<p>Has your new college grad (spring or fall) found a job? Has the outlook gotten worse for your area in recent months? What, if anything, do you plan to do if your son or daughter cannot land a degree-related job? Is graduate school an option? What about returning to school for a different degree? Would your child work at anything that could pay the bills and provide health insurance while still seeking something degree related? How long after graduation would you permit an adult child to live at home and look for a job in his career field? When the hours/wk. spent on WoW exceed the time spent on the job search, would you take the “tough love” route? At some point, do you usher him out the door and say, “Write when you get work.” ? </p>
<p>Ds has a month to go until finals end - and no job prospects. Matters are somewhat complicated by a medical crisis last year, so health ins. is vital. We may be inclined to baby him due to his near-death experience, and his chronic health issues, so we try to fight against that temptation. It’s tough to know what is reasonable given all of the circumstances. It doesn’t help that a sibling got an amazing offer last year from the second company interviewed, and he compares that to his situation. I’m concerned he may be unemployed/ underemployed for quite some time. </p>
<p>Considering what your son has gone through, I would cut him a tremendous amount of slack. Hopefully, you son is going to have plenty of time to work. </p>
<p>My daughter had some chronic health issues too. Right now, she is in great shape, just fantastic shape, but it took 3 years to get there.</p>
<p>After college, I let my daughter live at home for a few months. I would have let her stay longer too, but she did get a job after looking for a few months, and she was outta my house in a flash. :)</p>
<p>The health of our kids comes before a job. From your post, it sounds like your son still has health issues. </p>
<p>The economy sucks right now. It’s difficult for most people. As long as your son is looking for a job, making some effort, I would just be happy that he is alive.</p>
<p>DDs BF just got a full time engineering offer from a firm with which he has been doing an internship- he had expected it before the economy turned, but was relieved to have the actual offer.</p>
<p>DD is envious, given that she is pursuing med school, to see he is done with school and ready to move on whilst she has years ahead of education.</p>
<p>One cannot compare the offers between siblings, what about major, ECs, etc. If my kid with a non-professional degree needed time at home during the search I would allow it, but have certain adult expectations.</p>
<p>Dstark, I appreciate your comment about cutting him some slack. That’s certainly my inclination. Dh alternates between wanting to do the same and wanting to give ds a kick in the pants to focus on the job search and get real about his chances in his current location. I get frustrated, too, but tend to deal with it by doing too much for ds and that’s not good, either. Too often, when ds is unable to do what he should it’s because he used his energy to play and then can’t take care of school work or the job search. </p>
<p>Somemom, I agree that comparisons should not be made. We don’t, but he does. If he had not experienced the medical crisis last year, he might very well be working in his chosen field now. You raise the issue of “adult expectations.” Would you mind elaborating?</p>
<p>Dd graduated, but is overseas studying and playing (through a grant) and will return this summer. I’m assuming that the fates will provide her a job until such time as she decides what she wants to do with her life. On a practical note ; thankfully she is covered until age 25 by DH’s health insurance, and I will expect a minimal rent payment if she is employed but chooses to live at home. If she’s unemployed - well, I can’t let her go hungry, can I?" :eek:</p>
<p>Son, who is in his senior year, accepted an offer from a Fortune 100 company for a very well paying engineering position. He starts a couple of weeks after he grads in the spring. </p>
<p>My d. has been out for over a year. She absolutely did not want to come home. And yes, she is working at “anything” right now–but doesn’t have benefits (luckily she can stay on our policy until 24–time is almost up). She actually started back to school for a 2nd degree and quit–said she is just tired of school right now. Will she ever go back? I don’t know, guess it depends on how miserable her current jobs become.</p>
<p>Daughter graduated in May and took the summer off. Started looking for a job in her field (cinema grad) September 15th…got a job two weeks later! Would I let her stay and live with us? She is…and of course. That’s what family is about to me. In her field grad school is unnecessary, unless she wanted to become an entertainment lawyer.</p>
<p>Just my two cents: If your kid is out there trying to find a job and not laying in bed all day (if they are make sure they aren’t depressed) cut them some slack. This is a time of huge transitions of identity and lifestyle and some kids need their space.</p>
