To be panicking about DC’s employability post uni?

[NeedXanaxPlease]

DD is going into the final year of an Anthropology degree (might get a first but probably a 2:1) from a top RG uni. Has done a Fine Art foundation year. Always worked part time since finishing A-levels (Maths, English Lit, Art), first as a barista/front of house/waitressing, then as an after-school nanny during uni.
She loves working, is highly responsible, great people skills (and people judgement) and quite numerate/commercially savvy. She is a great kid and would be an asset to any team. But… she hasn’t had a single internship so no “relevant” work experience (didn’t get her act together after first year and a long recovery post an operation for a sporting injury after second year) nor does she really know what she wants to do after graduation. She is definitely not pursuing the classic investment banking, Bain/BCG/McKinsey, accountancy, law routes.
I am now feeling highly anxious and helpless as I don’t know how to support/guide her. I did the classic Tier 1 strategy consulting, MBA, corporate M&A so I am spending hours each week helping my friends’ kids who want to pursue this path (mock case studies, mock interviews, CV reviews) but am at a complete loss re how to help my own. I feel that I am spiralling. This is not helped by my being involved in graduate recruitment at my work – CVs I see are all full of Economics/Management/Sciences degrees, multiple internships/work experiences/summer schools – they are highly structured and tick all the boxes (to an extent where I can’t differentiate between them). My DD wouldn’t stand a chance on paper.
Sage mumsnetters, please reassure me that she can get a job without internships and with a “soft” degree? Does she stand a chance with graduate schemes? Should she even bother applying? What potential career routes she could explore?

@EndlessTreadmill

i reckon she actually has a plan - she just doesn’t want to tell you about it.
Would be interested to know what you consider a decent salary for her, say about 10 years in. If she progresses well, FMCG marketing in a leading company would be about £90k-£100k i reckon (with about 25% bonus on top). So good, but nothing like the earning power in banking/consulting…. Which may not be enough for you.

This would be more than enough. As I said before, all I want is for her to be solvent. The above would be enough to get a mortgage on a small flat in London and have a decent quality of life in with me helping out with a deposit.

it’s funny how many people are also saying law - she mentioned it a few times to me but I tried to dissuaded her from it given horrendous hours the lawyers I work with put in. The lifestyle doesn’t improve much with tenure. And all I see is corporate/M&A law which I think is mind numbing ply boring - at some point you’ve seen all the iterations on the 300 page contracts.

Again you are talking about your world . Corporate law is long antisocial hours due to time zone differences with mind numbing work about clauses in contracts .
plenty of other areas of law you know

Normal people do this. I did it and I have a perfectly good career.

There is absolutely no point in an intelligent young person making themselves miserable studying Management or Quantity Surveying for 3 years when they can learn the soft skills that actually make the world go round doing a degree in a subject they're interested in, and then see what comes next.

@MrsMasterclass There is a huge, huge range of careers which are not banking or similar

Remember, this is mumsnet. Non-banking careers are unthinkable.

Apparently, all buildings, cars, electronics, food, and toiletries just magically pop out of a factory when a guy pushes a button.

This is excellent advice and she’s the first on the thread to mention other life goals that really should be factored in to career planning.

My peers and I were encouraged to follow our dreams and were steered towards exciting, glamorous, roles that involved lots of international travel, big hours, long training, lots of money.

Nobody asked us what our goals were for marriage and family, or urged us to consider how our career plans fit in with that. If you work long hours in a female dominated industry it’s going to make it a lot harder to meet a husband (if there isn’t already a candidate on the scene). If you have to travel a lot, similar, and how will that fit together with a spouse’s job, and future children? Are there ways to cut back, or stop travel, or WFH in the future, if she wanted to spend more time with her kids? I’ll be advising my kids to take these things into account.

At the time you leave Uni it feels like these things are far in the future, but if you finish your 20s without having a child then there’s only a 50/50 chance that you’ll ever be a mother. There’s a huge epidemic of unplanned childlessness in our world just now. Sadly, some of the high-flying, beautiful women in my life are amongst them. So when my kids get to that stage I’ll be advising them to think not just of career and money but also holistically of how they see their ideal life in 20, 30, 40 years and how they can give themselves the best chances if achieving that.

