Agree 100% and it is really a joy to write a recommendation for someone who puts their heart and soul into volunteering!
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What did he do last summer?
As discussed above, a job would be great for a lot of reasons. In a grunt job, he’ll have more appreciation for money. (My kid who worked at Walmart in college dropout era came home the first day shocked at how the Schlotsky’s lunch had cost almost a full hour’s pay.). But it can be hard to get hired if heading back to school a few months later.
Not having a job has other disadvantage of more opportunity to hang home by himself all day playing video games. So I like the idea of job or volunteer work or maybe even some camp that could help him develop new interests and friends.
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Previous posters have shared good advice and perspectives, so I haven’t had anything to add. I do want to amplify on @blossom 's post about the irresponsible volunteer. One thing that strikes me is that if your son is routinely skipping class, he’s getting into the habit of not bothering to show up when and where he should. That will not be acceptable once he enters the working world. My theory is we get good at what we practice, and he may as well start getting used to the constraints of a job–showing up in a particular place at a specific time for a set amount of hours–sooner than later.
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I don’t think it has to be a punitive conversation. Just state that that the expectation is that at this point in his college career, he’ll be looking for a summer job/internship to gain some work experience and then next academic year you’d like to see him pursue an internship or perhaps a few hours per week job for spending money. Look at it as the start of a conversation - perhaps he can explain to you how his labs are scheduled/why a pt job wouldn’t work for him. But you’ll be talking about it and the expectation will have been set for him.
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From what I know about UCSD it’s not uncommon to get internships only after second or third year. I think I would start worrying if he doesn’t get any CS internships this year and really start panicking if the same happens next year. I don’t think he will have chances at full time jobs at any desirable companies without it. I never played money games with my kids. I didn’t have to because both are very ambitious, but even if I had to I probably wouldn’t. Your relationship is more important. But I would be constantly bringing it up trying to change their minds.
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We paid tuition, room & board, fees - anything school/education related. We never paid for “fun money”.
DC worked and interned in the summers. Sophomore year worked as a tour guide on campus. Junior year added another on campus job (something they loved and was part of their major).
Maintained straight As. DC insisted on paying their own art fees the last 2 semesters (bc they had a lot!)
Jobs and internships are great for time mgmt skills, experience, people skills, connections, fun, independence, pride, maturity, etc.
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THIS!
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My sister has a theory that most bosses are trying to hire themselves. If they worked their way through college making coffee or checking IDs at the cafeteria, they are going to want to see some of that manual labor on the resume. They are going to want to see an internship (paid or unpaid) where the applicant may have had to stay past the 5 o’clock whistle to get a project done. Probably not as interested as the Grand Tour of Europe after graduation or even winning the esports championship. If the boss spent 4 years of college learning to sail in the summer or traveling to art museums, well that may be a good boss for someone who did the same. Not saying that writing a great research paper doesn’t help secure the job, but some bosses just want to see that at some point elbow grease was needed, showing up on time was a learned skill, cleaning up a mess (physical or otherwise) happened.
My best friend was just looking for reporters who DIDN’T play basketball. She said if a major news story broke out between 11:30 and 1, it better happen at the YMCA gym across from the newsroom as that’s where all the reporters were and they didn’t get it that if they were working on something at 11:30 they needed to put off playing basketball for that day.
OP said son has little trouble keeping up with school work, so a part time job during the semester shouldn’t hurt grades in any way. It may cut down on video games or other leisure activities, but help with time management, people skills, and learning the value of a dollar (and how taxes work, who FICA is and why he gets a portion of your hard earned dollar, and why 20 year olds have to care about social security and medicare laws).*
*I just had to help my daughter do her taxes - over the phone. First I had to tell her that the free version of Turbotax expired on 3/31 (so she called me at 6:20 on 3/31) and then it went something like this: “Well, on the right side there should be a button to edit your income from last year…on the top there should be an ‘education credit’ section’” “Mom, it says that I can’t use this form for a Lifetime learning credit and have to pay…” “Well, you don’t qualify for the expense so edit it to remove all the education credits…” Turbo went back to the free version…I missed the end of Jeopardy. It really was easier when I just didn’t her taxes myself but she has to learn to do them.
This is a long learning process, so the sooner he starts, the sooner he’ll ‘graduate’ to adulting.
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I agree with your sister, and large companies are spending lots of money training interviewers to NOT try and replicate themselves. You cannot create a diverse workforce if every lacrosse bro is trying to hire a guy who joined the same fraternity and drinks the same brand of beer.
Some success. I’ve helped interviewers eliminate the “status marker” questions (Oh, you’re going on vacation next week? Where are you going?) since they are irrelevant (except if you’re interviewing for a job in the travel/hospitality industry) AND are typically used to filter out “I’m going to my mom’s to help out since her stroke” or “I’m going to my sister’s to help her paint her dining room” and filter in “Oh, we have a cottage in Bar Harbor” or “I love the beach. The sailing in Newport is gorgeous this time of year”.
