Parents are worried. They should be! You don’t need a college degree to tend bar, wait tables or walk dogs. Yet nearly half of all college graduates have jobs that do not require a college degree. And for millions of college graduates the situation will not get better once the economy improves. More than a bad economy is at play. Today’s job market has new rules about how to prepare, enter, survive and prosper.

Settling for jobs that do not take advantage of your student’s college degree amounts to an occupational downgrade that can take as long as two decades to overcome. Economist Paul Krugman suggested two decades was conservative. The demands of the new job market are such that those who settle may never recover—forever stuck in careers beneath what they dreamed of as entering freshmen.

But why am I talking to parents? Because there are things they can do to help their students avoid a downhill career slide. Here are some parental tips for you depending on where your student is along the educational continuum.

College freshmen and sophomores: Parents are sometimes worried about flying the proverbial helicopter and, as a result step back too far and let go too soon as their student enters college. From the standpoint of career development, they need you now more than ever. It is a time when students should have a laser-like focus on skills, extracurricular activities, and work experiences that will facilitate entry into the job market at graduation. Instead, many students waste those years reveling in the excitement of independent living away from mom and dad and are not focused on the linkages between college and career. The lack of focus the first couple of years of school can easily be the first step on the slippery slope to an occupational downgrade.

Now is good time for a conversation with your student about why they want to attend college. Most students understand that the end game at graduation is a well-paying professional position or its equivalent. It is time to place special emphasis on what your student needs to do to make a well-paying professional position happen. It is a career foundation that can be effectively established during the first two years of college or before.

Juniors and seniors should be in full job search mode. Yet many wait until they are near graduation or after to get started. That’s too late. There is stiff competition at graduation for good jobs. They will go to those who have a strong sense of career direction and solid preparation. It is a foundation that needs to be demonstrated in resumes, applications and interviews. It is hard work and requires practice. And it is not something someone can master in the rush of the moment.

Those who have graduated and have yet to land that first professional job should know time is speeding by. They need to put all their energy into a job search and avoid staying in a position that does not require a college degree. Before long, the job, rather than the degree, will define their standing in the job market.

These are a few of the realities of the new job market. How do parents get the attention of their students; how important is college major in career success; how does one judge if their student is on a career path to nowhere? Those questions and more is what this web site is about.
It’s a place for you to comment, ask questions and get answers—a place to see what other parents are experiencing. From time to time I will publish newsletters, post videos, blog entries and tweets as tips for parents and students. All are designed to get your student on the path to career survival and prosperity. The sooner you get started the better.

Please let me know what you think and what other topics are of interests. Sign up to automatically receive new blogs, tweets and a copy of my newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time.

A report by Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies finds that less than 30 percent of U.S. teens had jobs in the summers of 2010 and 2011. Though the employment outlook is bleak, there are some strategies for navigating the summer job market. Listen Here

Many young graduates take lower-paying jobs as waiters or cashiers that pay the bills, but rarely use the skills they learned in college and often have little money left to pay off student loans. And the choices they make early in their careers often have a long-lasting financial impact. Listen here

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From the interview:

“It’s new because there’s a worldwide redistribution of the workforce that’s going on. and i might add, that has very little to do with the job numbers that are getting ready to come out. that job market is going to be a lousy competitive job market for the foreseeafuture, regardless of how well the american economy does. and a couple of ticks up and down in the job market in the united states won’t make that much different. so, what people need to do is to really start thinking about how they can be competitive in this job market, and that requires them to begin to think differently. and i’m not talking about just tweaking your resume. i’m talking about tweaking your mindset, which is much more difficult.”

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000100678

I routinely meet people who have been looking for 5 years or more.  They want to know why their job search has taken so long.  Most prefer to blame it on the economy.   While the Great Recession has had an impact (finding suitable work takes longer), a lot of hiring has taken place in the last five years.  The more helpful question is “Has your job search failed?”

The truth is the job market has changed a lot over the past few years and the old methods of looking for a job don’t work as well as they used to.  Yes, there is a new job market out there and understanding how it works is more important than ever.

