17 year old son really struggling to get work

[FrancisSeaton]

He wants an apprenticeship but would consider part time college and a part time job and has applied for loads and had a few interviews but getting nowhere. Is there a service of any sort that helps youngsters get jobs?

Until self driving lorries become standard

If he is 17 and took his GCSEs last year what has he been doing since? I would certainly explore with him college courses like engineering etc as these often to lead to jobs through placements during the course. He might need to identify companies that do what he wants to and contact them directly.

Yep, no point in anyone even thinking about taking a lorry test now, total waste of time. See also pretty much any job as AI will run the world soon, out teens might as well give up now eh @YesThis

Or for the more sensible,

Apprenticeships can be hard to get when you know what you want to do and it sounds like your son doesn't so I'd suggest trying to narrow that down and if you haven't already done so sign up for alerts on the government apprentice service and apply for everything that comes up

This. We have a farm and although we don’t actively look for apprenticeships if someone knocked on our door with a willingness to work we’d set one up and have done so in the past

When preparing for an interview get him to put the job descriptions into chatgpt and ask it to derive competency based questions. Then he can plan good answers in advance.

OP I know little about this company, it's just that a friend of mine was talking about it because she had done a bit of work with them and only had good things to say about them. Tony Blair's son Euen set up the company and I believe it is free for apprentices

https://www.multiverse.io/en-GB/young-adults

I would strongly encourage him to look at doing some volunteering. No it's not going to bring any money in but it will provide him with some experience of work, something else to put on his cv and talk about in job interviews and a referee who can attest to his character, timekeeping etc. It really doesn't matter if the volunteering is unrelated to what he'd like to be doing for a career, all that matters is that he takes it seriously and applies himself as he would a paid job.

That sounds great
Thanks everyone for your idea

Ideas

In reality most school leavers CVs are incredibly basic, they have no discerning skills or experience and are all pretty much the same as the next so applying online is literally a numbers game. My DS secured an apprenticeship at a main dealership at 16, everyone says he was lucky but I genuinely believe it was down to his approach. The only thing that sets your DC apart from the others is his personality and you can’t show that on paper. Ditch online applications, print copies of his CV and send him off to hand it in and introduce himself at any and every company he wants to work for. It’s the only way to stand out from the crowd.