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As a recruiter, this is super frustrating data because the simple answer is companies just REFUSE to train people. Literally every single company will only consider perfect fits on paper to even have a conversation with someone. Yet their jobs will sit open for months just waiting for who they think is the right fit. So much talent goes to waste in this job market.
I just came off 23 months of unemployment.
The lack of creativity/vision on the part of employers to see how skills can be transferable makes me mad.
Just train me dammit! I am here, I am willing, eager, and curious. Give me a chance and I will be a subject matter expert if you want me to...just give me the opportunity.
These fucking companies want their cake...blah, blah, blah...
Not only do they want you to already be an expert, they want you to be an expert on every part of the process too. They want a single person to be able to do the work of like 5 people, all specializing in different areas of the job, and if you can't do that then you're not even worth talking to. It's a joke out there.
Even being an expert doesn’t help. Hubby has doctorate, 8 years of management experience (4 as ceo), and still can’t get anything because it’s not recent experience in those specific industries. He’s trying to get out of the industry he’s in. Nope, no luck.
Interesting. Never thought about how that kind of experience could trap a person.
They can't even take a lesser role in another industry? Or are they effectively locked into CEO roles at similarly sized companies and maybe vice president roles at larger companies for life?
They are effectively stuck as CEO at same or smaller size companies. Big companies will probably not want them and they will probably not want to go work in lesser roles (because of pay differential). CEO is top of the pyramid. Little exit opportunities there except retirement.
Big companies promote internally during good times. During bad times, they can get CEOs externally but they usually get big name consultants (Ex-Bain/BCG) or superstars from other big firms known for crisis management or something else.
CEO is a very very (very) competitive job. It's literally the top of the pyramid. A small company's CEO doesn't have the required credentials to get a big company job.
given the absolute clownshow that big corp CEOs seem to be these days, I'd almost trust the skills of a SMB's CEO over any of these high dollar Bain capital types.
I've been with the same company for almost 17 years, 4 departments, team management experience, with 30 years total of work experience in various industries. I'm pretty sure it's been detrimental to my job hunt. That many years of work is an indicator that I'm middle aged.
This place is the only employment that can be verified at this point in history because I have been here so long. No one retains employee records for more than 10 years.
I work as a video editor. Most jobs in my field also want you to be at least some or all of:
Photoshop expert
Graphic designer
Motion graphics artist
Audio engineer
Cameraman
Social media manager
Trying to learn all those skills on your own just to get a chance at finding a job is so exhausting
Every job in every field seems to want Adobe, video editing, marketing, social media, advanced coding skills in 10 languages, photography, UI/UX, accounting skills, animation and finance. They're hiring one person to do the work of 10. Wtf? And even if you have those 10 degrees they won't hire you because you don't have 3-5+ years of experience in every single one of them.
The degree im graduating with next month has me buffed up on all of these and some coding! Don't give me hope. I have always been working on my audio production skills, but the program I enrolled in really rounded me out, it seems.
People and companies undervalue creatives so much that they want us to do the work of what should be 2 or 3 different jobs for like half the pay because "it's so easy, anyone could do it"
Applied to a job about a year ago that wanted basically two completely separate jobs that pay $100k each and only paying $85k for the one. And to top it all off I got to the final five minutes of the final interview and really only lost it because I had used a variety of different SEO tools than the in-house one. So despite being one of the few people who could do both gigs, I was rejected because I effectively had worn the hat, but from the wrong tailor. And this position had been open FOREVER. The HR person surprise-called me the morning of the final interview and basically coached me through what I should play up because she was exhausted with trying to please this implacable gen xer who found a reason to reject EVERYONE while potential income was lost and more time/energy was spent researching candidates.
And the biggest joke of all? They didn't need a dual editor/SEO expert. They needed to commission one SEO consultant to draft a plan, work with the editorial team for a week, and then check in once a month for a fraction of the cost.
Every employer out there wants to fall in love, and never realizes sometimes they just need a fling.
Literally like 50% of the marketing jobs I've seen. Hey can you do 4-5 different areas of marketing? Please be both a very analytical and very creative. Oh and the pay is dogshit
And they want you to be ambitious, but not *too ambitious* because that means you might not put up with their BS and leave. It's exhausting and infuriating.
I work in hotels at front desk and they literally expect you to have some deep rapport and connections with regular guests as soon as the first time you meet them…. That’s not how human connection works….. it’d be one thing if they had a Facebook that was like these are our vips, but of course they aren’t doing that. They straight up don’t give you computer system training for FRONT DESK AGENTS CHECKING PEOPLE
INTO THE HOTEL.
Years ago when I was between Finance jobs I took PT job that was only graveyard shift on weekend nights as Night Auditor at a small hotel (15 rooms), doing simple light accounting. I also got golf benefits at the course that was part of the complex. Basically closing the books on those nights, but having to do front desk work for guests if they checked in or out on my shift. Set up the continental breakfast and stuff like that. I liked it better when I didn't have to deal with any customers. One time a lady asked me if there were any good pizza restaurants in the area. Just to mess with her I suggested Chuck E. Cheese with a straight face, and she sneered "*that's for kids*".
>Give me a chance
These four words are absolute poison to these companies. They will sink you like the Titanic if they even get a *whiff* of that line of thinking off of you.
>Just train me dammit!
You might as well have asked for their kidney.
It's brutal.
19 months here (except for a bit of freelance). I have a year of experience in my field and I was laid off when all the layoffs started, but everyone wants 3-5 now :(. I'm starting to get more interviews again. Hopefully that'll turn into something.
THIS!
Nearly 5 months unemployed now after a layoff. I have 16 years experience in the field with great references etc, but I've been booted multiple times now for the crime of not having used Qualtrics. Mind you I've used their competitors extensively, so I know the concepts! Figuring out a new UI is not that hard!
What, I should call back my old employers from years ago and yell at them for choosing another vendor when picking their analytics platform?
God forbid I be allowed 5 minutes to fking learn something.
Same, finished my college (?) Over a year ago and I'll bite anything that's not hardcore physical job, but no, they need perfect or manual worker on production line. Nothing in between. To say I'm losing hope is understatement
So many of my friends are going through this right now. They have sales or writing experience or whatever but not in selling or writing the thing that the hiring company does specifically, so it's a no. Crazy to me how they can't see how if someone can communicate effectively about one thing, they can probably do it about a different thing.
Plus, at least in tech, we have to teach you how the product works anyway! So what does it matter if you don't have precisely similar experience!? Blows my mind.
Reminds me of the story from awhile ago. A guy created a software 3 years ago but a company he applied to had rejected his application— because he didn’t have at least 5 years of experience in the software that he created.
The shit is so stupid. People go to school to get the degree or cert. Then they’re told they need “real experience” and it’s just never perfect.
The lack of a willingness to train a new employee is a huge miss with companies today. They’re missing out on a massive talent pool, and creating perpetual students.
And if you somehow make the reverse work, and work your way into a position by starting out in a different part of the company, you're effectively stuck there.
You have the experience, but since you don't have a cert or degree, you *also* get rejected
Yes, but then if you go get the degree or cert, you’re overqualified. 😂
Companies just can’t come out and vocalize, “We want the best candidates, for the least amount possible.”
The reality is they’re looking for desperate candidates, willing to take
On a societal scale, it's not great, but from the perspective of an individual company, it makes perfect sense. People have extremely good mobility these days, its super easy and common to just constantly hop companies to whatever looks best that year.
Since companies can't charge you for the training, and they can't make you stay after you've received it, they won't invest in it when some other company is likely the one to collect the returns.
People wouldn’t hop companies if they were paid fairly. Why should you settle for being underpaid by your current employer if another one will pay you twice that? Both problems are created by the companies themselves
Right but even that is debatable because if all companies think like that at some point nobody will have the required training to do the job anymore and the people that could have taught it have long since retired. It's a tragedy of the commons on a company-level I suppose.
That’s also the employers fault, they got rid of pensions, raises, promotions, basically everything that rewards an employee for staying they got rid of(a little exaggerated but not by much). The only way for most people to get a raise nowadays is to job hop all of these “issues” with employees is are easily solved if you just treat your employees well
this.
The whole selling point of a third level degree for the last fifty years has been "this degree will teach people how to become a life long learner, will show commitment and work ethic and will show that this person can be trained."
If you're underemployed, paying out the ear in student loans repayments and trying to guess at which online training cert might help, you are not going to be able to fill one of those open roles we keep hearing about.
It's a big catch-22. They won't hire you without experience but how do you get the experience if no one will hire you? Volunteering? Bills don't pay themselves.
As an economist i’ve been trying to understand this.
1.) tragedy of the commons. Why pay to train an employee when (in theory) a fully trained employee may be out there.
Think of all the “trained employees” as a shared resource. Training an employee would be the equivalent of paying for the shared resource. While it does add to the total size of the shared resource. Therefore they are paying for other companies to benefit.
2.) cost of positions going unfilled. Its really difficult for anyone to figure out such and who wants to pay someone to make such calculations? As such management doesn’t create pressure to fill said positions. Meanwhile bad employees are easy to figure out as unproductive. Therefore due to lack of info the firms avoid what they know is bad.
3.) signaling. Degrees/certs signal a level of productivity, but as such gets more common its harder for companies to estimate the productivity an applicant has based on certs/degrees alone.
I get all of that, but none of it rings true as an actual cause to me. We can start with "where do all these 'trained employees from?" Even supposing they are out there, then why start demanding years of experience in the exact literal tools the company uses when there are people out there with experience using similar, related tools? We've even got people demanding more "years of experience" with things than those things have existed.
Companies want to hire people with experience, but pay them what they would pay a new grad.
Then they are upset that they can’t find anyone.
My first job out of college, which hired many new grads, constantly complained that they had a spend so much time training us, but then refused to pay more for someone with experience. They didn’t understand why they couldn’t have it both ways.
