Student daughter only offered one trial job in a year

[RetiringRita]

I'm interested to know if other students are finding this.
My DD is a third year student (in September). She's been applying for jobs since April. After nearly 100 applications she's got a trial tonight as a cleaner. Forty mile round trip. No other interviews.
She has experience in retail, care and computers.
I'm proud that's she going but it's a 200 mile journey each week.
Even McDonald's have no vacancies near us.

She's almost graduated and the only job she can get is cleaning?

I love my cleaner but even she would agree that your dd needs to aim higher.

She needs to speak to the careers team at her uni who should be able to point her in a better direction of something aligned to her degree.

Unless you live on a remote island or her degree is in something utterly pointless, there's no way she's applied for 100 jobs and can only get a cleaning job - has she shown you her spreadsheet of applications? (I work with ug students who as part of their course are required to reach out to 50+ companies, some come to me moaning that they've not heard back but when pressed it's evident they've emailed 2 or 3)

Is this for a summer job? My DD can't find one either.

She genuinely cannot get a retail job this year. She has many more years of study.
We live near a very large town 200,000+ and it was always known for good employment opportunities.
She applied for a McDonald's job this morning, but was filled within two hours.
She's happy to start at 6am but all our waitrose and Marks and Spencer vacancies are 4am starts. That she feels she cannot do.
Her degree is clinical but no luck at our local hospital even as a porter!

@Ohmygodthepain I think this is for a summer job. She hasn't graduated yet

If she can do 6am she can do 4am…she just goes to bed earlier. She can’t cherry pick

Yes a summer job. She drives and has a reliable car.
Happy to go through DBS.
She had one care home ask her to pay £16 per day for a enhanced dbs check each morning then they rejected her because she queried it!
She spent two years volunteering at our local hospice.
She's so disheartened.

Does the university offer any research fellowships over summer? Many of these will be remote work and can be across discipline. I have 3 ug students working for me this summer from various subjects helping me to get a project finished. The hours are probably less than retail but it's interesting work.

Try Amazon - my student DC did this for several years in the holiday, it’s really flexible and good hourly rate. She could do the unpopular shifts early and late

flex.amazon.co.uk

I think companies prefer staff who aren’t going to vanish at the end of summer. The job market isn’t what it was do can get someone in who might stay for years rather than a few months.

If she doesn’t mind cleaning consider a residential job at a big hotel. Costs sbout £70 a week room and board and lots of housekeeping/ waitressing jobs available for summer months. My cousin has done this for a few years and saves £3-4 K over the summer , tax rebate in April. It works out really well.

It's so disheartening when they want to work. My DD commutes to uni as its close so she's available around her studies too.

Bumping as my ds is at uni, has been looking for a summer job but cannot find anything. Granted he has no previous work experience but we do live in London so would think there'd be more opportunities. Friend who works as student advisor at a uni in London says job market is impossible at the moment. I encouraged him to find some voluntary work to gain experience, which he has. However it's gardening based so not sure how useful that is.

Has he tried charity shops for retail experience?

Food delivery? Amazon delivery (if he has a car)

My daughter has struggled to find a summer job this year. She did get a job in a cafe which she liked but was then let go as they wanted someone who would stay on after the summer, even though this had all been discussed at the interview.
She applied for loads of jobs from when her course finished in April and had some interviews but wasn’t successful in any of them.
She has now managed to get a job but doesn’t start until the end of the month, it has definitely been harder this year.

It seems to be a big problem this year - there's an article on the BBC news website about this - I tried to link but bastarding MN won't let me post it....
Mine gave up and has emailed all her babysitting contacts to offer multi child nannying over the summer which seems to be working at the moment

My DS is at the end of his second year at Uni and has had no luck ever in finding anything apart from a few weeks of supermarket work last Christmas. It is very depressing. My older ds who went to Uni a few years ago never had any problem - worked at theme parks and macdonalds all through his Uni years.

my DD is almost 21, going into her 3rd year and applied for over 100 jobs since september with no luck. She is trained in bar work and waitressing, but is open to pretty much any type of evening/ weekend job. Retail won’t take her as no experience, she has applied to every local bar and cafe in both her uni town and home town (as it’s close enough to come home for weekend work). She has also applied for seasonal summer jobs with no luck.

I think it’s bad due to the national insurance increase. Businesses seem to be cutting back big time. A friends son made over 100 applications before finally getting a part time waiting job.

Don't think the DBS thing is correct. Even the DBS update service is only £13 a year. Frankly a lot of people are not keen employing students.

How about tutoring.

Loads of online companies. And she can schedule the hours.

My nephew does this over summer and weekends

My niece has done courses in eyebrows and eyelashes extensions which she does in her spare time.

I think its about looking outside the box.

She doesn't necessarily have to apply for a job and work for someone.

There other options

Do you have any family members who need extra hands over the summer- other options.

Has she tried signing up with agencies for hospitality? Which town/city do you live near? Many race courses, venues, stadiums etc hire temp staff for summer events. If she can get into an agency, they’ll send her to all the events they work with.

She may struggle as many roles (even hospitality), unless the post is listed as a temp summer role only, would consider someone who is clearly only temporarily home from university and will disappear in September leaving them stuck. That’s my best advice!

I know people who do shifts as lifeguards over summer holidays.

And also we have people who only work during the summer/ holidays as office admin- which is great so people can take leave.

Do you live commuting distance to anywhere touristy? Holiday parks like Center Parcs around here take on students over the summer (and other holidays)

According to today's papers, there are now a thousand applications to get one 'post-graduate' job. There must be some unrealistic fantasy in the brains of who "go to uni", instead of working from 16.

Everyone can do O.U. Everyone can get a FREE degree online from Stanford. Everyone can keep on taking training and degrees as much and as often as they like.

But, do it from home, and while working. Pretending that internet does not exist is like pretending cars don't exist, and that everyone still needs to travel by horse. The equivalent of pretending horses and carriages are the only possible method of transport, is clinging to 100 year-old ideas of 'learning', pretending it can only be done on campus. Worse, demanding this "going to uni" indulgence is paid for by hard working, deserving people. Those latter, working and paying tax, are the ones rightly regarded as employable, Employable because they have never dodged out of working, proving themselves, getting experience and paying into the communal pot, not draining it.

Even worse, these pretenders are taking up taxpayer's money for a prolonged frolic, while knowing that multiple millions of workers and frail old people are desperately scrimping on everything, to pay their own rent, and to pay the ever increasing council tax. Nobody would resent council tax for social care or other real needs, but those, real, needs are not being allocated funds. Instead, council tax is going to fund the three-year party-goers who refuse to learn online..

Equally unforgivably, these so-called students are avoidably occupying habitable accommodation, knowing millions in this country are homeless..