Uni student DD won’t/can’t get a job!

[sweetkitty]

DD2 is in 2nd year at uni (we’re in Scotland) she enjoys it & has a flat with her bestie. She gets a student loan which pays for her rent with a little left over. I give her £160 a month for food etc so £40 per week.

She understands most students have a PT job whilst at uni but apparently she can’t find one. First year ok she was settling in, then she came home for 4 months and did absolutely nothing. Best friend organised the flat and it’s in one of the most central streets in the city, think coffee shops, independent shops, pubs on her street. Loads of shops within walking distance too. She says she’s looked and applied but as she has no experience she doesn’t get interviews (she’s only had one).

Now it’s coming up to Christmas loads of adverts for temp work but she’s done nothing. She whinges about being poor etc won’t actively job hunt but does she have to if I’m paying for her food? I can’t stop paying for it I don’t want her to starve but at the same time even a few hours a week somewhere would help.

Also I suspect she has ASD but she’s never been formally diagnosed as she didn’t see the point. She doesn’t go out or socialise. I do think she has social anxiety and hates talking to people.

Considering top class grads can't get jobs atm, it is not easy to get a job as a student. As others have pointed out, it's difficult to cover the hours wanted, as lectures and seminars change every week, and they also often want you when you are back at home.

Summer jobs are much better.

Dd couldn't get a job at uni and really tried. This was in Sheffield. Friends who were successful ended working too much and struggling. It's not always easy.

So she got a job at home and put in long hours in the holidays, saving her money.

She only gets £40 a week! This is barely enough. I am astonished at this thread. If OP can't afford it she shouldn't be at Uni. I feel sorry for her.

I can see why they would struggle in cities like Sheffield. There are almost 60,000 students there over the two Unis.

There are only so many shops, cafes and call centres offering jobs that would be suitable.

Much depends on the course.

If it’s a 9 to 5 lectures plus labs type course with lots of course work, that’s already a full time job. Likewise if it’s medicine or law, for example and the parents can afford financial support, I’d recommend work only in uni holidays to avoid impact on grades. Some Arts courses may have lesser work commitments and the students will have time to work.

The other barriers to work are the lack of availability in some places. It’s much harder than it used to be especially with no experience. And a kid who hasn’t worked especially with any ND traits, may well be lacking in confidence/ procrastinating. What about something a little less daunting like babysitting or maybe tutoring in her discipline.

I couldn’t find anything when I was doing a 9-5 masters last year, and I was really trying, so it can be hard.

I don’t know if most students do have a term time job? During undergrad I only worked in the holidays. I would have had a breakdown working term time too (I know some people manage it though).

My ds has also struggled. he is actually in his final year at Uni and will have done four years as changed course. He has really struggled ( i also suspect mild asd). Last christmas he had a few weeks seasonal work and again this year has got another seasonal job but never been successful during the long summer holidays. I dread him graduating next summer. The problem is that lots of hospitality employers have cut down on staff due to the NI hike so just aren't taking people on. It's even harder when ( like my son ) he has no transport and no money to learn to drive.

My son and daughter ( Scotland) have been both applying for jobs and getting nowhere. Its hard to get a job!
My son got an interview at Tesco then heard nothing. Not even a sorry, on this occasion you have been unsuccesfull ( shame on you Tesco not to have the decency to at least email to say he hasnt got the job) Completely demoralising tbh.
My daughter just managed to.get a cleaning job that fits in with her studies but it has been hard to get a response to anything. Your dd might be trying but I agree that there's lots of competition atm, so much harder!

I have two at Uni and we give them £300 a month each. Their loans barely cover their rent.

This is what my ds is going to do this next couple of months. He is not good with social interactions so has got a job at Curries in the warehouse. He is much better with this type of work.

As the mother of a dd with ASD I can’t believe some people here are suggesting that you cut her money op! I’d like to see them try and live on little more than £40 a week for food, period products, toiletries, cleaning materials etc.

Op you need to support your dd to get assessed. Do you know anything about asd and how it can affect people? Does she? If she doesn’t go out or socialise that means it’s a question of her probably not being able to cope with a job rather than not being able to find one. Or being extremely fearful around it.
She can be helped to get a job but she may need a few different strategies and some more support.

Autism in young women by definition (auto > self) mostly manifests internally. It might be a fight for her every day to get up and dressed and attend lectures or visit the supermarket or travel on public transport and appear outwardly as if it isn’t affecting her. That is the very essence of masking and that can be exhausting.

Her brain may not filter out sights, sounds and smells in the same way that ours do. She may be unable to cope with sensory overload and is already at her limits. That four months at home may not be her “doing nothing”, it might be her recovering!

Many autistic young people struggle with the looser timetable of uni following the more structured school day and consequently university is often where the wheels fall off!

Her social anxiety could be very high, she could be using up a lot of her bandwidth just sharing a flat with a friend.

My dd is at uni too and being diagnosed has helped her find better strategies for living eg she can’t tolerate the heat, strip lighting and crowds in a shopping centre, so working in retail would be hell for her. But she has got quite a lucrative job tutoring a nine and eleven year old who are new to the uk, and she helps them with their homework twice a week and once at weekends. Her bf who has adhd and asd has found pt work at a garden centre where he can spend most of his time outside, tending to plants, and unloading stock, rather than interacting with the public.