Ok this is no use specifically for your dd as it's science, but I do a fair bit of recruiting graduates, and it is nothing like you describe! Our applicants have a degree. The really impressive ones have a year in industry or a part time job. Often they have been working for a few months or so in e.g. a supermarket because they've been looking for a graduate job for a little while. No internships, summer placements etc. The CV gets an initial screen by HR to make sure they are vaguely suitable and is then reviewed by me, then initial remote interview, then on site interview. No AI, no psychometric tests, no group role play, no weird gimmicky interview questions. This is a decent graduate job (not a graduate scheme) with a good career path. Maybe I am living in the dark ages but I imagined a lot of recruiting was still like this outside big companies.

Public as opposed to corporate law could be her thing. Lots of opportunities for advocacy and social justice work if she trained as a barrister. From what you say she has the passion and commitment to persevere with cases such as her friend.
https://www.matrixlaw.co.uk/practice-areas/public-law/civil-liberties-human-rights/

I agree with the PPs saying leave her be. She’s an adult, she chose her degree and she’s responsible for her own career planning.
You’re using words like tailspin, spiralling and freaking out. I understand that you’re anxious about her future but this level of reaction from you is way OTT. You can’t do this for her.

wow, she sounds amazing. Can I swap her for one of my kids?!

I wouldn't recommend Big 4 /Big accountancy career to ant sane person wputh minimal IQ in place. Whether they train in comms or not.
That aside, the OP is just that, interested and anxious to me but hands-off parenting is not my style.

I assure you it was not mostly luck. But sure - woman supporting woman and all that. Couldn’t have possibly worked my butt off, Networked networked networked and made opportunities for myself. In the cut throat world of an American tech company - you don’t make it based on luck. Your performance is constantly monitored. I say a little luck as my friend initially told me about the entry level data entry position that I started at on minimum wage.

What are those paths though? As you might have guessed from my post, my world is quite limited to finance. I am actually happy she is not doing it - I have seen enough women chewed up and spat out in these roles - but I am not familiar with what else is out there (that is not STEM/finance/law) that pays enough to have a semi-decent quality of life in London.
I'm quite mystified that someone who seems to have their own good career cannot imagine there are other paths and employment other than your own.
Do you think the whole world is employed in finance and law??
A degree in Anthropology isn't a pathway to any of those.

I think your priory needs to be stepping back, taking a deep breath, and dealing with what appears to be the biggest problem here..... Your spiralling anxiety over your Daughters future. She's young, there are years and years for her to find out who she is and what she wants to do. I'm 46 and honestly, all the people I know earning the most with lucrative and high flying careers got there by life experience rather than qualifications.

You really need to take a step back before you make your Daughter with her 2:1 degree feel like a failure before she's even started.

I think it’s really important to not make comparisons with those of us who are older (I’m late 40’s) to people entering the job market today.

i have friends with degrees in classics, anthropology and ancient history- now two teachers and a very successful journalist. My partner runs a marketing agency- on a degree in medieval history.

teaching still seems an option of course, but my journalist friend said that her multi national agency would recruit from a massive pool of graduates with a degree and masters in journalism.

my partner also recruits a couple of times a year - only interviews people with a degree/masters in marketing plus internships or similar. Because there are so many applications with a specific degree now.

its not the same as ‘when I were young’ and it raises unrealistic expectations to suggest it is.

probably the best thing for your DD OP would be to maybe take a gap year, travel, then apply for some work experience in various areas until something clicks - then do a relevant masters.

Maybe HR or Corporate Responsibility might suit her? I work in broadcasting and there are lots of interesting jobs connected to programming research which might also suit her skill set?

I think you have a very narrow idea of what her life should look like with your "small flat in London" plan.
Is any of this what she wants or what you want?

I live in the North West, 3 adult Nieces who all got decent enough degrees and are friendly, hardworking and personable. They didn't "tick boxes" in the way you are describing yet they have always worked and now all own their own homes and have a job they enjoy.

