That’s great suggestion will discuss with her. Thanks so much!
The worst she’ll get is a “thanks for reaching out, we’ve met our targets for 2026 but feel free to apply again for 2027.” It’s not like recruiters take this stuff personally!!! And on the off-chance that there’s a desk in the St. Louis office that is still open….
I’ve recruited for “hard to staff” locations. SF, Boston, Seattle, NYC, DC, Austin, LA– everyone we interview had a friend or a friend of a friend or whatnot in one of these cities, so filling the targets in the popular locales isn’t terribly challenging. But sometimes getting across the finish line in other parts of the country means that you aren’t done even in June. My personal nemesis was Duluth. Lovely place to visit in July; tough place to sell to a recent engineering grad whose heart is in Austin!!!
3 Likes
Indeed ! Much harder for parents who want to see their kids to stay close by!!
It’s not in our hands, I know she has given her best through out in school let it be selling cotton candies in cold rain for school news paper or collecting food for donating for her school centennial! and has dreams to continue to do the same in job too. After living a challenging life all I know is how things may or not work out as we plan! Sometimes these dreams flop sometimes they soar , watching them unfold is what makes our Life!
Thanks for your suggestions!
5 Likes
I’m not a big believer in the old saw “when god closes the door he opens a window”. But in the specific situation you cite- it’s DEFINITELY true (substitute your chosen deity, karma, chance, etc.)
There are tens of thousands of young people whose first jobs were at startups who quickly closed, merged, got absorbed into another entity. So in addition to the turmoil of having to find another job– so soon after landing the job that went away– they spend the next several years explaining “here’s why I thought a company which made software which allowed you to synch your dishwasher to your disposal to your front door would be a sure-fire winner”.
Startups fail for lots of reasons. Energetic young people join startups for all sorts of reasons. But a startup which is wise enough to know that it cannot sustain the payroll cash flow it has committed to is MUCH better than a startup which collapses in the middle of the night leaving its employees locked out of their laptops with no severance pay.
Your D is in the process of learning a great lesson and will land on her feet.
5 Likes
Appreciate your support Blossom!
1 Like
My god, this is from 2024 but it’s literally the same story today. Was looking up how headhunting firms adapted post-pandemic and ended up here. For anyone reading this now with kids stuck in the frozen tech market, shifting to classic industries like operations or manufacturing is a lifesaver. For example, my brother spent months blasting tech CVs to a black hole until he looked into logistics and ran into SCOPE Recruiting. The cool thing is their recruiters come from supply chain backgrounds themselves, so they aren’t just HR kids checking boxes. They guided him straight into a solid distribution firm.
2 Likes
Learning to pivot early can be beneficial.
A happy update!
She had reached out to one of her previous offers in East coast as she had not accepted them but had decided to decline and now after reaching back to them last week she got her previous job back!
Thanks so much for all of the support everyone gave me here!!
She will not be very close to home but still a few hours drive away only and in same time zone!!
35 Likes
Amazing!!!
2 Likes
That’s fantastic - congratulations!
3 Likes
Woo hoo! Congrats!
“In the Clever survey, current students said they expect to earn an annual salary of $80,004, on average, one year after graduation. By contrast, the average full-time employee ages 18 to 25 with a bachelor’s degree earns $56,153, according to Census data.”
The article also points to possible improvements:
“The latest Job Outlook from NACE, released in April, projects a 5.6% increase in hiring of new college graduates this year. Among 166 employers surveyed, 34% predicted increased hires, while only 11% expected decreasing hires.”
1 Like
I don’t feel like this is a new thing. The year my D graduated ('23) I remember seeing a survey that said most new grads thought they’d ben earning over $100K right out of school.
I also wonder who the “current” students are that they are polling? Does it include freshman and sophomores? I know that by the time my D was a junior she had done a lot of homework on industry average salaries and location differences so she was well prepared to negotiate if necessary. That information is readily available for most fields/majors.
3 Likes
Hopefully having unrealistic expectations doesn’t result in turning down a job that’s offering a wage that isn’t likely to be better elsewhere, or result in disappointment when there should be celebration.
3 Likes
Compensation is a function of major / profession. The survey composition should match the population composition in order to be representative. It is possible that kids in low paying professions may not 1) have jobs by the time of the survey (the highest paying jobs are filled a whole year before start date as an example), and 2) maybe less motivated to respond to surveys.
You should look at average salary at your college for your major, at your GPA, for your geography. Anything else is meaningless
1 Like
Compensation is also a function of location. Silicon Valley salaries are high in large part due to the extremely high cost of living in the area.
I’m not an expert in surveying, but I agree that obviously methods, sample size, representativeness, non-response bias, and so much more make a difference. And, the $56k is an average, so there are grads earning more.
I do think students tend to overestimate or underestimate their worth. I think the takeaway is what momofboiler1 suggested: advise young adults to do some homework to help determine reasonable salary expectations.
1 Like
Any estimation is unnecessary. You just look for the best job in your profession, in your location of interest. If you get a job, take it — renege if you get something better later.
1 Like
Have to agree to disagree. I think information is power. I think there are unscrupulous employers who will lowball an offer, and I think there are grads who expect way too much out of the gate. Having realistic expectations informs decisions. People have a tendency to use anecdotes as benchmarks.
5 Likes
Most major employers have standard pay with perhaps some 10% flex at the margin depending on whether you went through their internship or not, or whether you are in hot skill area. A small employer has more discretion to offer what they want. You are free to not pick them. You cannot afford to not accept lower paid jobs if you have no offers on hand. If you have an offer in hand, you can consult someone to negotiate. This whole discussion is just entertainment for people that are otherwise bored. It has no practical bearing on people who are actually looking for jobs — because by that point your major is already mostly done, and the broad contours of what you can get paid in your industry are already set in place.
The only question of importance is what bridges you are burning when you are reneging an existing offer to take a new one. In this day and age, when you are applying to many jobs outside of the college’s career center, reneging has very few penalties. My son just reneged on a job very politely, and the company was very nice about it. Given this flexibility, you just climb up the quality of the job one after the other, since you don’t have a medical school like matching system.
1 Like
Reneging is one of those things that students fret about but most employers don’t really care so long as its done thoughtfully and without too much explaining. S22 reneged on multiple internships and 1 FT roles and it was more smooth sailing than he anticipated. Bridges can get burned but generally its a non-issue - companies do it all the time as we saw on this thread so what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
3 Likes