The other thing about a June 1 start date was that both kids got 5 days of vacation after 6 months. So it was helpful that both had time off around the holidays to come home. Both were employed out of the state that we and our family lives in.
D’s new employer does not have a fixed PTO - she can take how ever much vacation she chooses. Apparently the average is about 3 weeks per year that is taken by other employees. I don’t like that, as it confuses those who are not sure about taking vacation. Other D started with 5 weeks a year, and she uses it all!
Toomanyteens, most new hires choose to start later at her company, has no effect on her employer’s opinion! And she will be wearing jeans and Tshirts to work too, just like everyone else!
This varies from industry to industry. My son who graduates this upcoming mid-May is going into management consulting with one of the big firms. He doesn’t start until August so he will be vacationing and then moving to his new place in his new city.
We told our son he should wait a month and take a vacation (affordable) before starting but he didn’t wait. His job had start dates the first of each month with hundreds of new hires going through general then job specific orientation- salary went up after 4 months by which time son was actually being productive in his software development job. Couldn’t get the concept of taking time off before entering the world of work. If money isn’t an issue I highly recommend a breather.
One of mine was working before he graduated, and kept right on working. Another was asked to start the same week he graduated and he politely pointed out he had to vacate one apartment, find another, and move 200 miles and maybe they could work something out. It turned out he kept HR posted about the apartment hunting and they jointly settled on “date you move plus a week” for starting. I would never advise a brand-new grad to ask for vacation first thing. Their roommates had similar experiences with settling on a start date, although one works for a major name and they had a set bunch of start dates and you were given the one closest to your offer date.
My daughter will graduate the first week of May and she starts her job two weeks later. I’m not sure if she was required to start on that date or if she figured 2 weeks was what she needed to pack up and move to a new city.
I think employers vary in their needs and flexibility, but there’s no harm in asking for the start date you want. I’d be prepared for the possibility that a particular date that’s not your first choice will be required by the employer, though.
Agree with those who say to negotiate with the employer. The student has leverage during negotiations prior to accepting an offer, not after they are an employee.
D1 made negotiating her start date part of her overall salary and terms negotiations. Her employer was a large well-known tech company. They would not move on salary, but they did agree to move her start date several weeks later than what they first wanted. That allowed her to take a month off to travel. She knew that it would be her last chance for some time to take a lengthy vacation.
Decades ago I also negotiated my start date with my employer-to-be (was too naive to realize I should’ve pushed on salary too). I’d wanted to start in the early fall so that I could spend the summer doing an internship abroad; my employer (about 5k employees) said no, we need you now. So instead I negotiated a six week break (without pay) a month and a half after I started, to travel with my family.
Obviously this all depends on the state of one’s industry/field, but asking should imo always be regarded as part of negotiations. Young women especially should be negotiating their starting pay, since they tend not to do so (young men generally DO).
I will just say this–in my experience, vacations between jobs are the best.
Your new employer will not care too much about your specific start date as long as it doesn’t inconvenience the employer too much.
The replies cover a wide spectrum of scenarios and I thank you all for your feedback. What I learned is that some employers have a set of starting dates (that may coincide with training/orientation sessions) to choose from so these would be the easiet to pick a later date. The others are case by case and a later start date should be negotiated up front. In those situations, even if an employer did not mention a formal training schedule, it would be courteous to ask if a later start date would interfere with any formal or informal schedule the employ had in mind. If nothing else, this would demonstrate that the new hire values the employer’s point of view.
Sometimes, time off between graduation and first job is involuntary due to graduating during an economic downturn (or an industry downturn for students in majors aimed at a particular industry) and not being able to find a job.
Unfortunately, employers tend to look at any periods of unemployment as a negative aspect of a candidate. The longer someone is unemployed (or employed but not in the desired type of job), the worse his/her job prospects will be. There were probably many civil engineering and architecture students graduating in 2009-2011 whose careers in those fields ended before they began, for example.
Against our strong objections, our kiddo took three weeks to bike a portion of the Pacific coast. Turned out to be a pivotal part of her successful job interview. Her hiring manager had ridden the same route.
Our S was hired in Feb of his SR year in engineering but it took over a year for his security clearance and after it was processed, he was given several start date options and accepted the earliest one–June a year after he graduated and over s year after he was hired!
This worked ok–he was able to get everything moved from West to East Coast, find a place to live, drive his car out, spend some time in HI with us, visit with friends and even do some traveling.
S1 had an offer in the fall of his senior year. Employer (big tech company) had no problem with starting in September. He had been doing work for them (paid and unpaid) all through UG, so they knew him well and were willing to wait.
Both my kids had jobs lined up well before graduation. One started in August, the other in September.