Wow
My nephew (accounting) just took a job in rural MN. He had a good feeling because less than ten applied at least via LinkedIn. He got it and good money.
Maybe going to where few want to go is a thing to look at today - less competition.
2 Likes
100% remote means that there are no applicant location restrictions, so applicants do not self select for living near the job location or wanting to move there. So no surprise that you get over a thousand rather than merely hundreds of applicants.
2 Likes
It could be a difficult year in the job market, and getting a job might not be the end of the difficulty. I believe that our K-12 test-driven culture has stifled our youth’s willingness to take risks. From an early age, students are conditioned to prioritize correct answers and mistake-free performance over exploration and creativity. As a result, many enter the workforce with a mindset focused on avoiding errors rather than embracing challenges, thinking critically, or pursuing innovation. This ingrained fear of failure can limit their initiative, an essential for growth and progress in any field.
From the Forbes article linked below and another link in hopes one isn’t paywalled:
“Employers’ gripe with young people today is their lack of motivation or initiative—50% of the leaders surveyed cited that as the reason why things didn’t work out with their new hire.
Bosses also pointed to Gen Z being unprofessional, unorganized, and having poor communication skills as their top reasons for having to sack grads.
Leaders say they have struggled with the latest generation’s tangible challenges, including being late to work and meetings often, not wearing office-appropriate clothing, and using language appropriate for the workspace.
Now more than half of hiring managers have come to the conclusion that college grads are unprepared for the world of work. Meanwhile, over 20% say they can’t handle the workload.”
2 Likes
Yep. I can totally relate to that 
This relatively recent phenomenon of “spamming” (or as “the kids” like to say - “shotgunning”) to every job opening that’s out there, regardless of qualifications, is making things very hard for all job seekers.
2 Likes
My kids, both Gen Z, find that to be true of most Gen Z job seekers. They also complain that many are downright lazy or entitled.
One of my children works in a company that only requires being on the office a few days a month. His Gen Z coworker wanted to choose his days so that he has zero overlap with his manager to, in his words, “establish the right power dynamic between them”.
6 Likes
This isn’t just Gen Z, sadly.
1 Like
Has he considered that the “right power dynamic” might end up being “first to be laid off when the company needs to make cuts”?
5 Likes
Im not sure how anyone gets a job these days without networking.
Companies must be getting hundreds/thousands of resumes and many of these jobs are probably filled with an internal candidate or through an internal referral.
My nephew had two offers in December. He’s experienced - about 5 years.
One was remote but you must go to DC quarterly. A huge, powerful consulting name that pays squat - does a lot of defense contract work. He’s an accountant so wouldn’t be a consultant.
The other in rural MN which he took.
My company just bought out 6 people. One of the guys - 61 years old - started at a competitor the next week (in early January). He had two offers.
My nephew found on linkedin. He definitely shotgunned. The other guy went on industry websites.
There are jobs. Yes, many have hundreds of apps - but there are jobs. My daughter went on a website of a national organization - it’s her only app - and got in.
I’m not sure it’s all doom and gloom.
But every college kid is likely applying to Disney or Google or Microsoft, etc. - and I think when there’s a zillion apps - a zillion aren’t being read. How do you stand out?
Kids are getting hired - and it’s from online sources.
Most don’t network. Most don’t know how to network, etc.
1 Like
I don’t know if it’s helpful but in case it alleviates some pressure, my oldest, who ended up at Goldman Sachs after graduating, had the following jobs during college:
Summer after Freshman year - worked at a local farmstand scooping ice cream and pulling weeds in the fields
After sophomore year - “interned” at a very small community bank (mostly doing filing)
After junior year - did a French immersion program, preparatory for a business internship in Belgium shadowing a real estate professional
Graduated without a job – but, was hired by Goldman shortly thereafter.
Obviously everyone’s journey is different and I realize the only thing that can be extrapolated is that there is more than one path. But there really is more than one path!
ETA just checked with him – I am off by a year – he did those things, but one year earlier
9 Likes
My daughter, a 2021 graduate, is in a full time top 20 MBA program. She worked for three years at an ad agency before going to graduate school. She is in the middle of recruiting for a summer internship/future job in brand management. She applied to five companies, got interviews with all, and landed three offers. She declined one yesterday and will make a decision this week between the other two. The two companies that didn’t extend offers to her told her that they had reduced the number of interns this year. One told her that she was their first runner up. For her the job market is good.
I asked her yesterday about the general job climate. She said that most of her classmates had offers, but certain fields, especially consulting, were not hiring many interns and many students were having to widen their search criteria. She said that the market for international students (about 40% of her class) is especially challenging this year. She thinks that the general market is good, but not great.
She did spend three years in a fairly low paying position, but she credits that job experience with helping her land the offers she got.
3 Likes
My D is on another recruiting trip for her company’s co-op and ELDP program. She said the networking event outside the career fair added a second day. Day one was talking up the company’s program but also doing some resume consulting and giving interview tips. Day two sounded like more traditional networking. She said the events were very well attended. Her company’s new trend is that they are making offers to the students they talk to at the networking events in addition to seeking them out at the career fair.
