My daughter is on the recruiting team for her company. She said it’s shocking how ill prepared some students are for job fairs, interviewing, and the job search in general, let alone being prepared for work.
IMO, this is why students need to avail themselves of their college career centers- get resume advice, polish the elevator pitch, do mock interviews, research the companies thoroughly prior to the interview, etc… And go to the college career fairs to practice those skills in person, even as a freshman.
If the school doesn’t have a strong career center, work the alumni network, talk to professors, and/or join campus clubs to find a mentor and develop those skills.
There’s a lot parents can do to help their kids make good choices to prepare themselves for the workforce.
Choice between Spring break on an island somewhere drinking vs. coming home to interview for a summer job?
Choice between joining the family vacation (which has always been set in stone- July 4th week) vs. taking an internship which does not have flexibility, i.e. everyone starts June 15th with two days off for July fourth, not the entire week?
Choice between yet another frat party on a Thursday night vs. attending the “here’s how to get an internship” sponsored by company your kid is actually interested in working for?
I hear ALL THE TIME from parents- “she’s only young once, she has her whole life to work” and “he loves his friends-- and isn’t that more important than worrying about the future right now?” or “why should she waste her summer editing a professor’s book for $20/hour when she can make the same salary working the cash register at the tennis club AND have her afternoons free to see her friends?”
All well and good. You do you. But recognize that parents can help kids get focused… you can’t assume that “Career Services” is going to parent for you. Your kid doesn’t show up for the interview workshops, resume editing, etc? They don’t go to your kids dorm and shake them out of bed.
It’s another reminder that having a flexible mindset is really important for success. Don’t narrow your possibilities by only being open to certain industries and locations. It can no longer be FAANG or bust.
Internships are the key. Getting real experience over the summer is a real leg up and shows a kid is motivated. If you can afford it an unpaid gig in a field is better than working retail or food for extra cash.
My current junior has had 2 unpaid with one that became paid. My recent grad had an unpaid but at a good think tank in DC. He now works in PR. Amazing money……no,but living in NYC learning to live.Both are political science guys who can write and communicate. Both lost arts.
Kids hate it, but they need your help. You know people who know people who work in a variety of fields. Your value as a parent is changing. You can help them find that random internship. Be supportive and positive. It’s the first time when rejection comes early and often.
To the extent that parental connections help finding internships, and parental money helps subsidize unpaid or lower paid ones, that suggests that advantages of coming from a family with connections and money continue through college, and are greater in subjects where internships are more competitive to get and lower paid or unpaid.
IMO, parents should be encouraging their kids to use their own resources at college and their alumni networks when finding internships. There are skills to be learned in hustling for a job.
And if there is an unpaid internship, a student can always supplement with paid work outside their field.
Anecdotally, the kids in our circle whose parents got them their internships have not launched as successfully.
Our S24 graduated from a top college in June. Probably a third of his friends from the school don’t have jobs. Several went to graduate school because of the lack of prospects, and several settled for positions outside their core interests. Our son persevered through many rejections and got an offer in his field, but not from a significant firm. One aspect that helped him land the job was that he offered a perspective on AI during his interview process.
He has already experienced AI impacting job openings. I see it happening in my consumer products business, as we have already eliminated one job and two more by year-end because of AI.
This has been my D24’s and her friends’ experience as well. It isn’t even rejections, it’s just constant ghosting. I’m not sure if it’s job postings that aren’t really open or what, but she doesn’t even get an email back saying the position is filled or we are looking for something else. And she has expanded her search out of frustration to jobs adjacent to her degree, think retail selling the product you have a degree to design for. Still crickets. Her friends are saying the same. I really feel for these kids. It is definitely a different job market than when I graduated. She does have her first interview today (fingers crossed)
Yes, unfortunately, there’s been a big increase in ghosting. I wish recruiters and HR talent acquisition staff would be kinder toward applicants, especially inexperienced young applicants who are just starting out.
Best wishes to your D24 with her interview. It’s especially hard for freshman applicants like her, who have just started their college journey.
Your post caught my eye (and my stomach felt it, too, with anticipatory anxiety).
I’m summarizing what your wrote to my S21 (graduates in May next year) that he very well may need to think of his Summer ‘24 internship site and location as Plan B; bc if no Plan A arises, Plan B is likely better than him returning home to live with us.
Ghosting has been the norm for decades when the applicant is rejected. Probably because employers don’t actually want to say that they rejected the applicant because they may change their mind later, and do not want to say anything that could be lawsuit fodder.
My assumption is that a job applicant will be ghosted whenever they do not pass whatever stage that they are rejected at.
It was discouraging. My kid worked so hard to get into college and worked so hard in college, believing the job offers would pour in. The big accounting and consulting firms were coming to recruit from U Chicago and his school, Northwestern, and no one was getting offers.
I would advise going beyond the campus recruiting and placement office, networking, and looking independently for opportunities. In this cycle, the job may not come to you; you need to find it.
I feel terrible about ghosting and try hard not to do it (and make sure my team doesn’t do it). But for every job applicant who complains about being ghosted, there are three who complain that they don’t like the rejection email they got.
1- It came too quickly. Nobody is reading resumes at 4 am when I applied.
Except of course- the recruiting team member in London who handles this role/function, and it’s not 4 am her time.
2- It didn’t have any feedback, I want feedback.
Well- the posting stipulated that you must be a JD with bar admission in New Jersey, NY or CT, and you have a chemical engineering degree and no law degree. Do you REALLY need feedback when you are blasting your resume out to hundreds of jobs for which you are not qualified?
3-Why didn’t I at least get an interview before a rejection? I deserve an interview, I worked so hard in college.
You’ve applied to a commercial entity whose shareholders expect employees to use their resources judiciously. And interviewing a hard-working candidate who does not meet the minimum requirements for a role is not a good use of resources.
Etc. On and on and on. Ghosting is bad. Getting rejected when you apply for a job you really want is bad. It’s all bad.
Of course, there has long been a vicious cycle where some employers list “requirements” that are more of a wish list (or the resume of the person who just left) when only a small subset are actually required, and applicants believe that to be true generally, so they apply to any job where they meet any subset of the “requirements”, not knowing which are actually required.
There’s a high probability that when a job posting lists outside certification (A&P mechanic at an airline; CPA for a public company; JD for a legal job, etc.) that this is an actual, functional job requirement. Ditto for language fluency. If I need someone who is fluent in Mandarin for an overseas assignment, there aren’t a lot of fungible skills that are going to replace that- you either are, or you are not.
A posting asks for 8 years of social media experience and you have 7? Nobody gets aggravated by that. But if you are working on C-checks at an aircraft maintenance facility and don’t have an A&P license (an active license, not a suspended license), the FAA is going to have something to say about that.
She graduated high school in 2020 she just graduated from college this June ‘24