Please talk to your daughter op. You say she enjoys university and that’s fantastic! But if she doesn’t go out and socialise she may not be coping as well as she says, and she may be blaming herself for it, Or she may be content just living a very quiet life with her own daily routines. Either way, she may need help to cope outside of her comfort zones.

We literally ended up driving our ds back to his xmas temp job in his Uni town last year ( 2 hour drive) in the hope that if he honored the Boxing day shift they'd given him they would keep him on longer. They didn't ! Agree it's very difficult. We just thought it would help if he had even a little experience under his belt.

Is she not going out because of social issues or because she can't afford it?

Nobody is enjoying living on 40 quid a week. Maybe she's stuck in a rut and needs a bit of help applying?

My DS is currently 3rd year at a Scottish Uni (think small city - not Glasgow or Edinburgh) and we live in the south west of England. He always has part time jobs before he left for uni (retail mostly) so plenty of experience to offer. For his first year he didn’t look for a job in term time (but he did work all summer when he was home). Once he hit second year and was out of halls he did start looking half heartedly for a job - but with no joy. Come the beginning of this year he started looking in earnest (tan out of money) and applied for everything he could find - but again absolutely no joy. Finally in May he got a really good bar job - when he was interviewed he was told there were over 100 applicants for two jobs!!! He got really lucky. But he had to stay in his uni town all summer and won’t be able to come home for very long at all for Christmas.

What I’m saying is there may be jobs advertised but competition is likely to be very fierce. And there will be an expectation for work over Christmas and the summer. If that isn’t some your DD is prepared to do then it is going to be tough I’m afraid.

£40 a week is not very much at all! Can’t believe some people are saying to cut it. When your child decides to go to Uni you are supposed to top up their funding to the full maintenance grant level.

DD has friends at Uni whose parents give them nothing at all and they do struggle with two part time jobs, and keeping on top of their Uni work.

For DD I said that doing well in the degree is her priority. There’s no point taking out all those student loans and then doing badly on the course because you are working to live.

DD has managed to find some temp work in the holidays and she says she finds that easier than working in term time, because it’s hard to find student jobs in the city she is in especially if you can’t commit to working during the summer holidays.

I would think for someone with ASD it would be hard to organise themselves to do both the degree course, and a part time job, and so temp work in the holidays would be better.
Young people often lack basic skills in how to get a job. Can you help her with signing up to temping agencies in the summer, putting a CV together, research places locally that might need temp staff. Even cat / dog / babysitting would bring in some money and give her some experience.

@Harriet9955 it’s what I ended up doing too back in the day. I’m really really bad at social interactions and painfully shy, so I started off working in factories/packing via temp agencies. I’m honestly not sure if I’d prefer customer service even, DD works in hospitality, is quite confident and even she hates how draining it is.

Even now as an adult I don’t work in customer facing roles, it does feel self-limiting but at the end of the day, we have to work. @sweetkitty your DD needs to find work that suits her traits.

However I have just seen in your op you said that she came home for 4 months ‘and did absolutely nothing’. So for me that would have been the issue. When DD came home in the summer (and they get long holidays!) we expected her to help around the house, cook meals etc and to actively look for some temp work.

We do stop DDs allowance over the summer holidays as we are feeding her, and if she needs spending money she needs to earn it. So that motivated her to get a temp job.

DD is at Notts and has struggled to get a job. For certain MH related reasons she can't work with food and there are 2 Unis there with a lot of students chasing jobs anyway. She is doing BioChem and has contact time 9-5 most days so only option would be weekends when I would actually like her to have free time (she actually does study as well then).
She does some voluntary work when she is home for holidays and earns a bit of money by pet sitting
Luckily we can support her financially as getting and doing a job would be really difficult for her

I know plenty of students who have really tried, and failed, to find work. Both PT work term time and holiday work. Holiday work seems to go to home students who work weekends already. The adverts may be for jobs wanting more hours than she is able to give due to university commitments.

Loads of employers have cut back on low level jobs as a direct result of Labours changes to employer NI and increase in minimum wage.

Yes and it’s not just students who are after these jobs. DD did manage to get a job through a temp agency in the summer. I asked if she was working with other students and she said no - there was an actress, another guy in-between jobs etc. and only one other student.

In her latest interview she said she could do 2 of 3 of Xmas eve, boxing day and NYE, so we will need to drive her there, if she gets the job.

But I'm intrigued at the difference between some posters insisting its easy for students to get a job and the multiple other threads where people are saying its really tough. Some areas must be easier than others

My DD has always been motivated, experienced at KPing, bar and waiting; but couldn’t find a job last year in central London, living in hall next to major tourist attraction and a stones throw from others, loads of food outlets within eyesight. It’s really hard - no one wanted to employ her 8 hours per week with limited availability. Don’t be too hard on her and ignore the usual psychos who come on to make deliberately spiteful comments.

To be fair, by mid-October most of the student p/t jobs are filled. Also, as ASD she is probably crippled with anxiety over job hunting or even having the commitment of a job. Give her a bit of slack but help her job hunt in the summer for something to tie her over.

If you are in a University town it will be harder as you are competing with all the other students. Also you do need to commit to working during the holidays (DDs halls closed in the summer so that wasn’t an option for her. Also she really wanted to come home for a while).

Event work in the summer could be a better option OP but you do have to get in there early as they are popular with students so get snapped up. E.g bar work at festivals, wedding catering, event stewards.

I would tell her I am going to halve her money so she needs to find a job.