Your job search will fail if you fail to:

1. Present your candidacy as the perfect fit for a position.  Of necessity companies/organizations have gotten pickier about whom they hire.  Finding a “good fit” is no longer good enough.  Your job is to convince prospective employers that you are the very best possible fit and bring attributes to the job that are difficult to find in other candidates.
2. Understand that your resume is not about you.  It is about what the employer wants from you.  You need to find what problems they want to resolve or issues they want addressed by filling the position you are applying for.  To find out, carefully review the position description, visit the employer’s web site and read some industry publications.  Then describe your skills and talents in the same language employers uses to describe their problems.
3. Present a professional on-line image.  Reference checking starts with checking out someone’s on-line image.  It is cheaper and less time-consuming than traditional reference checking.  Far too many people are casual about the things they post or allow to be posted on their Facebook page.  Those who are indiscrete are easily eliminated from consideration.   On the flip side, people who take the time to post professional, creative and thoughtful ideas tend to get a second look.  Remember, if it is on-line, it’s out there for others to see.
4. Use social media effectively.  A post which asks “Does anyone know where I can find a job” is classic laziness.  People are more willing to help if they sense you have done some homework.  Be industrious by uncovering opportunities and asking for connections in certain industries or with certain people.  Share what you find with others.  Largess of spirit is a demonstration of character companies find attractive.
5. Be flexible. In a rapidly evolving job environment new careers are cobbled together from old skills and creative ways of thinking.  An engineering professor at Northwestern University told me they no longer “teach engineering.”  Their students are taught to “solve problems to improve the lives of people.”  There will always be a need for those.

I have covered these points and more in my latest book, Cracking the New Job Market: The 7 Rules for Getting Hired in Any Economy (Amacom, 2011).

If ever there was a good time to be in the job market and over 50, now is it. No—I am not suggesting that ageism does not exist or that this is a good job market. It does exist and the effects of the Recession are still with us. But, we are in the midst of a sea-change that could benefit older workers. Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers and Gen-Y’s are defined by the years in which they were born. But, participation in the next generation of workers will have to do with mindset, not age—not completely, but more than ever before. At one time our mindset was driven by date-of-birth. It defined what we thought; believed in; and how we participated in the workforce. A flip-flop is going on in which membership in the next generation of workers (call it Generation Global) is less a function of age and more a function of mindset. As such, it dictates what all of us need to do to get a job regardless of age. Here is why.

The New Job Market: The new job market (see my latest book Cracking The New Job Market: The 7 Rules for Getting Hired in Any Economy, AMCOM, Aug. 2011) has been shaped by globalization, rapid changes in technology and deregulation. An increasing number of companies are chasing the emerging global markets of China, Russia, India and others. And technology is moving faster than the available skillset in the general population. Companies are forced to compete on price, quality and innovation. To get a sense of this see Tom Friedman’s July 12, 2011 op-ed piece in the New York Times, “The Start-Up of You.” He shares how today’s thought-leaders (think Silicon Valley) view the labor market. Companies are getting awfully particular about the people they hire. They want workers who, more than anything else, can add value. As evidence, workers are now evaluated quarterly because no company can afford to discover at year’s-end that a team leader is not working out.

Yes, there is room in the workforce for anyone who can add value—but you have to demonstrate rather than just say it. And that includes the over fifty crowd. Here are some suggestions to follow.

Five age-defying tips for participation in today’s workforce

1. Understand and stay focused on the value each employment opportunity is asking to be created. Make sure your background—how you describe it in your resume and application—reflects that value. This means your resume is not about you—it’s about what others want from you.
2. The interview is about the value you create. Give up talking about “the good-old days” and keep your mindset in the present and on the value the company needs created by filling the job for which you are an applicant.
3. How you dress is more important than ever. Understand the expectations the company has for people coming in for interviews, and dress accordingly. Avoid the extremes, but don’t go in looking as if you belong to an entirely different generation. If blue jeans are a part of the culture, you will probably make interviewers feel uncomfortable if you show up in formal business attire.
4. The best way to reenter the job market is to never leave it. An extended period of unemployment at an older age is difficult to overcome. When you are between jobs show your creativity by remaining active as a professional. Stay tethered to what’s happening in the workforce by taking classes, doing research in conjunction with a faculty member, taking on temporary project work; etc. —get the point?
5. Don’t be afraid to negotiate. Once you get over the idea others may not want you because of your age and you get use to the idea that you have something of value to offer, negotiate. The best time to negotiate is after you have a job offer in hand but before you accept it. Be reasonable but do not be afraid to ask for things that are important to you in any new job.

I have discussed these and many other points in the aforementioned work. Consult it for additional detail about execution. There are other points I have not mentioned at all: should you try and appear younger than you really are? Should you dye your hair or otherwise camouflage other aspects of your work history? For better or worse, I’ll leave all of that to you. My core advice is to learn how to create value and you will dramatically improve your chances of participating in the most exciting workforce ever.