Looking for a job after university? First, get off the sofa

 

More than 650,000 students left university this summer and many have no idea about the way to get a job. How tough should a parent be to galvanize them in these financially fraught times?

1 In July, you looked on as your handsome 21-year-old son, dressed in gown and mortarboard, proudly clutched his honours degree for his graduation photo. Those memories of forking out thousands of pounds a year so that he could eat well and go to the odd party, began to fade. Until now.

2 As the summer break comes to a close and students across the country prepare for the start of a new term, you find that your graduate son is still spending his days slumped in front of the television, broken only by texting, Facebook and visits to the pub. This former scion of Generation Y has morphed overnight into a member of Generation Grunt. Will he ever get a job?

3 This is the scenario facing thousands of families. More than 650,000 students left university this summer and most in these financially testing times have no idea what to do next. Parents revert to nagging; sons and daughters become rebels without a cause, aware that they need to get a job, but not sure how.

4 Jack Goodwin, from Middlesex, graduated with a 2:1 in politics from Nottingham this summer. He walked into the university careers service and straight back out again; there was a big queue. He lived with five other boys all of whom did the same. There was no pressure to find a job, even though most of the girls he knew had a clearer plan.

5 “I applied for a job as a political researcher, but got turned down,” he says. “They were paying £18,000, which doesn’t buy you much more than a tin of beans after rent, but they wanted people with experience or master’s degrees. Then I applied for the Civil Service fast stream. I passed the exam, but at the interviews they accused me of being ‘too detached’ and talking in language that was ‘too technocratic’, which I didn't think possible, but obviously it is.”

6 Since then he has spent the summer “hiding”. He can recount several episodes of Traffic Cops and has seen more daytime television than is healthy. He talks to his friends about his aimless days and finds that most are in the same boat. One has been forced out to stack shelves by his parents. For the rest it is 9-to-5 “chilling” before heading to the pub. So how about working behind the bar, to pay for those drinks? “I don’t want to do bar work. I went to a comprehensive and I worked my backside off to go to a good university, where I worked really hard to get a good degree,” he says. “Now I’m back at the same stage as those friends who didn’t go to uni at all, who are pulling pints and doing dead-end jobs. I feel that I’ve come full circle.”

7 Jacqueline Goodwin, his mother, defends him. She insists that he has tried to get a job, but having worked full-time since leaving school herself, she and her husband find it tricky to advise him on how to proceed. “I have always had to work,” she says. “It’s difficult because when you have a degree, it opens new doors for you, or you’d like to think that it does.”

8 Although she is taking a soft line with her son at the moment, she is clear that after an upcoming three-week trip to South America, his holiday from work will have to end. He may even have to pay rent and contribute to the household bills.

9  “They’ve got to grow up at some point. We’ve finished paying for university, so a little bit of help back is good,” she says. “The South America trip is the cutoff point. When he comes back there’ll be Christmas work if nothing else.”

10 Gael Lindenfield, a psychotherapist and the author of The Emotional Healing Strategy, says that the Goodwin parents have struck exactly the right note. The transition from university to a job is tough for parents and children: Crucially they must balance being positive and understanding with not making life too comfortable for their offspring.

11 “The main job for the parents is to be there because if they start advising them what to do, that is when the conflict starts. If you have contacts, by all means use those,” she says. “But a lot of parents get too soft. Put limits on how much money you give them, and ask them to pay rent or contribute to the care of the house or the pets. Carry on life as normal and don’t allow them to abuse your bank account or sap your reserves of emotional energy.”

12 Paying for career consultations, train fares to interviews or books are good things; being too pushy is not. But while parents should be wary of becoming too soft, Lindenfield advises them to tread sympathetically after a job setback for a few days or even weeks --- depending on the scale of the knock. After that the son or daughter needs to be nudged firmly back into the saddle.

13 Boys are more likely to get stuck at home. Lindenfield believes that men are often better at helping their sons, nephews, or friends’ sons than are mothers and sisters. Men have a different way of handling setbacks than women, she says, so they need the male presence to talk it through.

14 As for bar work, she is a passionate advocate: It’s a great antidote to graduate apathy. It just depends on how you approach it. Lindenfield, who found her first job as an aerial photographic assistant through bar work, says it is a great networking opportunity and certainly more likely to get you a job than lounging in front of the TV.

15 “The same goes for shelf-stacking. You will be spotted if you’re good at it. If you’re bright and cheerful and are polite to the customers, you’ll soon get moved on. So think of it as an opportunity; people who are successful in the long run have often got shelf-stacking stories,” she says.

16 Your son or daughter may not want to follow Hollywood stars such as Whoopi Goldberg into applying make-up to corpses in a mortuary, or guarding nuclear power plants like Bruce Willis, but even Brad Pitt had to stand outside the El Pollo Loco restaurant chain in a giant chicken suit at one time in his life. None of them appears the poorer for these experiences.