I wrote above that my daughter got her first job by responding to an email she received. I want to add that she received three other offers by applying to positions she found online.
They were all research assistant positions at well known universities with benefits and a decent salary (allowed her to live with roommates and support herself until she moved on with her schooling).
Absolutely agree - offer deadlines can be negotiated and timelines with other potential employers can be managed; those are all great skills for these kids! However, if a return offer has a deadline of September 18 and the recruiting cycle on campus starts December 15, negotiating is likely a non-starter. Basically, these kids need to define and manage their own recruiting cycles and tightly manage the timelines. As @Rivet2000 and @neela1 have pointed out - good skills. Just adds a complexity that didn’t exist when I was getting out of college and requires making decisions that are less “fully informed” than in my day, leading, I believe to more job turnover, ultimately.
Yes, exactly what happened to DS. He negotiated to get the time to see what came of everything that was advanced. But the option of starting something new or following through where he was in initial phases wasn’t an option.
In general kids don’t know this, luckily I was a helicopter mom and I coached my second child though all the offerings. They get nervous about everything. Don’t forget they are young, in their early 20s.
D1 went through on campus recruiting and landed an internship her junior year. She stayed there for 11 years before she resigned recently.
D2 got a job at a legal aid in our city junior year through her school. A sorority sister recommended her for an internship at a district attorneys office. She worked there for 2 years before she went to law school. An attorney there wrote an excellent recommendation for her and I think it really helped her with the admission. The head attorney went to a top big law. His law firm made her an offer before the recruiting season. For D2 one connection lead to another.
My three all found jobs by applying to openings on handshake, Indeed, etc. Two journalism majors, one CS.
Helpful post. My kids graduated years ago, so I had not heard of Handshake.
I may be wrong, but I believe Handshake works closely with the career services dept at many of the schools. You won’t find the same listings at each school’s Handshake. Certain companies recruit more from one vs. another. And many companies recruit for different openings at different schools so if Deloitte (as an example) recruits at your school, they may only recruit for accounting, advisory, etc and not consulting. Your Handshake likely wouldn’t have those other openings listed.
Older daughter at jobs fair. Tippy top school so got many of the big players.
Younger daughter is a nurse. It wasn’t hard. She did apply to a “residency” program that gives new nurses a bit more training ( regular salary). They take about 1/2 the candidates.
I think it varies. When I graduated (almost 20 years ago), I didn’t have a job lined up at graduation… I honestly had no clue what I wanted to do. I worked as a freelance web developer for a few months while babysitting my kid sister for some extra cash and then took a job at my company 3 months later. It wasn’t a good job, and I only intended to stay for a few months while I figured out what I wanted to do. Fast forward 17 years and I’m still there… on my nth career. Funny how things go. Still trying to figure out what I want to do next, and I’m one class shy of finishing my Masters.
My boyfriend was a sort of non traditional student and he graduated 3-4 years ago with his undergrad degree. He had a job lined up before graduation that had been a co-op.
As an employer who has used handshake, you post the job, say which schools you want to see it, snd set other parameters.
I have never had contact with a career office at any school where I have posted.
Many of these comments report job offer after internship. Maybe it would help to know how the student got the internships that led so cleanly to a full time offer?
Our S19 is still in school but he’s found his internships through lots of networking. The first one was with a start up that is supported by NASA. He approached one of his physics profs and told him he was interested in aerospace and asked if he had any suggestions for internships. The prof suggested the state’s space consortium and S19 contacted them which led to this first internship. The following summer, he was able to leverage that experience and get a NASA internship doing research.
For this summer, he used LInkedIn a lot - searched his LAC and the industries he’s interested in. Reached out to a number of those alums and probably had calls with 25-30 of them for informational type talks. That led to lots of options for open internships. Sent apps with very specifically written cover letters mentioning his connection and interest in the company. Had a handful of interviews.
