We feel/felt this very strongly as immigrants, too - not having gone to college or worked here before we arrived, the lack of network was hard for us finding our own jobs too. Even if the contact just means that a human being looks at your resume rather than an AI screen, it can make a difference.
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Stories from the UK (gift link):
Meet the Oxbridge graduates who can’t get a (good) job
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Perhaps that is another reason why kids go into their parents’ profession more often than by random chance – not only are they familiar with it from their parents, but their parents are more able to help them get entry level jobs, whether by direct connections / nepotism, or by providing more insider information about how hiring works in that profession. Those whose parents are in a completely different profession may not have any such advantage.
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Somehow I think all these articles are just lazy journalism aimed at buttressing a narrative. Look at the majors in question - French/german, Philosophy/ancient history, History, English. Not exactly majors that are in demand. And it seems like either Oxford didn’t prep these students well or they were completely delusional about the real world. Here’s a quote:
Then came the interviews themselves. Countless Oxford tutorials had taught me to defend my point of view: criticism was to be absorbed, but also to be challenged. As a fresh graduate, I thought that this was how all one-to-one interviews worked. In my first post-Oxford job interview for a PR agency, I defended my answers related to subjective branding questions. I was summarily rejected on the grounds that I was not self-reflective.
I was talking to my S the other night (graduated 2022, now a senior associate at his consulting firm) and he remarked that something seemed different about the new grads who had joined in the last year or so, namely that they just aren’t that committed to go above and beyond when the firm is very busy like now.
He’s been in the office until 10pm a bunch recently and yet the junior people still aren’t billing any more hours than normal or volunteering to pick up extra work (so the senior associates and VPs are having to do it instead). They aren’t proactive and just treat it like a job rather than a career (his company generally promotes from within so gaining wide experience and making a good impression is critical). That’s very different to when he started 3 years ago, and has led to difficult conversations where managers are having to tell junior people they just aren’t going to get promoted and progress as quickly as was the case historically (typically you’d get promoted every 12-18 months).
Although this is obviously only anecdotal, it’s odd to me that these younger people who’ve clearly worked hard in the past (all went to T30 colleges and got very high GPAs) would be more focused on lifestyle than their career even in a tougher economy. Maybe part of it is that they are now applying so widely that they aren’t really committed to any particular job or industry (whereas this was my S’s dream job, it was the only one he applied for, and he started as an intern in summer of his junior year)?
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There is also one who says she is the last of her group to not get a job, which implies it is more about her than Oxford in general, and one who got a good offer as he was finishing his contribution.
Also unless I missed something the heading says “Oxbridge” but all the students seemed to be from Oxford? Do they just assume Cambridge is the same, or they couldn’t find any Cambridge students finding it hard to get employment?
And talking about stereotypes… the one who waited for her benefits check then used it to buy an air ticket to Australia…
We’re not in consulting and my department has a much smaller group to draw on as a sample, but the bright young things (and they really are bright young things) that we’ve hired in the past couple of years all seem to have a great work ethic. That said, this is not the kind of work they need to be in the office till 10pm, but they come in early (I usually get in at 7 and most of them are already in), leave late and do good work. This batch is a combination of ivy, t30 and prestigious LAC graduates - as well as one from a fairly local commuter cal state who arrived in our department by way of the company rotating internship program.
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Lifestyle is definitely on the radar for the current cohort in a way that it was not when I started out (during a recession, so I was beyond grateful that with a degree in Classics I had landed a corporate job).
Whether it’s yoga, the dog, hiking, working out at the gym, lots and lots of weekends away with friends, standing appointment for a massage at 5:15 pm on Friday, and endless “I had to check out this farm to table restaurant 50 miles from here and so when I got a reservation for a Wednesday lunch I had to snag it- sorry we have a hard deadline for Thursday morning but I’ll be AWOL on Wednesday”.
I can appreciate that they don’t view their employment as an endless grind of deadlines and commitments-- probably healthier from a cardio-vascular perspective. They care about food a lot more than my friends did when we were in our twenties and considered free peanuts and a bowl of olives at a dive bar an adequate dinner washed down with a cheap beer.
But their long term value as employees… jury is out.
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“Dream job” is a trigger for me, like “dream college” ; )
I wonder if for some of these new employees, it’s not their dream job so they aren’t putting in the effort? IMO, that’s a recipe for disaster because if you are using a job as a stepping stone, the best gift you can give yourself is being a stand out and getting great reviews from your supervisors.