<p>I graduated in May… didn’t look for jobs while in school, as I am fortunate that it was not an extremely pressing issue. Planned a month long backpacking trip to europe instead…</p>
<p>I worked with a high school band this season, which was fun, but not career related.</p>
<p>I started applying for government jobs in the fall, and have a few applications floating around. I’ve only heard back from 1 so far, and I made it through the first cut there, but haven’t heard anything since (1-2 weeks).</p>
<p>I am moving to join Americorps at the beginning of December, and hopefully one of the government jobs will come through and I will leave Americorps and take one of those. I will also keep applying to government jobs while I’m doing Americorps. If nothing is promising and I’ve finished Americorps, I will probably move back home and substitute teach during Spring '10 and hopefully enter grad school Fall '10 if there’s still nothing on the job front.</p>
<p>Substitute teaching can be a good thing to do for your recent grad. It pays some money, and gets them working. I would’ve done some this fall, but I thought I would be doing a different Americorps program that started before the school year did, but that one didn’t work out.</p>
<p>Times are so uncertain for businesses right now. A lot of them have instituted hiring freezes and travel bans until they feel a little more comfortable…at least until the new year. I would definitely cut a kid a little slack during these uncertain times. </p>
<p>D graduated in June and had planned on coming home and vegging for the summer and looking for a job in earnest in the fall. Luckily, she found something in late June and had left the parental nest in July. I’m glad that she didn’t wait until the fall…the economy turned on a dime.</p>
<p>Our daughter graduated in '07 and worked in China for a year. When she came back in late August she intended to substitute teach and look around the country to decide where she wanted to live and work. She was very indecisive about how to go about this so got a tutoring job nearby thinking that would tide her over with steady income and she could live here. </p>
<p>Fortuitously, she found out about a long term (the whole school year) substitute position in our school district. Long story short, she got the job and has a good chance at another (probably permanent) position within the district at the end of this school year. The job market for teachers in schools outside of the cities is extremely tight in PA so she is extremely grateful for this job as she sees her fellow ed grads unable to find work. She was the only new graduate hired with a K-6 certification in our district, everyone else had worked for awhile as a sub or an aide for a year or two. </p>
<p>So here she is with a good job and benefits and living at home… When my husband and I were young we couldn’t wait to get out of the house. It wasn’t that we were told to leave but the expectation was clearly to graduate and start your own life. Now that she’s at that point it doesn’t seem that cut and dried. For one thing, she couldn’t afford to live within the district on her own and we fully support her trying to save money for a year or so. For another, it is just so nice to have her back after five years of her living out of state and out of the country. Her youngest brother who was ten when she went to college and is now a sophomore in HS is also benefiting from her in-house tutoring and big sister advice.</p>
<p>I agree with the other posters saying that if your son is not actively looking for a job, that’s when you want to give deadlines and ultimatums, but if he’s looking and not finding anything then it makes sense to support him.</p>
<p>There’s no doubt that ds’s recently diagnosed chronic medical condition plays a large part in his plans, and in ours. Dh no longer intends to take early retirement because we’re concerned about providing not only for our own future but also, as best we can, helping to provide for ds should he be unable to work at some point. For now a big concern is medical insurance. We can’t keep ds on our plan unless he is a full time student for at least one semester each calendar year, and even then only until he is 23.</p>
<p>Kathiep, I agree with your comment about support when looking for a job, but we struggle with what constitutes “actively looking.” For dh & me, it would mean checking the job search sites, online local papers and various companies’ job postings daily, plus writing letters and sending resumes to as many contacts as possible at least once a week. We’d be contacting the professional temp agencies, headhunters, and HR depts., as well as friends of friends who might have leads. We would not be waiting to hear back from one interview before going after a job with a different company. Ds’s approach has been to check the postings/job sites about once a week, and when he’s had an interview he waits to see if something develops (even if it means doing nothing for several weeks) before moving on to the next possibility. I’m trying hard not to give him unsolicited advice.</p>