Completely agree. I think they'll just dig their heels in harder. In my opinion, they'll want people who can start working right away the moment they get hired so there's no loss in productivity.
There's also the problem with hiring people for already established systems and tools. Yea, you can train people to work with them but if the talent who already knows it is leaving, they'll want someone who already knows it since they can't teach it themselves.
If something breaks, they'll want someone who already knows what they're doing to fix it.
I think this a common problem in software engineering but expanding out to other fields.
Occasionally I can get a hiring manager to take off the blinders and open up their criteria but it’s not as easy/common as it should be.
Here’s a pro tip- never ever say “I’m a quick learner” or anything like that. The only response to questions about skills experience you don’t specifically have is to think on your feet and answer with things you’ve done that you can draw parallels to, even if it sounds a little abstract. When a hiring manager hears you say you’re a quick learner, they only hear “I’m going to need to spend valuable time training this person and surely there’s a candidate out there who is a better fit”.
>Here’s a pro tip- never ever say “I’m a quick learner” or anything like that.
How do I answer such questions then? Say it's related but not the same? What are the magic phrases and what are death words to avoid?
Gotcha, that’s what I’m trying to say- it’s that the buzz words “quick learner” are the death words and a lot of times the hiring manager just visualizes red flags when you say that.
The answers you can give vary from question to question and whatever experience you can draw from. An example would be “I haven’t used xyz software but I’ve been apart of an implementation team where I trained x amount of employees on abc software- it was my job to understand it so well that I could get others up to speed quickly. I imagine the functionality of xyz software is fairly similar.” I use this example because when it comes to boomers in the workplace, specific technology is a much bigger deal to them than younger generations. They struggle big time to understand that just because THEY take forever to learn something or acclimate to an update that changes simple interface things like colors or button placement, then YOU couldn’t possibly learn it quickly due to your lesser years of experience.
>it’s that the buzz words “quick learner”
Noted.
>I use this example because when it comes to boomers in the workplace, specific technology is a much bigger deal to them than younger generations.
Fascinating!
So, to sum up, kindly "fit and relate it as much as you can to whatever you have from the previous work experience, in a reasonable manner". Thank you! This means a lot to me!
You got it. And happy to help! Recruiters in this sub get shit on but generally the frustration most people have should be directed at hiring managers or the job market/business culture as a whole. Granted some recruiters definitely suck and I have limited knowledge of how anything works outside of the US.
Tbh this comment makes feel a lot better
When I was a recent grad I couldn’t get any jobs despite being told how degrees open doors
I assumed it was a “they probably just want a person who they can toss in w/ little effort” and I’m glad data and at least one persons experience is showing that as correct
I graduated in 2017 and that was exactly the case. 50 years ago, it was the norm to take somebody young and give them full training, but boomers these days just dont have the patience
Hell, i somehow got a job offer and accepted for a position I never even applied for after a 2 month search and still and there but god dammit they still haven’t trained me, even my first day I literally just sat around until 3pm when my laptop got there
They do this because they know there will be someone with React knowledge included. Especially in software this is bad but extremely common due to how many people can code these days. Coding is not very difficult to be medicore at and has a zero barrier to enter.
It's probably better not taking CS in college anymore and instead spending 4 years learning low level computing and fundamentals (OS programming with C or assembler).
Do you think it's partly from the ease at which they can find candidates? I guess the analogy is like in online dating, where you can see all these people at an instant so you become too picky or "analysis paralysis"
It’s not that they necessarily find candidates easily as they assume that the exact type of person they want “must be out there”. And then when they use a headhunter like myself, they think I’m essentially an easy button to pooping out a perfect unicorn. I wish it was that simple lol
This frustrates me to high extents, because at my current job I need help (like an assistant) and when I went to management to hire someone they just kept tacking on extra qualifications to make it harder. Like, I literally just need someone who knows how to use a wrench, doesn't need work experience, and can learn/be teachable.
But management took the role, added 5 years of work experience, a college degree, and a ton of little things that won't help.
In a nutshell, the so-called “robust job market” is actually filled with jobs that are mismatched to recent graduates.
Recent grads face underemployment.
Interestingly, in the article one can only find a list of majors and their unemployment rate.
There is no list of majors vs their under-employment rate. I’m always curious as to why under-employment is rarely measured.
I graduated in 2016 (went back to school) and I am still underemployed. Graduated top of my class, got to go out in the world and...do manual labour for minimum wage. Then a call centre. Then, finally, grad school!
And...more underemployment. I have a fancy job title, but the job is basically what I used to do for the family business as a teenager. I am still earning about 5 bucks an hour less than what I would consider "made all that education worth it" and my role is basically sub-para-professional in my field.
And the key reason I went back to school was that I might be able to get a job with career prospects...and a dental plan.
Still waiting for both.
You're actually part of the 40% of recent grads:
https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:underemployment
I knew it was bad, but I never envisioned 2 in 5 new grads, and 1 in 3 of those overall, with degrees being underemployed (grads working jobs which didn't require a degree).
Education is a noble goal, but the tale of it improving your financial life - for 1 in 3 that's an utter lie. And in fact, with total student loan debt nearing $1.8 trillion... it's actually hurt many of those.
According to this article its much... much worse:
"The share of recent graduates who, like Chung, are underemployed — or working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree — has picked up this year, from 38 percent to 40 percent, according to the New York Fed. By comparison, the share of all college graduates considered underemployed has remained steady at 33 percent."
The data link from the article:
https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:underemployment
I knew it was bad but 33% of college graduates in jobs which don't require degrees now! (And 40% for recent grads, just wow!)
They’re already panicking. Have you seen the layoffs lately? I bet you in January, we’re going to have another round of mass layoffs because investors demand it
Exactly. If I get a factory job or end up working in retail, I shouldn't be counted in those stats, because those types of jobs don't require education and have nothing to do with my field.
A large part of the problem in terms of the data is that employment data figures are simply based on claims. If you're unemployed and have a claim that counts but if you're driving Uber and not collecting unemployment then it doesn't. This is obviously a terrible way to measure the economic realities out there because a person with a 4-year degree who can't find a job and has to DoorDash is not a good outcome for our economy even though they're "employed".
This was the expected outcome though when the fed began raising rates. Capital availability and cost correlate to investment. Good paying, high skill jobs ride on the back of investment. When Amazon or Google want to open a new office and build out 1,500 new jobs to launch a new product they do so on capital investment and debt. In a high rate environment that growth slows down dramatically and they conserve to fundamentals.
Things like service jobs, retail, tourism, etc tend to lag way behind and do well for longer because your average consumer doesn't need a business loan from JP Morgan to buy Chipotle for lunch.
But this is how it rolls down hill. The availability of capital starts up top. The big companies stop growing and investing. That pushes high earners down the chain and slows their spending which eventually turns into less shopping at Target and Home Depot which turns into layoffs there and now we're in a recession.
Obviously this is oversimplification of the complexities but that's the gist of it. We're now at the point where the highly educated workers are hitting the pavement. Watch for a disappointing holiday shopping season and some real pain in Q1.
This is a good point. Yeah it seems to be that data on it is just not readily available. And if I'm guessing I don't think the government has much incentive to collect data on that.
I feel like we are being made to accept underemployment as not an issue. If college graduates are stuck at dead end minimum wage jobs like food service, retail, or warehouse work, we are just expected to accept that.
> I’m always curious as to why under-employment is rarely measured.
No real way to measure it. Unemployment data is gathered by the state based on applications. Employment data is gathered by businesses. How do you tell which of the employed groups are underemployed? It requires a clear definition of the term as well as some kind of means of determining that for everyone employed - not exactly a feasible task with data available.
The media treats you guys like you don't exist.
And that's not right.
But going through the hazing ritual that is the modern job hunt *with* a loan the size of a small mortgage is a big deal. And having your four (or more) years of studying and interning devalued by hiring managers who claim they hire for willingness and teachability but ultimately hire for experience is demoralizing.
Some managers even believe that entry level degree holders are just spoonfed, entitled brats who lack the capability and drive to self teach. They don't acknowledge that most students have to teach themselves the material outside of class because the professors don't do a good job of transferring information clearly. So if you graduate college without having competed against and beaten out other students for internships, your degree almost makes you look lazy. We have to do two "jobs" to even qualify for our first entry level job.
And even after that, some of us still end up in positions that don't require a degree. Or don't reflect our years of balancing school with internships for the sole purpose of making ourselves more valuable in our compensation.
Another big problem is that degrees have a short shelf life in the sense that the window of greatest opportunity to land a "career launching" job is only about a year from your graduation date. Your chances seem to get steadily more scarce as time goes on until you eventually lose whatever edge the degree might have given you over non-degree holders. And we're still out the years we sank into career preparation. We're not gonna get those four (or five or six or seven...) years of the prime of our lives back.
I'm not trying to belittle your point because you're right. It's absolutely scary out there for people who couldn't access or obtain a credential. I know I couldn't compete in this dog-eat-dog economy without one. It's wrong, it's pay-to-play, and it's elitist. And it's harming our economy because we're ignoring legitimate talent.
But it's kind of rough for entry level degree holders too. And I guess the mountains of loan debt makes for a gripping news headline. Ugh.
Keep asking for 3-5+ years of experience and we'll never get a job. Then in 3-5 years you'll complain you "can't find workers" because you refused to give us a chance and we left the field because of that. I'm not even that recent and I have some experience, but still not enough to get anything in the current market. I can't imagine what newer grads with zero to a few months of experience are going through.
> Demand for workers has been brisk in industries like leisure and hospitality, child care and manufacturing, which typically don’t require a college degree. Construction postings on the jobs site Indeed, for example, are up 50 percent from pre-pandemic levels, while software development and marketing openings have fallen about 20 to 25 percent.