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Or Cambridge students are too smart to demean themselves by participating in something like this that may come back to haunt them in a decade or two 
My diagnosis of them in order was:
- hardly surprising she was struggling for a job in Grimsby (the US equivalent would be a hollowed-out Midwest town, where people absolutely wouldn’t want to hire a Harvard grad), now she’s in London I doubt it will be a big problem to find something
- seems to only have applied for prestigious jobs (perhaps unsurprisingly given his top grades) but apparently has never worked a job in his life even in fast food or similar which is likely a red flag to potential employers (what did he do every summer?)
- doesn’t come across well in interviews, took time off to travel, but did get a great job eventually
- doesn’t want to sell out, still looking to be an author, and applying in a super-competitive sector, her lack of a job is something that could have been the case any time in the last 30 years, at least she works hard
- same as 4 but even less defined about what he wants to do, I can’t imagine that impressing in an interview
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So many go to Top 30 - with the idea of high paid (IB, Consulting).
But my company - it’s the same - we now have a soccer tourney, golf tourneys, flag football tourney - during the work day (we take off) - the entire company is invited to watch the soccer and flag football. Last year they added - take a half day and exercise.
It’s become summer camp - because the economy was so hot and job market so tight.
Now it’s changing and rapidly so.
Companies are calling people in, tightening up and now we’re starting to see it with new hires - or less new hires it seems.
The economy is slowing, etc.
I think plays a part of it - there were so many articles, so much news - that the country in many ways created this country club effect of the last few years.
And these kids bought in - and it’s going to hurt them in the long run.
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I see a growing (and understandable) sense of disillusionment with the idea that “career” means giving significantly more to an employer than they are give back (less stability every day) while “job” means doing what you’re hired for and doing it well within the reasonable bounds of life.
That said, I came up as a 50-60 hour a week worker and there are rare times I still do that because it’s the right thing to do for my clients or my team. With our younger staff, I’ve found they are willing to walk through walls for teammates and leaders they love but not for “the company” or “the job”. So the key for me is to ensure that I’m creating an environment of care and camaraderie. They support in key times because they don’t want to let the team they love down.
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The languages grad had an interesting angle though, about how AI may have undercut potential translation work. This did bring an anecdote to mind:
Back in the days when we could visit Russia, we found out our (mandatory) tour guide in St Petersburg had majored in languages at university, and it seemed every time we saw other guides they had been with him in college, and I got the sense that there was quite a bit of resentment that they had gone to university and the best they could do with the degree they’d chosen was ferry tourists around the city. Because they could speak the language, and there wasn’t apparently much else a degree in languages was good for there.
I should clarify that this was the exact industry my S wanted to work in, it was the focus of his major and thesis, his political ECs and his internships going back to HS. So the consulting job was a “dream job” because it combined all of that with good pay and opportunities. It’s a niche area with lots to learn (not generic MBB strategy consulting). And very few college students are likely to be that interested and dedicated to this area, especially if they are applying very widely.
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So many red flags in that article. Choice of major aside and questionable commitment to job hunting (does every young person in the UK take off a year to go travelling?), these grads come off sounding entitled and naïve. The one quote that encompasses it all for me is
Post-graduation, I assumed I would drift into any job I desired, getting paid to swan around with great writers, artists and thinkers. I had been to Oxford, after all.
They’ve had a rude awakening to the real world.
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It certainly could be.
My spouse graduated with an electrical engineering degree in that time frame and the only job offer he received at the time was for where he was an intern but it required us to move to another state. And my employer wouldn’t allow me to work remotely. So instead we moved to our current state. he worked at CompUSA for a year and then got a low paying entry level IT job somewhere and worked his way up from there. Has never ended up actually working as an engineer.
In times like these, students will need to be flexible.
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My kids, both Gen Z, complain that most Gen Zs have no commitment, feel entitled, or are downright lazy.
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That hasn’t been my D’s experience at all. Her cohort are the come in early, stay late, volunteer for the stuff others don’t want to do crowd.
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Yep. It would be interesting to contrast their experiences by interviewing the Oxford grads who did find jobs fairly easily.. the one interviewee said their friends had jobs lined up by graduation.
That was an interesting article! What struck me about it was a mild sense of entitlement. The attitude because they went to a big brand name university, doors would open automatically.
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