<p>If ds decides he will move back home, then dh may be able to help him get a job with a nat’l. firm’s local office, but the start date won’t be until May or June. Ds would be content to prep for his prof. exam and play WoW until then. I can see that becoming a source of conflict between dh and ds.</p>
<p>This was the experience that a lot of high school kids I know had last summer. I was surprised, because in the past, employers were crying to hire them.</p>
<p>Finding jobs right now is so, so tough. I graduated in June and have gone straight on to grad school so I’ve avoided the whole thing this year, but I have friends who graduated last year and still don’t have jobs. My fiance was incredibly lucky as it only took him a couple of months to find a job, but even that (relatively short) period of time was really getting him down. </p>
<p>One of our friends is a doctor, and he was saying that depression rates have been sky-rocketing since the economic downturn became serious, particularly among younger people and the unemployed. He works in a town with a huge student population, and he’s finding many more patients with symptoms of depression now than he did even last year. </p>
<p>I am not looking forward to finishing my MA, as my field (librarianship) is undergoing a particularly bad squeeze, at least here in the UK. It’s not going to be pretty…</p>
<p>This was the way my D approached job searching also. She was afraid that if she started the process on job #2, she might be forced to take it instead of job #1, the job she really preferred. So she applied for fellowship #1 in the early spring and waited, and waited, and waited. She made it to the last cut in mid-May, only to find out at that time that she didn’t get it. Great…and graduation was in early June.</p>
<p>So we explained the facts of life to her–that you need to have as many irons in the fire as you can when it comes to job hunting, because you just don’t know when something will pop. Some employers just take forever to process resumes; some employers may not need you now, but will keep you in mind for something in the future–something that may not even get advertised. </p>
<p>So, after graduation, she applied for 3 things at once–first thing never got past the resume stage; second thing panned out and she’s now working; the last thing called a month after she had gotten her job and wanted her to come in for an interview. So I hope she learned a valuable lesson there. Had she waited for lead #1 to develop, she would have missed out on #2 and #3.</p>
<p>Also, she learned that when it comes to finding out about openings, it makes a lot of sense to use a network. Kids don’t often have one this early in the game, but they can make use of Mom and Dad’s network. No, Mom and Dad don’t strong arm their friends to give their kid a job. But we found that our friends, when hearing that D was graduating college and looking for a job, had great suggestions and inside information, like: “My employer has this program,” or “Maybe your D-with her background-would be interested in the kind of work my company does. Here’s how she can apply.” These are programs that she wouldn’t have come up with on her own unless she just happened to luck into them on an internet search.</p>
<p>All three things she applied for came from unpublicized leads highlighted by family friends (including CC friends). I think she was surprised at how adults were so interested in helping her find her way. H is always harping on her that networking is the most efficient way to find a job–I think she’s come to see his point.</p>
<p>We saw this happening at our neighbors’ house. It was not pretty, because it caused a lot of friction between the H and W (“You’re coddling him.” “Let’s give S some space–it’s hard to find a job in this environment.”“Why should he exert himself find a job when you make it so easy for him to live a good life without working?!”) You get the picture–eek!</p>
<p>I would suggest S make good use of time–besides studying for his professional exam, he might think about a part time job, volunteering, taking classes as local CC to learn new computer skills that may come in handy later, temping–things that may deflect growing impatience/anger of H. And for heaven’s sake, don’t be playing WoW while Dad is home!</p>
<p>Be clear early, kick em in the butt. Tell a kid,Yes, you have Sat’s for elite privates but go with a public , or help with the difference. Go to Career Fairs as a senior(and wear a nice suit), and if you do not go to the Career Fair and give it everything you have, prepare for an explanation. My kid was the only kid on his basketball team in his high school that was not African American. He was well liked, known to be smart but did not flaunt it. One of the other dads said in closing-“When he makes his first million, tell him to remember me.” Character, leadership, hustle mean everything. Go Obama!</p>