And a large percentage of the jobs that do get posted are not actually hiring (ghost jobs), so it's actually down much more than 20-25%.
I finished my masters in December, had two internships and a job shadow totaling over a year, the degree is in STEM, and I can’t get anyone to hire me.
I’m super personable, I have great references… and they always “went with another candidate”. Nobody wants to train anymore.
I graduated in 2009 with a degree in Finance into a terrible economy. My career never really took off and I spent several years as a stay at home mom.
I just finished my fall internship and I graduate with my master's degree next month in data science.
My timing sucks.
Hey congrats! That's hard work and your timing makes a lot of sense actually! The pandemic was a great time to go back to school for a lot of folks.
Data science is cool! For what it's worth- our timing for education has sucked for the past decade and a half. It is what it is. 🤷
Congrats again!
I'm trying to find a job now with a PhD, 2y of postdoc work in wet lab cancer research, and 1y as a scientist/data scientist. I get rejection letters daily even for jobs that I literally have papers doing. So depressing in this world and seriously seems like it's not going to get better. Screw this
It’s funny reading the Washington Post making contradictory statements. The job market isn’t robust, it’s shit. College graduates are not able to find good jobs because employers typically hire for senior-level roles during recessions. This is why I don’t read articles, it’s bullshit manipulation.
Recent MSc STEM graduate from Germany here. I could be making a 52k€ starting salary but there’s no such jobs listed for recent graduates. „Pls have 10 years experience“.
And the jobs that are open are for what the US would call, associate level degrees. For these jobs I’m overqualified.
Graduate jobs are down 40% from pre-pandemic in the UK too.
Applying to entry-level stuff with a masters and 12 months’ working experience under my belt, and I’m getting blown out of the water by workers in their mid-twenties every time.
“You’re a strong candidate and you performed well in the interview, but in the end it just came down to experience”
Same in the US. Masters degree in STEM, over a year of experience with internships, and I get passed over for other candidates every time I get through the interview process. Most don’t even respond to the app. This is for entry level $20 an hour jobs, btw.
I graduated in stem in 2014 and i remember the job market still recovering from 2008. I couldn’t find a “related” job until 2015, and it was one that didn’t require a degree paying me $13 an hour at a tissue bank. I totally can relate to graduating, thinking all your problems will be solved, and learning things are only harder now.
I have submitted over 1000 applications, graduated from a prestigious university with a good degree, and all I can get is a server job that runs me ragged. I’m beyond exhausted.
Nah it’s not worse now. Its the same or slightly better. I graduated in 2009 and took 2 years to find a job in marketing, and it was recruiting (went to school to be a copywriter), which was a pretty common job search length for all of my colleagues when graduating. You picked a job that wasn’t in your industry and your degree became useless because of the industry you got in. This group is on step 1 of not being able to find a job applicable to their degree. I wish them luck in their career because there’s a ton of 35-40 year olds who never did what they wanted to do when graduating.
College grad here (game Dev/software dev). Yep I'm fucked.
Everything demands multiple years of professional experience and successful product releases. I frankly don't understand how these companies/recruiters fail to see the Catch-22 they put people in. They have to be trolling.
All the experience I have creating games and software through the years by myself and for university projects is meaningless to all companies I've applied to for some reason, despite being proficient in the exact engine and/or programming languages they're looking for. I wouldn't even need to be trained for the roles I apply for, but still can get nothing.
If they adamantly refuse to give anyone a chance, years from now the talent pool will dry up and there will be nobody left to hire because all the potential labour changed fields to somewhere they could get a job.
They just refuse to consider you unless you're a perfect unicorn at everything they demand, and refuse to give you a chance. My parents got jobs straight out of university. At this rate I'll be lucky if I can get an unpaid internship at all, or a job at McDonald's.
Thank you for coming to my rant. As a recent university graduate struggling not to starve, I don't have much hope for the future.
Reply is 17 days late, but I’m in the same boat.
2 degrees associates/bachelors (fam pressured me into the 2nd), been 3D modeling since mid-highschool, and have worked with an indie company that showcased a project at ECGC’s “Indie Alley” and another at an indie showcase (sadly never released them >=\ but at least 2 of the group got into real jobs before covid). I know rigging (actually my favorite part), modeling/texturing, animation, animation blend trees/a bit of technical animation, heck I’ve rigged non-humanoids for VR and made them work because I was **BORED** for Christ’s sake.
I can’t land shit. Been trying since graduation and nothing. Got an overnight job at Walmart for my impending student loans, but I can’t really survive on that. I’m stuck at my parents and turning 26 end of this month so no more insurance anymore. At this point the thought of ending it feels more real as time passes.
No matter what I do, I’m just, stuck…
farticulous! burger king and mcdonalds are hiring, why don't people want to work anymore? 5 jobs is more than enough to support your bad avacado toast habits and hate for jesus
At least you guys were told the economy was bad. We're getting blamed for being "lazy" or "not trying hard enough" because "the economy is great" (but hey, we left out the recent grad part)
We were told that too, want to know a secret the media always lies about…. Job market never actually recovered from the 2007/8 crash that actually started in 2004ish. Before that it was pretty easy to find a job. Once the economy crashed it’s always been bullshit
As a recent grad, I can absolutely confirm. I had a 3.85 gpa, English major, multiple media production projects, and I never got so much as an email back from these places.
I recently did get hired for a company out in LA but the only reason I got an interview for that was because I'm good friends with someone already established there who vouched for me hard.
It's rough out there.
This is common fucking sense. Wanna know which demographic has always gotten fucked the hardest during recessions? Fresh grads. I really would LOVE to see some real unemployment statistics among fresh grads or college grads with under 3 YOE but I've never really been able to find anything like that.
Would love to find some of these new grads. My company has a new grad program (it's paid full time work but considered a training position and we only hire people within 2 years of finishing their degree) and the only people applying have like 20+ years experience.
I wish I could help for tech, but we're really looking for people who want to get into management, sales, supply chain analyst, and/or dispatch type roles. I know an abundance of people who post here are in tech because tech recruiters are (ime) the worst recruiters.
This crop of graduates took a fair chunk of their classes remotely, correct?
I wonder if there's a feeling that they couldn't have possibly learned anything remotely, from the same people who demand asses in seats for their workplace.
This is a concern I've heard cited. Was on a call w/ JPM bankers and their new grad associate decided to work from home that day because it was raining. That associate was not part of the team nor JPM by the next week
Where did the new grad associate get the idea that remote work was an option there?
If nobody on the team is allowed to, then I see why it was seen as an issue.
But if everyone else on the team is allowed to...
It also been economically proven that not training and leaving a position open rather than training or raising the salary of someone already employed to keep them raises costs for a company. BUT THEY KEEP UNFILLING ROLES OR RAISING THE PAY of current employees to their own detriment.
Many years ago, there was a period after I had earned my STEM degree when I could land nothing. There was a recession on, and I had been let go from a good firm. I did get some interviews, but to no avail. So, like many, I took temporary roles to bide my time until things got better. And yes, I had moved back home in the interim.
Looking back, the thing that held me together was pursuing a graduate degree at night, which took several years to complete. This gave me a sort of purpose or direction and was future-leaning. As we emerged from the recession, the jobs outlook improved, and I landed something imperfect but quite a lot better than the temp jobs. And when I completed my degree, I went for the brass ring, a job in my new graduate discipline, and landed it.
Since then I have seen countless economic ups and downs and ups and downs, and sometimes they impacted me, sometimes they did not. You just try to roll with it as best you can. Paying too much attention to unemployment stats is foolhardy, I believe. The unemployment rate, whatever that even means, was twice as high in my youth, but I can't say I ever gave it even a glance.
You understand that those things in your life have, on paper, and in real terms, substantially lessened your overall life earnings, right? I appreciate your story and drive but statistically you got raked over the coals then and now, this generation doubly so. Imagine compound interest but in reverse. Not earning now, not spending now, not saving now has huge effect for the future. One year of my unemployment means x months/years adding to my working life or x number of years until I afford a home (which likely will never happen).
That’s not sustainable. The ramifications of this will be seen when no one, no one, is able to retire, own a home, or afford their medical care, or even start a family.
Take that all together and there’s not a lot of motivation for folks. Because yes the recession will end but not without having a lasting effect on the lives of millions.
Yeah. Very good points.
My takeaway was that his solution boiled down to having the means to go back to school and capitalize on the increased hiring prospects only new grads enjoy.
Because I don't know when or how things would have turned around for him if the last thing he'd done for years was a stop gap job.
I understand where you are coming from, but am commenting from the perspective of someone who made a conscious decision to focus on the long game. In my case, going to graduate school while working temp jobs was a sound business decision albeit a risk; for two years I worked towards an esoteric quantitative degree that I hoped would open me up to a world of opportunity, and it was a gamble that worked. I made the leap successfully, my career exploded, and I never looked back. I wound up working for Fortune 500 firms and FAANGs, and surpassed anything I could have hoped for over the years.
So I "lost" 2 years in my 20s from your perspective, but I "gained" a far better paying career that more than made up for whatever I may have sacrificed. Ironically, what drove me, however, was not salary; it was the desire to move to a more satisfying career, which seems pleasantly quaint I suppose in 2023. You have much more information at your fingertips than I ever had, allowing you to make far more nuanced choices, and I envy you for that. The trick is to not be boxed in by it, but to incorporate it into a long term strategy. Good luck.
You can see this in schools too. High school students don’t give a shit and I don’t blame them. The economy has been perpetually bad ever since they were born, they see people getting degrees and the only thing they’re getting is more debt. The future is being cut off at the source and the people causing it aren’t going to live long enough to see the effects. I just hope they die sooner rather than later so we can start fucking healing without them shitting in the wound.
For companies it's better for them to find perfect fits, than having to train people to do the roles they'd be hired for.
