Anyone else feel like they have/will have no idea how to help their kids enter job market now?

[Echobelly]

My kids are early and late teens now, oldest will start uni next year. He has a pretty clear idea what he wants to do, which is great. It's low paying and hard to get into but he's realistic about that. Youngest still no clue really, and that's ok now.

But I feel like things have changed so profoundly since I finished education, and may change even more in the next few years I'm a bit of a loss to how to help. Other than advising them to become HVAC engineers - I mean, looks like the UK is going to start needing air con in homes soon!

I don't want to be like boomers telling millennials that they should walk in to an office and hand the manager a CV. 😂

Having watched the difficulties some of my friends children have had finding jobs, I’ve funded my eldest through a “side hustle” so that at least she has an income whilst at college. She qualified as a lash and nail tech whilst in year 11 (you can’t do it until you’re 16), and she qualified with an NVQ Level 3 in July of this year. Since then she’s renting a chair in a salon and earning around £100 a day doing beauty. She’s in college 3 days a week and 1 day placement, so there’s not a lot of spare time but it least it brings in an income. It’s also allowing her to learn about bookkeeping, tax, profit etc. And it’s also something she’s got a skill for life, should she not find her dream job. So I plan to do the same for my youngest, except she will do dog grooming. Every other person around here has a cockapoo. We have Lhasa’s, people have shitzus etc. they all need grooming. Ours cost £65 a month. I did the math on how much my groomer must be earning and it makes no wonder she can afford 7 holidays a year! And I don’t expect the dog grooming industry to slow. DD is only 14 now but literally cannot wait to get started. The £3k fee will be well worth it in my eyes.

Now I get that not everyone will be able to give their child a helping hand. But if you can, it’s worth thinking about. There are loads of courses you can pay for that they can do part time - plumbing, plastering including, not just hair and beauty (and dog grooming). But, I’d also recommend them applying for jobs too as interview skills are a must. Before my DD qualified in the nails, there was a gap between her finishing school where she applied for part time jobs - JD, Superdrug etc. Going to those made her a whole lot more confident and able to speak to people. Whilst she didn’t get these jobs, I’m pretty sure she would have been a lot more reserved than she is now.

Personal characteristics don't pay mortgages, not really. Focus on specialisms, and personal characteristics, they're not mutually exclusive

I encouraged mine to work from as early as they could, paper rounds, pub work and eventually high street stores through college. They gained soft skills, customer service skills and time keeping.
my eldest finished university mid August and started a post grad role in her field in mid September. She’s done extremely well but they did say they liked her previous work ethic and she was confident when they met at one of the stages in the process.
set them up be an all rounded individual and employee and hope they take your lead

I know of so many young graduates around age 24 who are just not getting into their first ‘proper job’.

I think that a trade is a great option right now.

That’s absolutely brilliant itsallabitofamystery!
Really creative. I agree that finding your own money making hustle is really important nowadays. With thousands of kids out of work and bloody robot interviewers they need to find a way to beat the system.
I HATE that it’s like this though. I feel
like we keep being told that the country is not productive enough, yet the government seems to have no interest in training/ supporting the next generation to become productive people!

I agree with @Hellinnnnn- there is no specialisms at grad level - there’s potential, keep options open but having the right personal characteristics is the most important thing at grad level. They want to know you can make the right decisions at every level from grad to partner. You need to work with people, most grads don’t place any importance on this they’ve been fed the qualifications matter more than anything philosophy.

I worry.

But I'm also not sure that it's my problem

I didn't see DS's personal statement. I don't know which universities he applied to (apart from the one he got a place at), and when he went looking for bar work in the town he's at college at, he discovered his lecturers were already behind the bar.

Gone are the days of walking into summer jobs, fruit picking, working at sports centres, restaurants etc etc - other people have those jobs already

Fair. I'm also not planning to look at oldest's personal statement and fix uni choices are up to him. I'm less concerned about oldest as he has a plan but is also realistic about potential issues. Youngest may need more support.

I think it is harder than ever for those who aren't sure what they want to do. A younger colleague of mine was saying last week that he got into work by basically applying for random entry level admin with big businesses when he didn't know what to do, which would have been 8-9 years ago, but I think even that route is drying up a lot for the undecided.

