a place (and they're motivated to, since they're going to get a cut of your rate).

Entry level candidates are a mine field for IT departments, but there are still people out there willing to take a chance on you if you give them a reason to.