Yes, people without inherited wealth like the beach and love to sale and even love Newport. But these kinds of questions are generally used by poor interviewers and are NOT predictive of someone’s job performance!
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I think something like 80% of large companies now use AI for these screening interviews. More consistent and reliable and can be programed to avoid bias. Cheaper, too.
I am not sure they have figured out how to make applications like HireVue truly unbiased. As my daughter says, they don’t seem to bode well for the neurodivergent, non-native speakers, or people who aren’t attractive.
Perhaps no worse than live interviewers?
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You have to know your child and what motivates them. We paid for everything in college. Lots of “fun money” too. When my daughter took an on campus job in a clinic working with a population she hope to work woth as a nurse after she graduated….because she thought it would be good experience ….she actually had friends who asked “why would you do that when your parents give you as much money as you want” My daughter thought that was in-sane! Who wouldn’t want helpful experience, was her thinking.
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This goes back a little in the thread but there are paths to careers without internships or managing one’s own expenses/income in HS or college. ShawSon showed no commercial or career interest (except for constructing arbitrages in political prediction markets). He was/is intellectually gifted, though he was severely dyslexic. He he had to work hard to succeed academically. As a consequence of the learning disabilities, his academic work tired him out. He needed summers to recover. So, he did not have a summer job in HS and only took summer jobs after sophomore and junior years in college as a research assistant to one of his professors (he also worked as an RA for two professors during the school year). We encouraged him to get internships but he did not have the energy. We did not put him on a budget or make him earn money (and had to bug him to cash his checks when he was an RA). He did perform very well (graduated summa from a prestigious school) and got a perfect or near perfect score on the GREs.
What made it work was his ambition. He was/is extremely ambitious. He actually took the RA jobs with two professors in preparation for a possible Rhodes application – he wanted to ensure that professors could really speak to his intellectual ability and drive. During his senior year, he co-founded a company and raised a modest amount of capital. He ran it for a year, recruited a more experienced CEO, got a tech MS and an MBA at a prestigious university, co-founded another tech company while in grad school, raised several rounds of funding and has gotten a fair bit of recognition.
He just had to find his own way of using his academic and other talents. Maybe @jc1228’s son is similar.
With younger kids wondering why they have to worked hard for grades, I often explain that they are playing a game and they need to understand the rules and the rewards of the game. While grades are not OP’s son’s problem, maybe understanding the game is.
With older kids, I try to focus them on how to construct a satisfying career. I give a talk that is apparently very motivating to high performing college graduates who have been working or have been to law or business school. Not sure what I would say to a kid at the stage of @JC1228’s kid, but I think it might be blend of the two. Depends on how he is seeing the world.
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What year is your son in college? We paid full fare for both kids’ private schools and they never worked during the school year with our blessing. However, they did have summer jobs after high school unrelated to their majors. It was not a prep for their careers and that did not hurt them at all. Does he come home for the summer? What does he plan to do?
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One of my kids was falling into this trap. Generous, immigrant dad paid for everything and never required son work. Cheapskate mom (me!) decided son had to get a job to pay for some expenses himself. We would pay tuition, car insurance, and rent, he would pay for food, entertainment, etc. Son got a job at Best Buy and it was a huge win. Son made money, discovered he was good at explaining tech to customers, especially old people (experience from home), and gained confidence in this new area.
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That’s a great story. I had a kid who dropped out a while and worked at Walmart… hated it. But back in college there was a campus job available (not requiring financial need) for phone info line. That eventually turned into an IT phone support job which was a really good fit, excellent experience.
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I have work in Accounting for 25+ years for many private companies. Mostly small to mid-sized organizations. I have been the decision maker on hiring for a long time. (I know, I can’t believe someone put me in charge at some point). My staff usually consists of a couple of profession degree people and some clerks without a college degree. At one company I needed some clerks and I got some resumes from kids right out of college with an Accounting degree, but no relevant experience. I went ahead and hired 3 of people over time. I had no qualms hiring them for a clerk job because they had a degree and usually a recent hire is computer savvy. Whereas, I have had other employees that struggled with computers and programs like Excel. Most of the time those hires worked out fine and a couple of them moved out of the clerk position and started doing work that was Accounting related. If I needed a Staff Accountant(degree required) I would hesitate hiring a kid right out of college with no experience or internships.
Shorter version sometimes the kid with no experience will have to start out at a lower level compared to someone with some relevant.
Lastly, if I see a kid that worked in HS and College and did some decent work like moving up a level I am going to put that kid higher on my list than a kid who didn’t work. But clubs and student gov’t can substitute for work in some cases, especially if leadership positions were held.
This is why my wife just told my D23 that when she goes off college in the fall that at a min she has to join 2 clubs. We usually give a pass for first semester or first year on if they have to work.
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