It is when they cant afford to pay rent to said parent, he can't kick them out because there is literally no accommodation that will take them. DS1 at 18 decidedHe didn't want to go to university and applied for approximately three hundred jobs. He got about four interviews and eventually a job. We have to help intervene and work out what was going wrong ( mainly that his cv didn't have the right words to be picked out by AI and that he is the age he is and living in the uk in 2025.)

Agree, as a parent financially supporting DD at uni , looking at it from a practical/mercenary point of view, its in my interest if DD can secure a job. ....(the minimum maintenance loan doesnt stretch very far, if living away from home) but mostly i think it will be good for her confidence and give her a better chance when looking for work after uni, if she's at least had experience of interviews and various work places.

She's done volunteering at a charity shop, but the volunteering and unpaid internships that lots of people recommend all require financial support from parents (or maybe grandparents)

As it happened I didnt do anything to help DD get the 2 jobs she had over summer. I would probably get criticised for this but most days we gave her a lift for 1 journey/day when she was working at a job that took 2 hours to get to, on public transport (less than an hour in the car)

Trouble is that market will be flooded with people coming from other declining fields. There will also be less work due to loss of earnings in various workforces.

My DD16 is the same as your youngest – bright and capable, but SEN means she didn't do great in her GCSEs. Since September she's been studying for a BTECH in Animal Care and she absolutely loves it. She's already got a one-day-a-week work placement lined up, and an extended two-week one somewhere else, all hands on. She'll struggle at university so an apprenticeship while doing a zoology degree is more likely and the work experience she's doing now means she'll have a huge advantage over her peers doing A-levels first. So might be worth considering for your DS? But no, it's not a well paid industry unless you end up as director of a zoo or something equal – but that's certainly doable. We were a bit worried about DD not doing A-levels but now we are relieved she's already getting valuable work experience at 16. This one of the few professions that should be immune to AI advances – AI can't muck out elephants, feed monkeys or even walk dogs!

Number one is to get them into a work ethic as young as possible and prepare them for a life that doesn't revolve around them. Any kind of work - babysitting, waiting tables, dog walking, washing-up in a cafe, delivering leaflets. It's not the job that matters, it's the effort they have to make followed by a few quid in their pocket.

@Hufflemuff

Well university should be setting them up with placements and connections for work. This is a quality that you should prioritise when selecting a university IMO.

This! It's the biggest thing we hammered home to our son when we started looking at Uni open days etc. We researched prospective Uni's career advisory services etc and literally shoved the webpages in front of DS and ensured that at every open day, we visited their careers advice dept and talked to the staff there, also questioned the existing students when doing departmental tours, accommodation tours, etc., to ask what they thought of the careers advice, sandwich year placement advice, etc. We also all looked at league tables re careers advice scores, destinations (i.e. number in jobs) for each Uni, course, department, etc. We made such a big thing of it with our son that he finally got on board and started doing his own research, asking his own questions, etc. The difference in attitude between Unis was very shocking, with some going the "extra mile" and others basically doing little more than handing over a few leaflets!

The Uni he finally chose, was mostly based on their careers advice service. In the event, despite Covid restrictions, the careers advice was excellent. Several group talks, a few "one on one" sessions including CV review, sessions on "new" forms of online applications, online interviews, online aptitude tests, etc., group and individual "mock" interviews etc. All quite over whelming really and it was difficult for him to fit it all in between lectures and self study! He could easily have not bothered so much as it was all voluntary and most of the people he knew didn't bother doing everything that was available, but we'd really hammered it home to him to get as much advice/experience as possible.

It all came good and he now has a top graduate scheme job in one of the UK's biggest insurance/investment firms.

I don't think we should be trying to help our kids get into the job market necessarily. We should instead be equipping them with the skills and qualities that will enable them to navigate these challenges independently.

Resilience, resourcefulness, initiative, curiosity, persistence, interpersonal skills, flexibility, positivity, the ability to adapt to change, confidence, self efficacy etc.

The world is going to keep changing, and it's inevitable that we won't be able to keep up. But we don't necessarily have to if we prepare our kids to be able to find their own way through. We need to nurture and support their development to facilitate that.

