<p>Maybe this thread is already out there, but just in case...My daughter graduated from a fine midwest LAC and doesn't seem to have a clue about the next step (employment). Wife unilaterally determined this topic was taboo until now as such stress might somehow put the graduation at risk. But here at last we are. So now what? Economy is obviously in the toilet. Lots of experienced but unemployed folks looking. Grad school is not an option. So, being certain that we aren't alone in this - what are others doing? Just thought I'd ask...</p>
<p>Colleges usually have some type of placement office that she can use to help research jobs and help write a resume.</p>
<p>Somebody missed the boat by about 6 months. The college placement office would have been hosting interviews and forums and job fairs for seniors months ago. Senior year is about getting a job. </p>
<p>Could I suggest that your daughter camp out at the placement office to try to make up for lost time.</p>
<p>A must do - visit her College Placement office.</p>
<p>In addition, depending on where she is living, I would at the minimum encourage a part-time job until permanent placement can be found.</p>
<p>What major? Closest city?</p>
<p>So is she ultimately motivated by the student loans that she will soon be making payments on, or did you foot the bill? Is she coming home to free room and board? </p>
<p>Time to see that the motivations are internal, and that there are responsibilities in life that must be dealt with. Once she is home, I would give her 4-6 months to find herself and figure out how she is going to support herself. Then it is time to nudge her out of the nest, or figure out how much room and board to charge. Time for all car expenses, cell phone expenses, wardrobe expenses to be hers. </p>
<p>If her LAC typically gets very quiet over the summer, she may need to return in the fall to discover the location of the placement office, and use it. I am sure at a LAC, a graduate can return to utilize there services. Problem is, she should have done that last December or January. There are some things that she could help her with now. Do you live close by? The internet makes things closer than they used to be.</p>
<p>I would set up a timetable and stick to it. Or in 3 years you will be asking the same thing. A part-time job now for all cell phone, car, clothes expenses will help her to realize that a $9.00/hr job does not go far… If she has loan payments coming due, DO NOT PAY THEM. She will figure it out quickly.</p>
<p>I don’t understand how the subject of a job is taboo until after graduation. That is ultimately what the college experience and diploma are all about.</p>
<p>"Wife unilaterally determined this topic was taboo until now as such stress might somehow put the graduation at risk. "</p>
<p>I don’t understand why anyone would follow such a ridiculous directive.</p>
<p>Did your D not work summer jobs or during the school year? Typically summer jobs or internships (paid or unpaid) are important – particularly after junior year-- because that’s how employers determine whom to hire after graduation. Working a job – any job – also gives students valuable experience in the work world as well as experience to help them get permanent jobs. </p>
<p>"Once she is home, I would give her 4-6 months to find herself and figure out how she is going to support herself. "</p>
<p>That is a very long time. I suggest expecting D to get some kind of job now to support her personal expenses even if the job is as a part time cashier at the supermarket. Let her know that after 60 days, she’s expected to pay rent and take care of all of her expenses. </p>
<p>Time for her to wake up to what being an adult means. If you don’t do these things, she may be like those young adults who happily live with parents – letting parents support them – for years while the young adults party and have a grand old time without ever growing up.</p>
<p>Frankly, though, in some places there aren’t even part time jobs to be had. It isn’t as easy as walking in and filling out an application anymore. Lots of competition for most openings.</p>
<p>Around here, students graduating with education degrees can’t even find jobs-- and that hasn’t happened here in decades. (This has been one of the fastest growing states in the country.)</p>
<p>I graduated in the late 80s when Texas (where I was) was in the middle of a recession caused by dropping oil prices. While I left the state (I wasn’t a Texan anyway) many of my friends really struggled to find employment if they wanted to stay close to home.</p>
<p>Is Grad school not an option because of econmics or lack of direction?</p>
<p>If the economy was strong, did she have a vision of what she wanted to do after college?</p>
<p>D has just finished up junior year and is home briefly before going off to internship. One thing we did talk about is how next year she must find time to explore all options and offers her school’s (PNW LAC) career center has to offer. Can she not get in contact with someone from her school’s center to see what is available?</p>
<p>toodleooo, I’m sure your D is not alone. And even if she had been looking for a job, she might still be unemployed. Here’s one article that says that only 19.7 percent of 2009 college grads that have looked for work have found jobs [Got</a> Work? - ABC News](<a href=“Got Work? - ABC News”>Got Work? - ABC News)<br>
But I’d agree - time for her to contact her college’s placement office for help on how to begin the search. Good luck.</p>
<p>Don’t feel bad about D not even starting the job search until after graduation. This reminds me of my D who graduated last year. She applied for an internship she wanted and wouldn’t do any other job looking (yes, “magical thinking”) until she heard one way or the other from this internship. The answer was NO in the middle of May. Now she was scrambling, what with an early June graduation.</p>
