Covid changed or at least advanced some attitudes for the better.
Many realized that nothing is more important than family.
Others realized that suffering over trivialities makes no sense.
Mark graduated UCONN in 2020. Tough year to graduate. So I understood why he took a job waiting tables in June of 2020. But I didn’t understand why he had not looked for a job from September 2019 until March 2020 when the pandemic began. Indeed, he was an Economics major. So applying to financial institutions throughout his senior year should have been part of his daily life. Two years later, when I met Mark in 2022, he was still waiting tables.
Mark’s story is not singular. I’m no longer surprised when I hear that college graduates did not look for jobs during their senior years.
But what many don’t realize is that every day that they don’t have a job they become slightly less employable. That sounds harsh. But employers – particularly old school types – wonder “why has this guy been waiting tables for the last 2 years?” They would rather hire a guy straight from college who doesn’t have a question mark embedded within his application.
I do think the “gap” is not as big of a deal was it was years ago.
However, Mark came to me because he was getting fewer responses than ever. “I used to send 10 applications in a month and get at least a few interviews. Now, I’m lucky if I get an interview every other month.”
When he did get interviews, he said that the first five minutes were spent explaining what he had been doing the past few years and that put him on his heels from the start.
If your child just graduated college without a job…. get help now.