Whilst I agree, a lot of those skills can be acquired by actually having a job, i.e. real life experience.

Personally, I was an immature mess when I left school. It was getting my first full time job, working closely alongside adults, that I matured and started to acquire "adult" skills like those you mention. I was a completely different person after just a few months, I grew massively in confidence, resilience, etc. That kind of thing can't easily be "taught" it has to be experienced in real life. I think that's why a lot of employers insist on work experience, relevant or not, as ANY work experience for a decent length of time will mean some workplace skills, even if the type of work is nothing like the job being applied for.

Of course, work experience absolutely helps to develop those qualities, and it is to be encouraged, but there are many other things that parents can do to facilitate the development of such qualities before kids even get to the age where they might be thinking about getting a job. And focusing on those qualities/character traits makes it relatively easy for kids to go out and find their own part time jobs/work experience opportunities.

Yes, but like a lot of "parental" duties, lots of parents don't have those skills themselves, so can't pass them on to their children. Hence why schools, Unis and employers have to fill the gap. I've no doubt that "some" parents can instill all those qualities and attributes, there needs to be "outside" influences to fill the gap when the parents can't or won't do it. And a workplace, any workplace, is a good place to start to do that, probably better than a school.

I'd suggest grads even knowing that these attributes are important is half the battle. Being aware of the need and importance of developing the personal attributes required by more employers is the first step. I think schools and universities are pretty poor at helping kids personally develop - getting a part-time job can help, but to get the best from their experience, they really need to understand that employers want more than a degree, and experience isn't about the knowledge acquired, it's the interpersonal skills developed, especially in the early days.

Times have certainly changed. Posters saying “do a paper round” “get a holiday job” - !!!! Businesses are operating on a shoestring now and no longer employ heaps of Saturday kids.

What has really put a spanner in the works for my dc is the application process. Faced with 1000s of CVs (all auto-uploaded) employers are arbitrarily culling. Then follow AI tests and even AI interviews! It doesn’t seem to matter what your qualifications are let alone “soft skills” - to get through the door you are competing with masses of candidates, perhaps most of whom are unsuitable but if they’ve “passed” the algorithm they’re not eliminated.

And don’t get me started on “woke” hiring practices. What business is it of an employer what job your parents had when you were 14?!

My parents were in their 40s when I was born. They’re boomers and the world has changed so much since they were young.
I didn’t even know the difference between university and college until I was 17. Not kidding.

It’s partially my fault for not telling them anything about what I did at school but they had no idea what a gcse was. Back in their day they were called o levels and most kids left school before doing them and still managed to get a good job.

It’s interesting to see on Mumsnet how much others advise their kids through the young adult/teenage years. Im glad I had my kids young so I’m not as out of touch as my parents are

The thing about what jobs your parents did when you were 14 is purely for DEI monitoring purposes. Employers won't be using it in their hiring decisions... the hiring managers won't even see this info in most cases.

I worry about this too.

one thing that reassures me is nowadays you can pay experts to support you- university coach/ CV & job application receiving etc. I have a friend who does it and she’s brilliant. I would have no problem throwing a few hundred quid at it- it’s so important to get support in a competitive workplace.

for those saying it ever was thus - yes and if I can do anything to make it easier for my children I will. No one helped me and I struggled for years longer than I needed to.

Best thing you can do is make sure they do a worthwhile degree if they are going to uni or get a good apprenticeship if they are not.

Worthwhile degrees are things like law, medicience, hard sciences, engineering, anything numerate basically. There are a wide variety of jobs available to anyone with good numeracy skills, finance and accountancy, programming/IT, STEM and moving on to management after

For non academics support in getting them a good apprenticeship is key. Skilled trades can earn far more than a lot of low value graduates in soft subjects. Plumbing, electrics, plastering and painting, tiling/fitting, building and landscaping are all good things to be in.

Businesses are operating on a shoestring now and no longer employ heaps of Saturday kids.

The ones that do won't employ kids! My DD16 and because of employer liability insurance, she is deemed too young for a lot of places. She had the same issue even trying to get work experience – she got knocked back a few times before she got her day release placement because the companies could only take on 18s and above.