Your dd may well have a plan of her own but is not sharing it with you because she's struggling to breathe due to all the plans you're making for her.

I get that you're well-intentioned but step back and let her find her own way.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm really working class, and then along come these threads to remind me that I absolutely am.

You sound completely unhinged. The 'tier 1' route you discuss is open to so few privileged young adults it's untrue. It wasn't considered by a single person I knew. Funnily enough we all have successful careers and haven't had to resort to Onlyfans yet.

I did a 'soft' degree at an excellent University, and my classmates are now a mixture of academics, 2 working for the UN, charities, in social policy, teaching, media. Would any of those really be so awful?!

It's completely normal to not know what you want to do at 20 isn't it? Is this why I don't have a Tesla?!

@Kelly51
Do you think the whole world is employed in finance and law??
A degree in Anthropology isn't a pathway to any of those.

I am clearly not articulating my thoughts well enough - I don't think the whole world is law and finance. My world is law (corporate only) and finance. That’s what I am familiar with given I did an Economics degree and an MBA. As did most of my friends. And yes, we all ended up in the world of consulting, finance and corporate. A couple chucked it in and became life coaches, aromatherapists, etc but after they had a corporate career. That’s why I posted - asking for views on what alternative career paths exist they can provide a decent (not luxurious) living. Anthropology was mentioned for context to give a picture what my DD finds interesting and what might suit - so that posters do not come with something like “an actuary is a great career path - stable job and well paid” for which you clearly need a maths degree.

Yes, I was going to suggest academia if she is passionate about her subject.

What about doing an internship abroad through someone like Bunac? Widen her horizons, give her a breather and get some work experience too.

bunac.org/internships

Not sure what your point is here. I clearly distinguished between people who need the money - like me (no rich parents, no London home to live in rent free). And those who don't. Like OP's daughter, and possibly yours.

It's not about what's good for society it's what you as an individual want to achieve.

In 2024 it's very difficult to get a secure roof over your head if you don't earn well relatively early, especially in London. 20 years ago my colleagues came back to the UK after 3 years of travel in Australia, walked into a corporate job and bought a property immediately. You can't do that these days. You need thousands of pounds in savings for the deposit.

We all make decisions based on our circumstances. And, as we mature, find out what we like about the working world.

Personally I started in finance, went into tech and have worked across every sort of company imaginable. Young people get starry eyed about social justice, but charities, 'social enterprises' etc all can have the same problems with politics, bad managers, etc as any other company. Equally, a lot of creative people I know quit because they spent more time dealing with other mundane work stuff.

But you don't have to bankroll her if you don't want to. You need to make your expectations clear, also not impose your judgement of what's best for her. Impose a deadline on her moving our after graduation.

Even if she moves out at 23, has a few years living on her own and all the expenses that entails. She might get that high paid job after all! Or not, move back in a few years later, save and get a flat deposit. Or move abroad.

She's extremely unlikely to be struggling financially in the long-term with you as a safety net. But you want to be the safety net, not the default option.

I mean, she has worked, so she has a good work ethic but it's for pin money presumably. If you've been paying for all the big stuff during her studies, it's time for her to do that herself.

Crikey OP Panicking and spiralling? Take a step back to be proud of your daughter and her achievements and trust in her ability to find her own path as she sounds more than capable.

I'll tell you about my DD, also a hard worker/high achiever. The only help she had from me was getting her first pub job age 16 when she was on study leave for her AS levels. I noticed the pub up the road from her school was having a recruitment morning and suggested she go. She had a fit, study blah blah, no cv etc. I did her CV that night and dropped her off at 8am, they offered a trial shift and she was in, never looked back. It was a great first job, local gastro pub group, doing really well back then. I let her take an afternoon off school Drs appointment for a wine training afternoon. I think they had forgotten she was only 16. They learnt about the wines they sell, how to present them and up sell, how to cork them and might have done a bit of tasting too. She won employee of the month several times, gifting us a free meal at the fine dining pub in the group among other prizes. The best thing was when it was time to leave to move on to Uni she was able to pass on her job to DD2, a shy and diffident girl who would never have survived an interview and trial shift but trained up by her sister got stuck in and also benefited hugely from working for the group. Also whenever she was home in the holidays there was always work available for DD. She's been great about working, earning money and paying her way.