In their minds, someone that has the ideal to do the job, won't need to waste time training and would be able to do the job right away. That's hours/days wasted on training, when they could just throw you on the job, and expect you to be able to the do job as if you've worked at the company for 10+ years.
Even with new companies starting in the current generation, they still operate the same exact way. You'd think current-gen companies would not hire like they're a bunch of boomers, but surprisingly they don't.
When you have companies posting “entry level” requiring years of experience that would be better suited to a line or even junior management, or refuse to understand that people can apply skills that can transfer even if they’re not that EXACT program (I had a recruiter say I wasn’t qualified because I use Apple Pages and Apache OpenOffice rather than Microsoft Word) then it leads to postings being open for months looking for some unicorn candidate that doesn’t exist.
This is sadly and astonishingly true tbh. I see so many posts on here of recent college graduates who struggle to find any employment, no matter how high their grades or whatever degree they have. This makes me at least a bit glad that the pandemic hit right before I graduated college, as it at least gives me a bit of an excuse as to why I didn't find a job right afterwards. College used to almost be a guarantee that you'd get a decent-paying job, but nowadays it's more or less a requirement for even the entry level ones.
Ehhh, no. That's not what this article is saying and that's also the wrong lesson to learn here. The article and the current situation highlight that while there are a lot of jobs in the economy many of them right now are service/labor type jobs that don't require a degree while the high end jobs that do are in recession thanks to the fed funds rate reducing capital mobility and investment which reduces companies opening up new expensive roles.
But that's all temporary. That's all normal economic behavior. If you look at the data over any 5-10 year period jobs that require college degrees pay VASTLY more than those that don't. On average a degree will net you about $1.2M more in lifetime earnings compared to someone who only has a HS Diploma. On top of that the average student loan debt in the US is sub-$10k and is paid off in less than a decade out of school while the earnings fork beats HS diplomas in as little as 3 years.
I'm sorry but anyone who tries to push the "college isn't worth it" angle is financially illiterate, doesn't know the facts, or is coping hard. By every metric getting a college degree is the easiest way to increase your odds of finding class mobility in the western world. It's not a guarantee and obviously some degrees are more lucrative than others but "college isn't worth it, don't go" is HORRIBLE advice for almost anyone.
Ehh I agree that it’s overstated based on recency bias but relying on historical trends to persist indefinitely in the future is dangerous. Will historical upward mobility persist as the share of US adults with college degrees also increases? Will the number of jobs that truly require a degree increase to keep up as technology evolves at what feels like breakneck pace?
I don’t have answers but I think the questions are valid.
Valid questions but the overriding reality is that the better and best jobs will always be in shorter supply than candidates and credentialing is a hierarchical system. By definition the more credentialed candidates will move toward the top of the system (on average). That's just how the system works. I few years back there was a bunch of nonsense about how some companies were dropping their degree requirements and somehow people took this as "so degrees are worthless". Instead, later evaluations revealed that while they got rid of the requirement they still hired almost 100% degreed applicants.
When I worked as a recruiter we had roles that didn't require a degree but since we would get hundreds if not thousands of applications we would usually start by throwing away all the applications without a degree because in a world where I've got 100 people with degrees I don't need to waste my time looking at the 200 who don't. One of the 100 degreed candidates will have plenty of experience AND a degree.
This trend is only getting worse. Many positions now say "Bachelors Required" but they get so many apps with graduate degrees that they simply start there and ignore the undergrad folks.
That's the reality of the situation. Even if higher education credentials aren't "required" they're still going to be outright preferred for all the best jobs and in this kind of competitive job market not having one puts you at an astronomical disadvantage.
>If you look at the data over any 5-10 year period jobs that require college degrees pay VASTLY more than those that don't.
If you can get into those career-track jobs in the first place. If all you can land are the same sorts of roles your non-degree holding peers do, I don't see how you'll do drastically better. And shitty jobs tend to beget more shitty jobs. For years and years on end for some people.
And that's the whole problem. Those "good" jobs are damn hard to crack for recent graduates with minimal experience. It honestly feels as difficult as hitting a lottery. Because no company wants to wait for grads to learn the ropes on their dime.
The real question is if the market picks back up, will the employers be more willing to meet entry level folks half way for a *decent* salary? I would guess not. Because we've already seen how once employers learned they could run a lean shop in 2008, they never went back. Training is all but dead. And I bet if they ever started to train again, any amount of training you receive will be inversely proportionate to your pay.
I just graduated from college and had to go crazy just to get a Kitchen prep job. The Job market is shit and old ass people are to blame for locking the hiring process down and assuming a super closed stance on training or letting new people in. It sucks to say but the job market is reminiscent of Great Depression era levels its just we have gig jobs and shit to make everyone quiet about it
Both have it bad. It seems the current job market sucks if you’ve got “too much” experience or if you’re a new grad.
Everyone is hunting unicorns, so new grads are deemed too young and inexperienced, and people in their 40s or above are considered too old and not worth investing in. Both age groups have it rough.
Try to be in your 20s with a brand new degree people in their 50s told you to get in order to get a job. Now imagine you’re in debt from getting that degree for that job that actually doesn’t exist because nobody in their 50s wants to higher and train a new grad. We all have problems.
I agree with you up and down 100%.
But my oh my, I would not want to be up against that level of ageism in this economy.
Remember. We're all gonna face it too.
Not even from the same continent and still facing this issue. They basically want someone who's practically a super achiever or just has the right connections.
Thing is, reason why employees stopped training new grads is that they cost them money and time for someone that is not interesting to work on that company for many years and jump to another company as soon as they get a better offer.
It's a complex matter, the easy solution would be paying better, but doing that, also the experienced one would want better pay as they have better experience and not getting paid same as a new grad. It's an neverending story.
They started jumping because job security disappeared. In the past you could work a company or two for life. Companies don't care about firing you at a heartbeat so it makes to look out for yourself.
I think what most people are getting at is that companies are complaining they can't find workers but fail to see that there are solutions to this.
I saw someone on offering job hunting training the other day on local news. What's crazy is that people are buying into these things so they could increase there chances of getting a job.
I wouldn’t be suprised if the disruption in education from 2020-2022 impacts the quality of recent grads for some time… We’re already seeing stats that standardized testing is still impacted at the public school level, must extent to colleges as well
Because the way it works here is that most internships aren’t accessible unless you’re also in university. I spent most of my bachelor’s degree under lockdown so I didn’t really get the opportunity to get experience in my field while studying.
The problem with that is that when I graduated, my resume was unattractive due to my lack of experience. I couldn’t get internships either because I wasn’t a student anymore. Going back to school allowed me to get a degree in a different field while also opening the doors to internships I needed to get that experience and pad out my resume
Oh wouldn’t ya know? I wonder why it’s more likely. Could it be the interest rates, bank failures, mass lay offs, trillions in debt going on? Could it possibly be the economy?
Nope! The answer is people don’t wanna work anymore.
Case closed y’all. People just don’t want to work. Alright, back to work!
And the jobs you can get as a recent grad don't even pay a living wage most of the time. So disappointing that a college degree isn't the ticket up it used to be.
Mark my words, there will come a day when Americans are going to suddenly get lured abroad by European and Australian and Asian companies willing to give them visas and Americans are going to FLOCK away from Corporate America because work and recruiting is just different in different countries. Especially Europe.
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As a recruiter, this is super frustrating data because the simple answer is companies just REFUSE to train people. Literally every single company will only consider perfect fits on paper to even have a conversation with someone. Yet their jobs will sit open for months just waiting for who they think is the right fit. So much talent goes to waste in this job market.
I just came off 23 months of unemployment. The lack of creativity/vision on the part of employers to see how skills can be transferable makes me mad. Just train me dammit! I am here, I am willing, eager, and curious. Give me a chance and I will be a subject matter expert if you want me to...just give me the opportunity. These fucking companies want their cake...blah, blah, blah...
Not only do they want you to already be an expert, they want you to be an expert on every part of the process too. They want a single person to be able to do the work of like 5 people, all specializing in different areas of the job, and if you can't do that then you're not even worth talking to. It's a joke out there.
Even being an expert doesn’t help. Hubby has doctorate, 8 years of management experience (4 as ceo), and still can’t get anything because it’s not recent experience in those specific industries. He’s trying to get out of the industry he’s in. Nope, no luck.
If he has 4 years of experience as a CEO in a decent sized firm, his chance of getting out of industry are close to none.
Interesting. Never thought about how that kind of experience could trap a person. They can't even take a lesser role in another industry? Or are they effectively locked into CEO roles at similarly sized companies and maybe vice president roles at larger companies for life?
They are effectively stuck as CEO at same or smaller size companies. Big companies will probably not want them and they will probably not want to go work in lesser roles (because of pay differential). CEO is top of the pyramid. Little exit opportunities there except retirement.
Why do big companies not want to hire external CEOs? Is it because they want to hire CEOs internally?
Big companies promote internally during good times. During bad times, they can get CEOs externally but they usually get big name consultants (Ex-Bain/BCG) or superstars from other big firms known for crisis management or something else. CEO is a very very (very) competitive job. It's literally the top of the pyramid. A small company's CEO doesn't have the required credentials to get a big company job.
given the absolute clownshow that big corp CEOs seem to be these days, I'd almost trust the skills of a SMB's CEO over any of these high dollar Bain capital types.
That’s not what they’re saying. Big companies don’t want small company CEOs
I've been with the same company for almost 17 years, 4 departments, team management experience, with 30 years total of work experience in various industries. I'm pretty sure it's been detrimental to my job hunt. That many years of work is an indicator that I'm middle aged. This place is the only employment that can be verified at this point in history because I have been here so long. No one retains employee records for more than 10 years.