<p>We put out the word to our friends and acquaintances that she was open for suggestions. It was easy–they would ask, “What is D going to do after graduation?” Then we could tell our sad story. She had 3 leads to “new professionals” programs (one from H, one from a friend, and one from a CC poster) within a month. </p>
<p>The one from H’s company panned out relatively quickly and she was on her way. </p>
<p>She didn’t really have any clear idea of what direction she wanted to go after college and still really doesn’t. I think she is waiting for destiny to knock on her door. (Yeah, I know–“magical thinking” hasn’t disappeared.)</p>
<p>She didn’t find the Placement Office to be particularly effective unless you were looking for a particular kind of job (think financial job). Networking worked a lot better.</p>
<p>This is a tough time to be coming out into the job market. But 20 years from now, this will all be a blip. For now, it’s going to be tough. She’ll probably work at whatever job she can get. Maybe that will introduce her to a job field she hadn’t considered before. Maybe she’ll get some better ideas about what she wants to do and then can think about graduate programs to help her along that path. Hey, kids aren’t the only ones who can do “magical thinking.”</p>
<p>Try to keep her spirits up. It must be a very depressing time for our new college graduates (and their parents).</p>
<p>I have PMd you</p>
<p>toodleoo, don’t feel bad. We’re in the same position with S. He’s just now starting to look for a job too. And we also felt it important not to pressure him as he was struggling to finish up his last semester. He’d had some unanticipated challenges that made graduating on time a huge hurdle.</p>
<p>But he overcame it. He’s not ready for graduate school and doesn’t have a major that is easily employable. But the way I see it, he WILL find something eventually. We feel that as long as he puts in a good faith effort to support himself, best he can under the economic conditions, we’ll continue to help him out–to a point. </p>
<p>I have mixed feelings about putting an extremely black & white timetable out there–although we can appreciate that some kids will definitely take advantage of continuing parental funding. I’m pretty sure that S isn’t relishing the idea of being back under our roof for any longer than he has to be after being on his own.</p>
<p>We have encouraged him to utilize the university’s career placement center for as long as possible–but once his lease is up later this summer, he’ll be moving away from the city that’s been his home during college. At that point, it really won’t be as available as a resource.</p>
<p>Couple the late start with a bad economy and a naivete about what it really takes to find a “career” job, we fear he has several months of struggle ahead of him. And his student loans will be coming due. Generally though, I know he’ll find his way eventually. After all, I didn’t complete my undergraduate degree until I was in my late 20’s. As a late bloomer myself, I know sometimes the path isn’t direct, but can be enlightening and become one’s true destiny, all the same.</p>
<p>One D actually told me not to ask her about job plans after she had graduated. She hung around her campus town (and a rotten BF) and worked in a bar for a couple of years. She is now in business with her H and working 24/7. As the economy has shrunken they have cut back staff hours and do a lot more of the work themselves. What can I say? They’re happy and even happier when they are making more money.</p>
<p>Thanks to all for these comments. After having supported a rarified LAC education for four years, we will not watch D hangout at home for four more. It occurs that this subject is very important to parents of NEXT year’s college applicants - how does your kid’s major, as well as the school, prepare for self-support after graduation? Or is it all gravy and afternoons? As to not being alone: while at the commencement, I queried parents on this topic. NOBODY’S kid had a job! Dad’s weren’t smiling as they stuffed their minivans with college memorabilia. As to placement offices: I once wrote the school president in response to his letter assuring parents that finances were in order (donations always welcome). I said “Impressed with your financial planning, but future donations come from your school’s alumni and the best way to assure this will be to help your graduates find jobs.” He suggested D contact Placement, as they were “redoubling that effort”. D would not do this, so I contacted them only to hear later that everyone had had quite a laugh at my expense. OK. I won’t help finance grad school for More of the Same.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why your D would not contact the college placement office, which when she was on campus was her best way to get connections to a job. I suspect that her reluctance may be due to how you and your wife hadn’t brought job employment before with her. She may be very content to think that you’ll continue to take care of her.</p>
<p>It’s typical for college grads not to have landed jobs right when they graduate, but at the same time, it also is typical for college grads to have been interviewing and sending resumes for much of their senior year. With doing lots of hard work looking for permanent jobs, many college grads in the past would be employed by Oct. after they graduated.</p>
<p>The college placement office, however, doesn’t chase down students to force them to use their services. Students usually are motivated enough on their own to go use the services. The services aren’t secrets on any campus, and usually offer things like job fairs, resume help and other services – particularly to graduating seniors and to other students looking for jobs.</p>