H said they are actually having a hard time finding people - for the first time ever, they had a student with a signed accepted offer ghost them. They are assuming she got a better offer. Not cool and looks badly on her school but it forced them to relook at their starting package for new grads.
Both work in manufacturing.
And the student my D was mentoring on how to find a job (D helped her focus on what her priorities were, helped tweak her resume more for industry, and have been doing mock interviewing), got her dream offer last week from a biotech company.
It’s not all gloom and doom.
6 Likes
And of course the biggest gripe in his 360 review will be the lack of mentorship and feedback!
4 Likes
Perhaps a sign of a more elite-or-bust trend? Employers only want the best, so merely good applicants get ignored, but “the best” get multiple offers.
Any chance something happened to that new hire?
I guess that could be a possibility. They tried multiple times to contact them.
I would hope that if something happened to me, my family would go through my phone and email messages and follow up to let people know.
1 Like
I’m struggling with this thread a little, partly because my son is trying, and trying all the things, and it’s still been a challenge. As of last night, he’s applied to 109 positions for summer internships. He’s a MechE and CivE double major, completing his junior year at WPI, with a perfect 4.0 GPA. He’s been a varsity athlete in college (plays club level of a different sport now), is in three different engineering honor societies, and has been a paid TA for a professor. Last summer he worked at a well respected CivE firm and had outstanding references and was invited back - but he wants to do MechE work this summer. The summer before that he worked developing a new model wind/water turbine to bring power to farmers in rural Indonesia. He’s not being picky for “big names” for jobs but he is being picky in that he doesn’t want to do work that is defense industry focused.
He’s applied to a few bigger name companies (Westinghouse, GE Vernova, threw in some for GM mostly just to try) but most have been smaller firms or businesses not necessarily known for the engineering, but who need to hire an engineer. He’s had five interviews and been turned down for three of those (the other two interviews were last week, waiting to hear, plus another two companies had those weird “virtual” interviews where you record yourself answering questions). The most recent 40 or so of his applications went in in January, so he may still hear from those. The others were Oct/Nov/Dec and probably either already had a selection but the ad was still up, or he just didn’t get them. He’s applying directly from companies and firms websites. He tried to go to the fall career fair - but the company he researched and was going to see failed to show. He was pickier back in September - was hoping to find something in one of three major metropolitan areas (including near the school) or that offered relocation assistance so maybe there were other places that he would’ve looked at if he had known how hard it would be. Since November he’s applying to anything, anywhere, that is interesting to him and that he’s qualified for.
He’s also really broadened what type of work he’s looking for - at first he really wanted to pursue something in the area about which he’s passionate - renewable energy - he didn’t care if it was solar, wind, nuclear, water what have you. But with the current roll back of green energy provisions, we expect many of those jobs he applied for in late December and early January may have been cancelled, so now he’s basically just looking to do mechanical engineering and not build bombs or guidance systems or the vehicles to deliver them. He’s revamped his resume once during this process (not to mention the work and revisions that went into it before he started applying this year), and we’re going to work on it together again this weekend to see if we can update it differently to be more attractive to AI readers. He’s worked with the career center and done mock interviews and they’ve provided feedback that he’s a comfortable and confident interviewee who presents professionally. He’s reached out to his network - mostly recent grads from his fraternity - and the ones who seem to have job openings are all working for defense contractors, which just isn’t something he feels he can do. (And I’ve already had one friend tell me that he needs to stop being such a precious princess, which was kind of rude - I’m not ready to tell my kid to go back on his ideals and things that matter deeply to him.)
So, yeah. I’m glad for those students for whom it has been easy. But for people whose kids are struggling, know that you aren’t alone.
21 Likes
Absolutely!
And people should keep in mind that the job market was very hot 2 years ago but has cooled down very significantly. This is especially true in the finance and tech industries which have drastically cut back hiring, which in most cases also means fewer internship opportunities.
When I hear from people IRL that it was a breeze for their kid to get an internship and that they received multiple offers for full time rolls - I ask them if it was 2+ years ago. Almost always, the answer is “yes”.
So please tell your son to hang in there. He’s doing the right thing by applying as broadly as possible. I hope something works out for him soon!
13 Likes
D24 got a summer internship offer last week with a Fortune 500 company.
Going through the process, very few large companies hire rising sophmores. She got the interview through networking but she was on her own to get the offer.
The interviewer said they dont usually take freshmen but noted that she’s already very active in college and her past ECs and work experience in HS stood out.
The lesson for her was that you have to add building blocks on your resume and not to wait for the exact right opportunity.
5 Likes
No idea if this has been discussed since I just skimmed the thread, but is anyone else nervous about all these engineering majors? Clearly its extremely competitive to get into engineering but its also wildly popular. Are we going to need this many Mechanical Engineers 4-8 years from now? My S25 certainly hopes so…