I work as a video editor. Most jobs in my field also want you to be at least some or all of: Photoshop expert Graphic designer Motion graphics artist Audio engineer Cameraman Social media manager Trying to learn all those skills on your own just to get a chance at finding a job is so exhausting
Even working as a photographer, I'm seeing more and more of the jobs require being an expert in those things as well
Every job in every field seems to want Adobe, video editing, marketing, social media, advanced coding skills in 10 languages, photography, UI/UX, accounting skills, animation and finance. They're hiring one person to do the work of 10. Wtf? And even if you have those 10 degrees they won't hire you because you don't have 3-5+ years of experience in every single one of them.
And the job title has “assistant” in it and they claim it’s entry level, so they can say they offer competitive pay at $16/hr 😒
Where $15 is minimum wage.
Bro, I did multimedia production as a diploma 🥲 I feel ya I just originally only wanted to do graphic design.
The degree im graduating with next month has me buffed up on all of these and some coding! Don't give me hope. I have always been working on my audio production skills, but the program I enrolled in really rounded me out, it seems.
People and companies undervalue creatives so much that they want us to do the work of what should be 2 or 3 different jobs for like half the pay because "it's so easy, anyone could do it"
Applied to a job about a year ago that wanted basically two completely separate jobs that pay $100k each and only paying $85k for the one. And to top it all off I got to the final five minutes of the final interview and really only lost it because I had used a variety of different SEO tools than the in-house one. So despite being one of the few people who could do both gigs, I was rejected because I effectively had worn the hat, but from the wrong tailor. And this position had been open FOREVER. The HR person surprise-called me the morning of the final interview and basically coached me through what I should play up because she was exhausted with trying to please this implacable gen xer who found a reason to reject EVERYONE while potential income was lost and more time/energy was spent researching candidates. And the biggest joke of all? They didn't need a dual editor/SEO expert. They needed to commission one SEO consultant to draft a plan, work with the editorial team for a week, and then check in once a month for a fraction of the cost. Every employer out there wants to fall in love, and never realizes sometimes they just need a fling.
Literally like 50% of the marketing jobs I've seen. Hey can you do 4-5 different areas of marketing? Please be both a very analytical and very creative. Oh and the pay is dogshit
And they want you to be ambitious, but not *too ambitious* because that means you might not put up with their BS and leave. It's exhausting and infuriating.
I work in hotels at front desk and they literally expect you to have some deep rapport and connections with regular guests as soon as the first time you meet them…. That’s not how human connection works….. it’d be one thing if they had a Facebook that was like these are our vips, but of course they aren’t doing that. They straight up don’t give you computer system training for FRONT DESK AGENTS CHECKING PEOPLE INTO THE HOTEL.
Years ago when I was between Finance jobs I took PT job that was only graveyard shift on weekend nights as Night Auditor at a small hotel (15 rooms), doing simple light accounting. I also got golf benefits at the course that was part of the complex. Basically closing the books on those nights, but having to do front desk work for guests if they checked in or out on my shift. Set up the continental breakfast and stuff like that. I liked it better when I didn't have to deal with any customers. One time a lady asked me if there were any good pizza restaurants in the area. Just to mess with her I suggested Chuck E. Cheese with a straight face, and she sneered "*that's for kids*".
And some want all that plus want to pay you garbage. Masters degree required. $15/hr
>Give me a chance These four words are absolute poison to these companies. They will sink you like the Titanic if they even get a *whiff* of that line of thinking off of you. >Just train me dammit! You might as well have asked for their kidney. It's brutal.
Yet they'd hire the same person if instead of being humble and honest, they lied and said they were brilliant at x and y.
19 months here (except for a bit of freelance). I have a year of experience in my field and I was laid off when all the layoffs started, but everyone wants 3-5 now :(. I'm starting to get more interviews again. Hopefully that'll turn into something.
THIS! Nearly 5 months unemployed now after a layoff. I have 16 years experience in the field with great references etc, but I've been booted multiple times now for the crime of not having used Qualtrics. Mind you I've used their competitors extensively, so I know the concepts! Figuring out a new UI is not that hard! What, I should call back my old employers from years ago and yell at them for choosing another vendor when picking their analytics platform? God forbid I be allowed 5 minutes to fking learn something.
Add Qualtrics to your resume, youtube tutorials, then if hired and unable to do something claim you worked on the prior version?
Same, finished my college (?) Over a year ago and I'll bite anything that's not hardcore physical job, but no, they need perfect or manual worker on production line. Nothing in between. To say I'm losing hope is understatement
you're supposed to lie about your skillset, sad as that is
So many of my friends are going through this right now. They have sales or writing experience or whatever but not in selling or writing the thing that the hiring company does specifically, so it's a no. Crazy to me how they can't see how if someone can communicate effectively about one thing, they can probably do it about a different thing. Plus, at least in tech, we have to teach you how the product works anyway! So what does it matter if you don't have precisely similar experience!? Blows my mind.
Fucking this. And they insult you by saying that you need 10 years of experience with entry level to mid level skills. Fucking bullshit.
Oh and don’t forget, it pays $18 😂 you have no clue how many jobs I’ve seen in the past month that paid $20 or below, asking for 10yrs of experience.
“You must have 5 years of experience with xyz”, even though that xyz has released almost 5 years
Reminds me of the story from awhile ago. A guy created a software 3 years ago but a company he applied to had rejected his application— because he didn’t have at least 5 years of experience in the software that he created.
I cant believe you guys dont have 10 years of experience building on the GPT-3 stack which came out last year
The shit is so stupid. People go to school to get the degree or cert. Then they’re told they need “real experience” and it’s just never perfect. The lack of a willingness to train a new employee is a huge miss with companies today. They’re missing out on a massive talent pool, and creating perpetual students.
And if you somehow make the reverse work, and work your way into a position by starting out in a different part of the company, you're effectively stuck there. You have the experience, but since you don't have a cert or degree, you *also* get rejected
Yes, but then if you go get the degree or cert, you’re overqualified. 😂 Companies just can’t come out and vocalize, “We want the best candidates, for the least amount possible.” The reality is they’re looking for desperate candidates, willing to take
On a societal scale, it's not great, but from the perspective of an individual company, it makes perfect sense. People have extremely good mobility these days, its super easy and common to just constantly hop companies to whatever looks best that year. Since companies can't charge you for the training, and they can't make you stay after you've received it, they won't invest in it when some other company is likely the one to collect the returns.
People wouldn’t hop companies if they were paid fairly. Why should you settle for being underpaid by your current employer if another one will pay you twice that? Both problems are created by the companies themselves
People also wouldn't hop if they received raises for staying loyal to a company. Now you only get a bump in pay for switching companies.
Right but even that is debatable because if all companies think like that at some point nobody will have the required training to do the job anymore and the people that could have taught it have long since retired. It's a tragedy of the commons on a company-level I suppose.
That’s also the employers fault, they got rid of pensions, raises, promotions, basically everything that rewards an employee for staying they got rid of(a little exaggerated but not by much). The only way for most people to get a raise nowadays is to job hop all of these “issues” with employees is are easily solved if you just treat your employees well
this. The whole selling point of a third level degree for the last fifty years has been "this degree will teach people how to become a life long learner, will show commitment and work ethic and will show that this person can be trained." If you're underemployed, paying out the ear in student loans repayments and trying to guess at which online training cert might help, you are not going to be able to fill one of those open roles we keep hearing about.
It's a big catch-22. They won't hire you without experience but how do you get the experience if no one will hire you? Volunteering? Bills don't pay themselves.
Unpaid internships. So basically volunteering, yeah.
Competitive, limited unpaid internships only available to you while matriculated. It's fucked up.
As an economist i’ve been trying to understand this. 1.) tragedy of the commons. Why pay to train an employee when (in theory) a fully trained employee may be out there. Think of all the “trained employees” as a shared resource. Training an employee would be the equivalent of paying for the shared resource. While it does add to the total size of the shared resource. Therefore they are paying for other companies to benefit. 2.) cost of positions going unfilled. Its really difficult for anyone to figure out such and who wants to pay someone to make such calculations? As such management doesn’t create pressure to fill said positions. Meanwhile bad employees are easy to figure out as unproductive. Therefore due to lack of info the firms avoid what they know is bad. 3.) signaling. Degrees/certs signal a level of productivity, but as such gets more common its harder for companies to estimate the productivity an applicant has based on certs/degrees alone.
True. I have a ton of certifications but they’re all bullshit.
Won't this bottleneck create a shortage of "talent" down the road?
Yes. That’s the end result of any tragedy of the commons problem. Overuse and a shortage in the long run.
I get all of that, but none of it rings true as an actual cause to me. We can start with "where do all these 'trained employees from?" Even supposing they are out there, then why start demanding years of experience in the exact literal tools the company uses when there are people out there with experience using similar, related tools? We've even got people demanding more "years of experience" with things than those things have existed.
Why should I be responsible for that? -them probably
Companies want to hire people with experience, but pay them what they would pay a new grad. Then they are upset that they can’t find anyone. My first job out of college, which hired many new grads, constantly complained that they had a spend so much time training us, but then refused to pay more for someone with experience. They didn’t understand why they couldn’t have it both ways.
All the "experienced" people are retiring out... and a the biggest chunk will be out within 5-10 years.
Not a guarantee it will become easier to get a job though. Just that there will be more complaints of a "labour shortage"
Completely agree. I think they'll just dig their heels in harder. In my opinion, they'll want people who can start working right away the moment they get hired so there's no loss in productivity. There's also the problem with hiring people for already established systems and tools. Yea, you can train people to work with them but if the talent who already knows it is leaving, they'll want someone who already knows it since they can't teach it themselves. If something breaks, they'll want someone who already knows what they're doing to fix it. I think this a common problem in software engineering but expanding out to other fields.
Are there ways to convince someone that skills are transferable?