In the end, for this summer, he accepted a position at a start up where a friend of mine’s husband just took a job. I was chatting with her and she was telling me about the company and I thought it sounded like an awesome match for S19 so I gave him the name. He found an internship on their website and applied and got the job. This was total serendipity because he never would have known about this company if my friend’s husband hasn’t moved there or if she didn’t mention it to me.
All of this to say that he worked very hard to find his internships. His school doesn’t have days where companies visit. He spent hours networking. I hate to speak for him but I think it’s been wonderful experience for him to have to do it himself. He’s learned a lot from talking to so many people and also learned that putting yourself out there in a big way can lead to multiple opportunities.
If he likes this summer internship, we all hope it turns into a full time offer after graduation!
Edited to add: This was very time consuming. S19 did some of this work during winter break but, for the first two weeks back for spring semester, finding an internship was up there in importance to his schoolwork and his running so he was swamped. Sometimes I think kids don’t get how much work they need to put in to be successful in a job search or don’t understand how many hours their classmates might be putting into it. We felt strongly that networking was a way better way to go than to blanket send out resumes. Much more efficient in the end.
What @homerdog describes stresses how both networking and luck play a big role in getting jobs (for people of all ages not just college kids).
And it’s easier to get lucky if you do the work to network. He’s at Bowdoin. I’m betting that a lot of LAC alums will take current students’ calls. It’s not the most comfortable thing to do but it got easier over time when he realized almost everyone he contacted was super happy to connect and talk to him. Also helped him learn more about what kind of company he wants to work for.
My daughter spoke with professors for 2 of her summer positions (rising sophomore, rising senior). For her 3rd position as a rising junior, she responded to a research position that looked interesting to her, interviewed by phone, and was chosen (they accepted 50 from all over the country).
She could have remained on campus doing research after graduation (prob should have in order to finish her papers) but chose not to. Her job offer came from an email she received.
My dad, as a long-time engineering professor, was often contacted by ex-students looking for new engineering grads. Dad would give them names of students he thought were outstanding. Ironically, Dad couldn’t help my husband and me find work, even though we were his students and had top grades. We got out in 1986 when oil prices collapsed and engineers in Texas were getting laid off left and right. 
That was awesome that your dad helped those students. I’m not sure many kids think to ask their profs. When looking for a job, you should be asking anyone who might have a connection and profs can be super helpful!
Oh gosh, a million years ago, I, like @MaineLonghorn graduated into a recession and you better believe I talked to all my professors. (I also realized that if I wanted to work in California after architecture school, I’d have been much better off attending school there.)
Older son did not get an internship freshman year, mostly because he started the process too late. Luckily he’d been working for my brother who was in the computer business and they were more than happy to have him back and paid him very well. The next summer he went to the intership/job fairs at Carnegie Mellon. Got an internship he thought looked interesting. It fell through because of 2008 recession. Friends told him Nvidia was still looking so he ended up there that summer. The next summer (after junior year) a friend of his who was already at Google put up his name as someone they should look at for an internship. He took their tests, did their internship interviews and got the internship.
Younger son had a much harder time as his freshman grades brought down his GPA. He did an immersion program in Arabic his first summer which helped his GPA in the future, but they were still an issue as they hovered around 3.0 not the 3.5 many of the more interesting internships required. The summer after sophomore year he worked for the Tufts Conference Bureau which basically runs Hotel Tufts and all their various summer programs. He did that every year and eventually became the head student supervisor. That experience led to the interships he had after he graduated. (I think he might also have gotten a recommendation from a previous intern at his first internship, not sure.) He’s the one who in the end decided NGO work was not for him and is now a Naval officer.
My D17 got her internship-turned-job through the business school at UNC. During “internship season” (mid-fall of junior year for summer-before-senior-year internships) opportunities are posted through the business school and students can apply to as many as they want. She accepted a summer internship in January and the full time offer in August before her senior year.
Yes, kids should absolutely talk to their profs about jobs. I know the UT engineering profs tend to stay in touch with old students. It’s quite an active network.