<p>I know that my younger S is a rising junior theater major of all fields, and on his own with the help of his advisors, etc., had applied for some paid theater internships for this summer. He didn’t get those internships due to lack of experience in the field, and now is trying to get more experience this summer including by doing volunteer work in the field as well as finding some other jobs related to the field.</p>
<p>He already has expressed concern about the job market after graduation, and my impression is that this is a concern of his peers.</p>
<p>The graduating seniors whom I know are either working over the summer and then heading to grad or professional school or they are doing Teach for America or Americorps to support themselves while adding to their employability.</p>
<p>College placement offices do better with some fields than others. D took advantage of opportunities appropriate for her major/experience, yet there weren’t very many. She did a major appropriate internship last fall as well. Teach for America is very competitive at D’s school and only about 1/3 - 1/2 are accepted and she had no interest in going that route. While I was attending graduation, I sat in on a lecture on the changing face of higher ed and the subject of the placement office came up and it seems several parents concurred that job opportunities via the placement office were scarce in some fields.<br>
While I want D to find a position, I’m not too worried because I sent her to school to get an education more than I sent her to find a job. I believe the quality of her education will ultimately open many paths for her.</p>
<p>Of course college placement offices do better in some fields than in others. Some fields have more job opportunities. I can’t think of any reason, however, for a student not to use their placement office at all. At the very least, they can get career advice, resume assessment, contacts with alum, and possibly intereviews with prospective employers even if those people aren’t offering jobs in fields the student would prefer.</p>
<p>Better to get some job than to get nothing. The graduate whom I know who is going into Americorps also applied to Teach for America – which she preferred, but she was rejected. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that graduates need to apply for lots of things, not sit back and wait to apply only for things that exactly match their career aspirations. It’s a tough job market, and getting a job – any job – will work as an advantage to a person’s eventually getting a job that they feel matches their interests.</p>
<p>I sent my kids to school for educations, too, but I still expect them to do what H and I did: Work hard to find a job to support themselves after graduation. Even my college drop-out son is supporting himself. H and I always made it clear to our kids that high school, if they weren’t full-time students, we’d expect them to be supporting themselves, not living off our largesse.</p>
<p>Good luck to your son developing his career in show business, Northstarmom. I know it’s easy enough listening to a tale like mine saying, well why didn’t you do such and such, or most kids would have done so and so. Maybe. College Placement offices are great, but I have seen media coverage of job fairs for grownups who had some pretty long faces at the end of the day. As for things like Teach for America, there are some interesting threads on this forum that indicate the program may not be such an uplifting experience. So many boomerang kids around indicate to me that some of the obvious answers apparently aren’t the answer. I know wife and I did about as well as we could raising our kids to understand they would someday paddle their own canoe. In the end, I think new parents on the block should think carefully about the purpose of college education before laying out maybe a hundred grand for four more years of enrichment. Some would say college should be about “education” for its own sake, while others consider it more important in making a living. My view - if a kid majors in some cute subject they are passionate about, insist s/he also minor in something more mundane that will help get a day job.</p>
<p>Teach for America is hugely competitive, at least at S’s school. He and some of his friends were all interested, but even the ones who were more competitive gpa-wise didn’t get selected.</p>
<p>It just seems that this particular class has a rougher time of it due to the terrible economy and competition from people who are older, wiser and more experienced.
Very difficult job market, ESPECIALLY for college grads with degrees in anything other than engineering or nursing.</p>
<p>Though this year’s class may be having a tough time, it has never been easy for kids majoring in the humanities/sciences and not interested in teaching. Those kids who got great jobs had to be more creative and really extend themselves or have great connections. Part of the problem with job hunting is so many kids limit themselves as to where they are willing to work. Recruiters from different areas of the US may show up at a college’s job fair but if their location isn’t among the most desirable places to live, kids will often pass them up. Some kids think they need to be closer to home when it comes to finding a job as well.
I know at my D’s school there are recruiters coming throughout the year interviewing kids. Most of the time these times are posted on the school’s event calendar. D said she also gets email notices from the school when such things are happening. I told her she needed to go to many this coming year, not just the ones that sounded the best. You never know if a company has a niche you just might be able to fill. For example, H and I went to a solar energy workshop. Since D has expressed interest working for an environmental company in a capacity where she could use her Spanish, I went up and asked the presenter if there was a possibility for someone like her with his company. His answer - have her call me, and he handed me his card.</p>