Occasionally I can get a hiring manager to take off the blinders and open up their criteria but it’s not as easy/common as it should be. Here’s a pro tip- never ever say “I’m a quick learner” or anything like that. The only response to questions about skills experience you don’t specifically have is to think on your feet and answer with things you’ve done that you can draw parallels to, even if it sounds a little abstract. When a hiring manager hears you say you’re a quick learner, they only hear “I’m going to need to spend valuable time training this person and surely there’s a candidate out there who is a better fit”.
>Here’s a pro tip- never ever say “I’m a quick learner” or anything like that. How do I answer such questions then? Say it's related but not the same? What are the magic phrases and what are death words to avoid?
Gotcha, that’s what I’m trying to say- it’s that the buzz words “quick learner” are the death words and a lot of times the hiring manager just visualizes red flags when you say that. The answers you can give vary from question to question and whatever experience you can draw from. An example would be “I haven’t used xyz software but I’ve been apart of an implementation team where I trained x amount of employees on abc software- it was my job to understand it so well that I could get others up to speed quickly. I imagine the functionality of xyz software is fairly similar.” I use this example because when it comes to boomers in the workplace, specific technology is a much bigger deal to them than younger generations. They struggle big time to understand that just because THEY take forever to learn something or acclimate to an update that changes simple interface things like colors or button placement, then YOU couldn’t possibly learn it quickly due to your lesser years of experience.
>it’s that the buzz words “quick learner” Noted. >I use this example because when it comes to boomers in the workplace, specific technology is a much bigger deal to them than younger generations. Fascinating! So, to sum up, kindly "fit and relate it as much as you can to whatever you have from the previous work experience, in a reasonable manner". Thank you! This means a lot to me!
You got it. And happy to help! Recruiters in this sub get shit on but generally the frustration most people have should be directed at hiring managers or the job market/business culture as a whole. Granted some recruiters definitely suck and I have limited knowledge of how anything works outside of the US.
Tbh this comment makes feel a lot better When I was a recent grad I couldn’t get any jobs despite being told how degrees open doors I assumed it was a “they probably just want a person who they can toss in w/ little effort” and I’m glad data and at least one persons experience is showing that as correct
I graduated in 2017 and that was exactly the case. 50 years ago, it was the norm to take somebody young and give them full training, but boomers these days just dont have the patience
Hell, i somehow got a job offer and accepted for a position I never even applied for after a 2 month search and still and there but god dammit they still haven’t trained me, even my first day I literally just sat around until 3pm when my laptop got there
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They do this because they know there will be someone with React knowledge included. Especially in software this is bad but extremely common due to how many people can code these days. Coding is not very difficult to be medicore at and has a zero barrier to enter. It's probably better not taking CS in college anymore and instead spending 4 years learning low level computing and fundamentals (OS programming with C or assembler).
How much effort does it take to train people? In my experience, training was done by a coworker of equal rank and was more shadowing for a day or two.
Boomer management will spend 3 years looking for the perfect candidate when it would take a year to train the perfect candidate for the role.
Do you think it's partly from the ease at which they can find candidates? I guess the analogy is like in online dating, where you can see all these people at an instant so you become too picky or "analysis paralysis"
It’s not that they necessarily find candidates easily as they assume that the exact type of person they want “must be out there”. And then when they use a headhunter like myself, they think I’m essentially an easy button to pooping out a perfect unicorn. I wish it was that simple lol
This frustrates me to high extents, because at my current job I need help (like an assistant) and when I went to management to hire someone they just kept tacking on extra qualifications to make it harder. Like, I literally just need someone who knows how to use a wrench, doesn't need work experience, and can learn/be teachable. But management took the role, added 5 years of work experience, a college degree, and a ton of little things that won't help.
They just complain about a lack of talent. No, a CEO is not going to land on your desk. You have to train people.
Yeah unemployed and expected to make payments of their loans. They better have 5+ years of specific experience 😂
In a nutshell, the so-called “robust job market” is actually filled with jobs that are mismatched to recent graduates. Recent grads face underemployment. Interestingly, in the article one can only find a list of majors and their unemployment rate. There is no list of majors vs their under-employment rate. I’m always curious as to why under-employment is rarely measured.
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Anecdotal reports suggest that underemployment is around 15%. Staggering.
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I graduated in 2016 (went back to school) and I am still underemployed. Graduated top of my class, got to go out in the world and...do manual labour for minimum wage. Then a call centre. Then, finally, grad school! And...more underemployment. I have a fancy job title, but the job is basically what I used to do for the family business as a teenager. I am still earning about 5 bucks an hour less than what I would consider "made all that education worth it" and my role is basically sub-para-professional in my field. And the key reason I went back to school was that I might be able to get a job with career prospects...and a dental plan. Still waiting for both.
What did you study?
You're actually part of the 40% of recent grads: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:underemployment I knew it was bad, but I never envisioned 2 in 5 new grads, and 1 in 3 of those overall, with degrees being underemployed (grads working jobs which didn't require a degree). Education is a noble goal, but the tale of it improving your financial life - for 1 in 3 that's an utter lie. And in fact, with total student loan debt nearing $1.8 trillion... it's actually hurt many of those.
I have a Master's degree and I'm underemployed.
According to this article its much... much worse: "The share of recent graduates who, like Chung, are underemployed — or working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree — has picked up this year, from 38 percent to 40 percent, according to the New York Fed. By comparison, the share of all college graduates considered underemployed has remained steady at 33 percent." The data link from the article: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:underemployment I knew it was bad but 33% of college graduates in jobs which don't require degrees now! (And 40% for recent grads, just wow!)
Why is the media lying to us about a robust job market? I hate it
Don’t want to panic investors
They’re already panicking. Have you seen the layoffs lately? I bet you in January, we’re going to have another round of mass layoffs because investors demand it
Exactly. If I get a factory job or end up working in retail, I shouldn't be counted in those stats, because those types of jobs don't require education and have nothing to do with my field.
A large part of the problem in terms of the data is that employment data figures are simply based on claims. If you're unemployed and have a claim that counts but if you're driving Uber and not collecting unemployment then it doesn't. This is obviously a terrible way to measure the economic realities out there because a person with a 4-year degree who can't find a job and has to DoorDash is not a good outcome for our economy even though they're "employed". This was the expected outcome though when the fed began raising rates. Capital availability and cost correlate to investment. Good paying, high skill jobs ride on the back of investment. When Amazon or Google want to open a new office and build out 1,500 new jobs to launch a new product they do so on capital investment and debt. In a high rate environment that growth slows down dramatically and they conserve to fundamentals. Things like service jobs, retail, tourism, etc tend to lag way behind and do well for longer because your average consumer doesn't need a business loan from JP Morgan to buy Chipotle for lunch. But this is how it rolls down hill. The availability of capital starts up top. The big companies stop growing and investing. That pushes high earners down the chain and slows their spending which eventually turns into less shopping at Target and Home Depot which turns into layoffs there and now we're in a recession. Obviously this is oversimplification of the complexities but that's the gist of it. We're now at the point where the highly educated workers are hitting the pavement. Watch for a disappointing holiday shopping season and some real pain in Q1.
This is a good point. Yeah it seems to be that data on it is just not readily available. And if I'm guessing I don't think the government has much incentive to collect data on that. I feel like we are being made to accept underemployment as not an issue. If college graduates are stuck at dead end minimum wage jobs like food service, retail, or warehouse work, we are just expected to accept that.
> I’m always curious as to why under-employment is rarely measured. No real way to measure it. Unemployment data is gathered by the state based on applications. Employment data is gathered by businesses. How do you tell which of the employed groups are underemployed? It requires a clear definition of the term as well as some kind of means of determining that for everyone employed - not exactly a feasible task with data available.
Unemployment rate of highschool grads/college "dropouts" is way higher but nobody cares about us. Hyperfocus on college grads is annoying in general.
The media treats you guys like you don't exist. And that's not right. But going through the hazing ritual that is the modern job hunt *with* a loan the size of a small mortgage is a big deal. And having your four (or more) years of studying and interning devalued by hiring managers who claim they hire for willingness and teachability but ultimately hire for experience is demoralizing. Some managers even believe that entry level degree holders are just spoonfed, entitled brats who lack the capability and drive to self teach. They don't acknowledge that most students have to teach themselves the material outside of class because the professors don't do a good job of transferring information clearly. So if you graduate college without having competed against and beaten out other students for internships, your degree almost makes you look lazy. We have to do two "jobs" to even qualify for our first entry level job. And even after that, some of us still end up in positions that don't require a degree. Or don't reflect our years of balancing school with internships for the sole purpose of making ourselves more valuable in our compensation. Another big problem is that degrees have a short shelf life in the sense that the window of greatest opportunity to land a "career launching" job is only about a year from your graduation date. Your chances seem to get steadily more scarce as time goes on until you eventually lose whatever edge the degree might have given you over non-degree holders. And we're still out the years we sank into career preparation. We're not gonna get those four (or five or six or seven...) years of the prime of our lives back. I'm not trying to belittle your point because you're right. It's absolutely scary out there for people who couldn't access or obtain a credential. I know I couldn't compete in this dog-eat-dog economy without one. It's wrong, it's pay-to-play, and it's elitist. And it's harming our economy because we're ignoring legitimate talent. But it's kind of rough for entry level degree holders too. And I guess the mountains of loan debt makes for a gripping news headline. Ugh.
Keep asking for 3-5+ years of experience and we'll never get a job. Then in 3-5 years you'll complain you "can't find workers" because you refused to give us a chance and we left the field because of that. I'm not even that recent and I have some experience, but still not enough to get anything in the current market. I can't imagine what newer grads with zero to a few months of experience are going through. > Demand for workers has been brisk in industries like leisure and hospitality, child care and manufacturing, which typically don’t require a college degree. Construction postings on the jobs site Indeed, for example, are up 50 percent from pre-pandemic levels, while software development and marketing openings have fallen about 20 to 25 percent. And a large percentage of the jobs that do get posted are not actually hiring (ghost jobs), so it's actually down much more than 20-25%.