Onto uni and a 1st from RG uni in international relations with quantitative methods. She graduated in 2020 and graduate job plans evaporated with covid. So she, her boyfriend and a few others headed to Spain with some company (can't remember who) that organised teaching assistant jobs for them. She spent two years there, very low pay but had a great time overall, learnt another language (fluent) and picked up a TEFL qualification along the way. Although some aspects of lockdown were very strict in Spain overall they had a better time there than here, her school was near a beach and she could swim all year round, keen climbers they were able to get out of the cities for long hikes and climbing and still managed to see lots of art galleries and other sights.
At the end they went to Italy and worked in a summer camp in the mountains, lots of taking children hiking, mountain biking, climbing and other sports. The best thing was they went there as vegans, but all food and accommodation was part of the deal and with no opportunity to self cater they shut up and put up and discovered / rediscovered the joys of cheesy pizza, bolognese and tiramisu. Made my life so much easier for cooking when she came home!
Back home she slotted back in with the pub group managing one of the pubs whilst putting in job applications.
She didn't pursue one of the big banks after being interviewed online by some scruffily dressed chap working from his bedroom with a rumpled bed in the background.
She got a 2 1/2 year training contract with a data management company, a few months intense training at the main office followed by industry secondments. She currently earns what OP might think low compared to banking and law, but it's more than junior doctors get as they head out to the wards. Every secondment she's been on they have tried to poach her and offered jobs at double her current salary, so heading towards OPs expectations but she obviously wants to complete the training contract and also would have to repay a significant sum of money if she left before the end.

So apart from booting her into the pub that morning she's done it all herself and is doing well.
Of her friends from uni who graduated same time as her several were poleaxed by lockdown etc and accepted low level jobs in things like local housing Dept and stuck together where they were. I worried for them that they would find themselves in a rut working well below their abilities. But they are all doing well, her close group have all ended up in London so they are all together again, one has joined DD's company on same training scheme, the one who was in housing is now in civil service policy development doing work around domestic violence and climbing the ladder.

As for banking. The son of some wealthy distant relatives through marriage went to the same uni as DD at the same time. She said he was always drunk or high on drugs whenever she happened to see him at student events. He never did a single days work/internship unless you count desultory hitting tennis balls with children at the village summer tennis camp. Probably bigged that up on his cv. 🙄After extended holiday at home following graduation somehow a job appeared in the city thanks to Dad's contacts so off he went to become a banker. 🤷‍♀️

Anyway whatever they earn labour are going to tax us all to the hilt and I've no idea why OP thinks ending up in London is a life goal.
None of DDs group plan to stay there. Knife crime is a constant worry. One of DD's colleagues was walking back to his flat one night, in a group of five when they were approached by a man and a woman. Wrongly thought 5:2 wins. The man punched them to the ground while the woman transformed into a stabbing ninja. It's a miracle none of them died. One chap was stabbed several times. Her friend blocked a stab to the face/eye with his hand and severed tendons affecting his ability to type with that hand. He supposedly lived in a decent area but there was another killing on the street so he's moved somewhere hopefully safer.

To PP who said work romance doesn't happen, it's happened to DD, lovely chap on the same scheme as her.

Relax OP. Encourage your daughter to travel if she never had a gap year or even if she did. Take time. Do fun stuff. Enjoy life while she's young free and healthy. She'll be fine.

A couple of last comments - I hope youve been reassured there are many many routes open to your dd, which will pay reasonably well, suit her personality and that she isn't on the back foot for.

I will add though that I strongly believe your 20's are the age where you can spend a few years working things out, travelling, doing grunt jobs, trying grad schemes, quitting because it's not what you wanted, spending a couple of years in Australia etc. If you can't do those things when you're young with no children or mortgage, when can you. And you should - cos you're a long time in work.

Finally does she know you're posting - you've told us her very niche course and effectively which uni she is at - it would be quite easy for anyone who knows her to work out who she is from this thread.