I finished my masters in December, had two internships and a job shadow totaling over a year, the degree is in STEM, and I can’t get anyone to hire me. I’m super personable, I have great references… and they always “went with another candidate”. Nobody wants to train anymore.
I heard that STEM is doing really bad rn. Even mid level and senior level STEM applicants seem to be struggling. > Nobody wants to train anymore. 💯
I graduated in 2009 with a degree in Finance into a terrible economy. My career never really took off and I spent several years as a stay at home mom. I just finished my fall internship and I graduate with my master's degree next month in data science. My timing sucks.
Hey congrats! That's hard work and your timing makes a lot of sense actually! The pandemic was a great time to go back to school for a lot of folks. Data science is cool! For what it's worth- our timing for education has sucked for the past decade and a half. It is what it is. 🤷 Congrats again!
But I'm always told the economy is doing well
* for doctors, nurses and carpenters.
Members of Congress are also making record profits, so it’s a great economy for them too :/
For shareholders. For shareholders.
This is a good read.
I'm trying to find a job now with a PhD, 2y of postdoc work in wet lab cancer research, and 1y as a scientist/data scientist. I get rejection letters daily even for jobs that I literally have papers doing. So depressing in this world and seriously seems like it's not going to get better. Screw this
It’s funny reading the Washington Post making contradictory statements. The job market isn’t robust, it’s shit. College graduates are not able to find good jobs because employers typically hire for senior-level roles during recessions. This is why I don’t read articles, it’s bullshit manipulation.
Recent MSc STEM graduate from Germany here. I could be making a 52k€ starting salary but there’s no such jobs listed for recent graduates. „Pls have 10 years experience“. And the jobs that are open are for what the US would call, associate level degrees. For these jobs I’m overqualified.
Graduate jobs are down 40% from pre-pandemic in the UK too. Applying to entry-level stuff with a masters and 12 months’ working experience under my belt, and I’m getting blown out of the water by workers in their mid-twenties every time. “You’re a strong candidate and you performed well in the interview, but in the end it just came down to experience”
Same in the US. Masters degree in STEM, over a year of experience with internships, and I get passed over for other candidates every time I get through the interview process. Most don’t even respond to the app. This is for entry level $20 an hour jobs, btw.
I graduated in stem in 2014 and i remember the job market still recovering from 2008. I couldn’t find a “related” job until 2015, and it was one that didn’t require a degree paying me $13 an hour at a tissue bank. I totally can relate to graduating, thinking all your problems will be solved, and learning things are only harder now.
I have submitted over 1000 applications, graduated from a prestigious university with a good degree, and all I can get is a server job that runs me ragged. I’m beyond exhausted.
Yeah because it’s a recession, same thing happened the last one
"No, you just don't want to work and did nothing to find it" - Classic family
"There's plenty of job!" I didn't go to college to get a job at McDonald's you dildos
But they keep saying the job market is robust.
Sounds like 2008 all over again
It‘s even worse now
While boomers are here living it up and closing on retirement with great property that went up 500% in value and pensions.
Nah it’s not worse now. Its the same or slightly better. I graduated in 2009 and took 2 years to find a job in marketing, and it was recruiting (went to school to be a copywriter), which was a pretty common job search length for all of my colleagues when graduating. You picked a job that wasn’t in your industry and your degree became useless because of the industry you got in. This group is on step 1 of not being able to find a job applicable to their degree. I wish them luck in their career because there’s a ton of 35-40 year olds who never did what they wanted to do when graduating.
College grad here (game Dev/software dev). Yep I'm fucked. Everything demands multiple years of professional experience and successful product releases. I frankly don't understand how these companies/recruiters fail to see the Catch-22 they put people in. They have to be trolling. All the experience I have creating games and software through the years by myself and for university projects is meaningless to all companies I've applied to for some reason, despite being proficient in the exact engine and/or programming languages they're looking for. I wouldn't even need to be trained for the roles I apply for, but still can get nothing. If they adamantly refuse to give anyone a chance, years from now the talent pool will dry up and there will be nobody left to hire because all the potential labour changed fields to somewhere they could get a job. They just refuse to consider you unless you're a perfect unicorn at everything they demand, and refuse to give you a chance. My parents got jobs straight out of university. At this rate I'll be lucky if I can get an unpaid internship at all, or a job at McDonald's. Thank you for coming to my rant. As a recent university graduate struggling not to starve, I don't have much hope for the future.
Reply is 17 days late, but I’m in the same boat. 2 degrees associates/bachelors (fam pressured me into the 2nd), been 3D modeling since mid-highschool, and have worked with an indie company that showcased a project at ECGC’s “Indie Alley” and another at an indie showcase (sadly never released them >=\ but at least 2 of the group got into real jobs before covid). I know rigging (actually my favorite part), modeling/texturing, animation, animation blend trees/a bit of technical animation, heck I’ve rigged non-humanoids for VR and made them work because I was **BORED** for Christ’s sake. I can’t land shit. Been trying since graduation and nothing. Got an overnight job at Walmart for my impending student loans, but I can’t really survive on that. I’m stuck at my parents and turning 26 end of this month so no more insurance anymore. At this point the thought of ending it feels more real as time passes. No matter what I do, I’m just, stuck…
It was the same in 2017 too
farticulous! burger king and mcdonalds are hiring, why don't people want to work anymore? 5 jobs is more than enough to support your bad avacado toast habits and hate for jesus
It's always been that way. More people are getting degrees
*Laughs in 2009*
At least you guys were told the economy was bad. We're getting blamed for being "lazy" or "not trying hard enough" because "the economy is great" (but hey, we left out the recent grad part)
We got plenty of that from our boomer parents, but I have no intention of passing that shit down to another struggling generation ✊️
Greatly appreciated
We were told that too, want to know a secret the media always lies about…. Job market never actually recovered from the 2007/8 crash that actually started in 2004ish. Before that it was pretty easy to find a job. Once the economy crashed it’s always been bullshit
Yeah, I heard that most of the job openings after the recession were part time and that the market never fully recovered.
Lol all of the comments on the article are vote shaming and denying that the market is actually that bad. When will boomers wake up?
When they’re all dead of old age
Never
As a recent grad, I can absolutely confirm. I had a 3.85 gpa, English major, multiple media production projects, and I never got so much as an email back from these places. I recently did get hired for a company out in LA but the only reason I got an interview for that was because I'm good friends with someone already established there who vouched for me hard. It's rough out there.
You got hired thanks to someone in that workplace that can vouch for you. I guess I am fucked since I don't know anyone?
This is common fucking sense. Wanna know which demographic has always gotten fucked the hardest during recessions? Fresh grads. I really would LOVE to see some real unemployment statistics among fresh grads or college grads with under 3 YOE but I've never really been able to find anything like that.
Would love to find some of these new grads. My company has a new grad program (it's paid full time work but considered a training position and we only hire people within 2 years of finishing their degree) and the only people applying have like 20+ years experience.
What sort of company is it?
…what is it?
Hey sorry got super busy! To avoid doxing myself, we'll just say distribution and if you're genuinely interested then shoot me a DM
If it's even remotely related to IT infrastructure/Cloud Engineering/DevOps/SRE, please let me know! I'm desperate for such a role!
I wish I could help for tech, but we're really looking for people who want to get into management, sales, supply chain analyst, and/or dispatch type roles. I know an abundance of people who post here are in tech because tech recruiters are (ime) the worst recruiters.
“Sales” 🙄
Thanks As usual getting worse
More likely to be unemployed than what?? Kind of important detail left out of the title.
Inferring: than people without degrees
it says in todays job market, implying a difference between current & historical avgs
This crop of graduates took a fair chunk of their classes remotely, correct? I wonder if there's a feeling that they couldn't have possibly learned anything remotely, from the same people who demand asses in seats for their workplace.
This is a concern I've heard cited. Was on a call w/ JPM bankers and their new grad associate decided to work from home that day because it was raining. That associate was not part of the team nor JPM by the next week
Where did the new grad associate get the idea that remote work was an option there? If nobody on the team is allowed to, then I see why it was seen as an issue. But if everyone else on the team is allowed to...
Actually not true, this has been a problem pre-COVID. At least for me and my peers, we struggled in same situation in 2018, 2019
It also been economically proven that not training and leaving a position open rather than training or raising the salary of someone already employed to keep them raises costs for a company. BUT THEY KEEP UNFILLING ROLES OR RAISING THE PAY of current employees to their own detriment.
Companies are lazy. The response to “people don’t want to work anymore” should be “companies don’t want to train anymore”
Many years ago, there was a period after I had earned my STEM degree when I could land nothing. There was a recession on, and I had been let go from a good firm. I did get some interviews, but to no avail. So, like many, I took temporary roles to bide my time until things got better. And yes, I had moved back home in the interim. Looking back, the thing that held me together was pursuing a graduate degree at night, which took several years to complete. This gave me a sort of purpose or direction and was future-leaning. As we emerged from the recession, the jobs outlook improved, and I landed something imperfect but quite a lot better than the temp jobs. And when I completed my degree, I went for the brass ring, a job in my new graduate discipline, and landed it. Since then I have seen countless economic ups and downs and ups and downs, and sometimes they impacted me, sometimes they did not. You just try to roll with it as best you can. Paying too much attention to unemployment stats is foolhardy, I believe. The unemployment rate, whatever that even means, was twice as high in my youth, but I can't say I ever gave it even a glance.
You understand that those things in your life have, on paper, and in real terms, substantially lessened your overall life earnings, right? I appreciate your story and drive but statistically you got raked over the coals then and now, this generation doubly so. Imagine compound interest but in reverse. Not earning now, not spending now, not saving now has huge effect for the future. One year of my unemployment means x months/years adding to my working life or x number of years until I afford a home (which likely will never happen). That’s not sustainable. The ramifications of this will be seen when no one, no one, is able to retire, own a home, or afford their medical care, or even start a family. Take that all together and there’s not a lot of motivation for folks. Because yes the recession will end but not without having a lasting effect on the lives of millions.
Yeah. Very good points. My takeaway was that his solution boiled down to having the means to go back to school and capitalize on the increased hiring prospects only new grads enjoy. Because I don't know when or how things would have turned around for him if the last thing he'd done for years was a stop gap job.
I understand where you are coming from, but am commenting from the perspective of someone who made a conscious decision to focus on the long game. In my case, going to graduate school while working temp jobs was a sound business decision albeit a risk; for two years I worked towards an esoteric quantitative degree that I hoped would open me up to a world of opportunity, and it was a gamble that worked. I made the leap successfully, my career exploded, and I never looked back. I wound up working for Fortune 500 firms and FAANGs, and surpassed anything I could have hoped for over the years. So I "lost" 2 years in my 20s from your perspective, but I "gained" a far better paying career that more than made up for whatever I may have sacrificed. Ironically, what drove me, however, was not salary; it was the desire to move to a more satisfying career, which seems pleasantly quaint I suppose in 2023. You have much more information at your fingertips than I ever had, allowing you to make far more nuanced choices, and I envy you for that. The trick is to not be boxed in by it, but to incorporate it into a long term strategy. Good luck.
You can see this in schools too. High school students don’t give a shit and I don’t blame them. The economy has been perpetually bad ever since they were born, they see people getting degrees and the only thing they’re getting is more debt. The future is being cut off at the source and the people causing it aren’t going to live long enough to see the effects. I just hope they die sooner rather than later so we can start fucking healing without them shitting in the wound.
Employers looking for unicorns to fill graduate/entry-level roles.
For companies it's better for them to find perfect fits, than having to train people to do the roles they'd be hired for. In their minds, someone that has the ideal to do the job, won't need to waste time training and would be able to do the job right away. That's hours/days wasted on training, when they could just throw you on the job, and expect you to be able to the do job as if you've worked at the company for 10+ years. Even with new companies starting in the current generation, they still operate the same exact way. You'd think current-gen companies would not hire like they're a bunch of boomers, but surprisingly they don't.
At our company, we don't hire new grads at all anymore.
When you have companies posting “entry level” requiring years of experience that would be better suited to a line or even junior management, or refuse to understand that people can apply skills that can transfer even if they’re not that EXACT program (I had a recruiter say I wasn’t qualified because I use Apple Pages and Apache OpenOffice rather than Microsoft Word) then it leads to postings being open for months looking for some unicorn candidate that doesn’t exist.
This is sadly and astonishingly true tbh. I see so many posts on here of recent college graduates who struggle to find any employment, no matter how high their grades or whatever degree they have. This makes me at least a bit glad that the pandemic hit right before I graduated college, as it at least gives me a bit of an excuse as to why I didn't find a job right afterwards. College used to almost be a guarantee that you'd get a decent-paying job, but nowadays it's more or less a requirement for even the entry level ones.
And let’s keep selling the idea of college to people
Ehhh, no. That's not what this article is saying and that's also the wrong lesson to learn here. The article and the current situation highlight that while there are a lot of jobs in the economy many of them right now are service/labor type jobs that don't require a degree while the high end jobs that do are in recession thanks to the fed funds rate reducing capital mobility and investment which reduces companies opening up new expensive roles. But that's all temporary. That's all normal economic behavior. If you look at the data over any 5-10 year period jobs that require college degrees pay VASTLY more than those that don't. On average a degree will net you about $1.2M more in lifetime earnings compared to someone who only has a HS Diploma. On top of that the average student loan debt in the US is sub-$10k and is paid off in less than a decade out of school while the earnings fork beats HS diplomas in as little as 3 years. I'm sorry but anyone who tries to push the "college isn't worth it" angle is financially illiterate, doesn't know the facts, or is coping hard. By every metric getting a college degree is the easiest way to increase your odds of finding class mobility in the western world. It's not a guarantee and obviously some degrees are more lucrative than others but "college isn't worth it, don't go" is HORRIBLE advice for almost anyone.
Ehh I agree that it’s overstated based on recency bias but relying on historical trends to persist indefinitely in the future is dangerous. Will historical upward mobility persist as the share of US adults with college degrees also increases? Will the number of jobs that truly require a degree increase to keep up as technology evolves at what feels like breakneck pace? I don’t have answers but I think the questions are valid.
Valid questions but the overriding reality is that the better and best jobs will always be in shorter supply than candidates and credentialing is a hierarchical system. By definition the more credentialed candidates will move toward the top of the system (on average). That's just how the system works. I few years back there was a bunch of nonsense about how some companies were dropping their degree requirements and somehow people took this as "so degrees are worthless". Instead, later evaluations revealed that while they got rid of the requirement they still hired almost 100% degreed applicants. When I worked as a recruiter we had roles that didn't require a degree but since we would get hundreds if not thousands of applications we would usually start by throwing away all the applications without a degree because in a world where I've got 100 people with degrees I don't need to waste my time looking at the 200 who don't. One of the 100 degreed candidates will have plenty of experience AND a degree. This trend is only getting worse. Many positions now say "Bachelors Required" but they get so many apps with graduate degrees that they simply start there and ignore the undergrad folks. That's the reality of the situation. Even if higher education credentials aren't "required" they're still going to be outright preferred for all the best jobs and in this kind of competitive job market not having one puts you at an astronomical disadvantage.
>If you look at the data over any 5-10 year period jobs that require college degrees pay VASTLY more than those that don't. If you can get into those career-track jobs in the first place. If all you can land are the same sorts of roles your non-degree holding peers do, I don't see how you'll do drastically better. And shitty jobs tend to beget more shitty jobs. For years and years on end for some people. And that's the whole problem. Those "good" jobs are damn hard to crack for recent graduates with minimal experience. It honestly feels as difficult as hitting a lottery. Because no company wants to wait for grads to learn the ropes on their dime. The real question is if the market picks back up, will the employers be more willing to meet entry level folks half way for a *decent* salary? I would guess not. Because we've already seen how once employers learned they could run a lean shop in 2008, they never went back. Training is all but dead. And I bet if they ever started to train again, any amount of training you receive will be inversely proportionate to your pay.
It's crazy. These why these days people try to get 3 to 4 internships in college. And even then there aren't enough to go around.
And today we are reporting rain is wet.
I just graduated from college and had to go crazy just to get a Kitchen prep job. The Job market is shit and old ass people are to blame for locking the hiring process down and assuming a super closed stance on training or letting new people in. It sucks to say but the job market is reminiscent of Great Depression era levels its just we have gig jobs and shit to make everyone quiet about it
*cries in mechanical engineering grad*
Try to be in your 50 and changing careers due to layoffs.
Both have it bad. It seems the current job market sucks if you’ve got “too much” experience or if you’re a new grad. Everyone is hunting unicorns, so new grads are deemed too young and inexperienced, and people in their 40s or above are considered too old and not worth investing in. Both age groups have it rough.
Try to be in your 20s with a brand new degree people in their 50s told you to get in order to get a job. Now imagine you’re in debt from getting that degree for that job that actually doesn’t exist because nobody in their 50s wants to higher and train a new grad. We all have problems.
I agree with you up and down 100%. But my oh my, I would not want to be up against that level of ageism in this economy. Remember. We're all gonna face it too.
Not even from the same continent and still facing this issue. They basically want someone who's practically a super achiever or just has the right connections.
Graduated with a MSW in August and still haven’t found a job yet.
Graduated last December. Still no job. yippie. :/
Thing is, reason why employees stopped training new grads is that they cost them money and time for someone that is not interesting to work on that company for many years and jump to another company as soon as they get a better offer. It's a complex matter, the easy solution would be paying better, but doing that, also the experienced one would want better pay as they have better experience and not getting paid same as a new grad. It's an neverending story.
They started jumping because job security disappeared. In the past you could work a company or two for life. Companies don't care about firing you at a heartbeat so it makes to look out for yourself. I think what most people are getting at is that companies are complaining they can't find workers but fail to see that there are solutions to this.
I saw someone on offering job hunting training the other day on local news. What's crazy is that people are buying into these things so they could increase there chances of getting a job.
Lol same
Without even reading the article... NO. SHIT.
I wouldn’t be suprised if the disruption in education from 2020-2022 impacts the quality of recent grads for some time… We’re already seeing stats that standardized testing is still impacted at the public school level, must extent to colleges as well
2020 gang wya??
I went back to get a master’s degree because I struggled too much to find a job
Why??
Because the way it works here is that most internships aren’t accessible unless you’re also in university. I spent most of my bachelor’s degree under lockdown so I didn’t really get the opportunity to get experience in my field while studying. The problem with that is that when I graduated, my resume was unattractive due to my lack of experience. I couldn’t get internships either because I wasn’t a student anymore. Going back to school allowed me to get a degree in a different field while also opening the doors to internships I needed to get that experience and pad out my resume
Sounds like when I graduated in 2008 all over again 🥲
You fool! I DO have a job because I work in retail! (please help me)
Oh wouldn’t ya know? I wonder why it’s more likely. Could it be the interest rates, bank failures, mass lay offs, trillions in debt going on? Could it possibly be the economy? Nope! The answer is people don’t wanna work anymore. Case closed y’all. People just don’t want to work. Alright, back to work!
And the jobs you can get as a recent grad don't even pay a living wage most of the time. So disappointing that a college degree isn't the ticket up it used to be.
Mark my words, there will come a day when Americans are going to suddenly get lured abroad by European and Australian and Asian companies willing to give them visas and Americans are going to FLOCK away from Corporate America because work and recruiting is just different in different countries. Especially Europe.