Students have their own agegndas for pursuing their education and sometimes its just something to do for them. Students who are not interested will usually come around and ask for your help eventually. Providing a lifetime placement service is the best tool to make an impact upon student's life. It takes time for people to make big changes in their lives.
Good points, Michele. The challenge is to discover what the fears are that get grads to say they don't want to work. There are definitely fears that are debilitating to them. To uncover what they are and address them could change these no shows into highly motivated individuals. But how is certainly the question. Maybe start by asking them. Best wishes, Susan
Unfortunately, I have the same challenge. I have a specific timeline for placement. Yet, I receive calls from the parents of adults graduates from 2 years ago requesting immediate help for their children. However, when you set the appointment, the student is a no show no call. And, if you call or mail them, they do not respond. These people clearly do not want to work! At the end of the day, I do not want to jeopardize the integrity of our relationships with employers by setting up no show appointments. I believe we can only help those people who are at least willing! Thanks, Michele
Great points, MariaElena. All have solutions that generally require patience and persistence. Keeping in touch by phone is difficult but yields the best results. People will talk a lot more than write the same info. It gives you a chance to probe for more information and establish rapport so you get some good answers. While it is a lot of work the information is so helpful and provides clues about how to get grads to seek a job, discover what they do with their training, or their fears about the job seeking process. It might start in admissions with a focus on getting a job as the end result of training. Good luck, Susan
Hi, I guess we are all running into the same situation.
First day of job search workshop I have them sign and fill out our employment verification for when they do obtain employment and it is at that time when I find out the ones that dont want employment or my assistance because they are working out of the industry of study. It also helps when some take courses because they want to enhance their skills - We still count that as a placement at then end of the 90 days but we also track raises and promotions because of the training.
I let them know that although they have signed the Waiver - my door is still open to them just in case" knock on wood" they lose their current employment or decide I need a job.
Suggestion I will keep in touch with them just to see how they are doing or send them Holiday Cards. Sometimes we send other incentive letters....
Because sometimes if they obtained employment on their own they will not want to share the information with you. Incentive letters have been great graduates end up calling back letting us know where they are working ...at that point we have the employment information and they already had completed their 90days.
Continuing to keep in touch has worked in some cases.
I agree with all of you sometimes there are some that you just cant change.
I also keep notes in their file of all form of communication I have had with the graduates.
Its tough many times but the ones you do manage to impact just by saying hello...feels good.
Good luck
HI Tess
Great description of career services. We suggest keeping in touch with students many times prior to graduation. It's great you are part of orientation. But new students forget most of what they hear in the excitement of starting school. We also suggest creating individual placement plans for each student with checklists of activities and projects to complete. Best wishes, Susan
At Orientation we discuss with students what their goals are to get some idea how realistic they are about their goals and to get to know them. We also discuss Career Services and what we do. This is a good opportunity to start connecting with the students and building relationships. It is important to develop relationships early with students to find out what Career Services needs to do to assist them, so they can develop skills to meet their individual challenges to employment before graduation. It also helps us to be aware of students with special circumstances/issues that can be problematic with placement.
That's a great story Deborah. Unfortunately not a story.Maybe you need a disclaimer about no guarantee about finding husbands. (Just kidding.) Perhaps this points to better qualifying during admissions? There are ways to ask around the applicant's motivation to enroll. What do you plan to do with your training upon completion? How soon do you see yourself working in the field? How many of your friends work or are in the specific field, etc. Anyone else have a story to top this one? Any other suggestions? Best wishes, Susan
A lot of people (more than you might think) take classes and enroll in programs just for something to do. I can think of one particular student who came to school for the sole purpose of finding a husband; she never intended to use her degree and openly admitted that fact! There's nothing you can do about it and unfortunately it skews placement results.
FYI, she didn't find a husband by graduation and ended up moving in with her parents because she still wasn't interested in working. You meet all kinds!
Hi Janelle
Very very interesting situation. Can you require that students have a license as an admissions requirement and even offer driver's ed. Of course if the students have no way of getting a car then it's a moot point. The other thought is to get the employers to be creative. Ask employers to set up vans for pickup and drop off of employees. It depends on how desperate employers are for workers. Anyone else have ideas? Susan
We have that problem with students that don't want to find a job as well. However, our bigger problem is students that do not have driver's licenses. It isn't even that they have a suspended license they simply do not even have a license and have really no intentions of going for their license in the near future. We live in a very rural area and there is not public transportation. Most of our graduates have to travel outside of our immeadiate area to find employment and we stress the importance of having a license but it does not mean anything to some graduates. What are some recommendations that you may have to help us motivate these students without a license to get their license?
I definitely understand having graduates that have no desire to work. However, our bigger problem is trying to place students that do not have a driver's license, it is not that they have a license and it just isn't valid at this point. We have several students who do not have licenses at all and have no intentions of getting their licenses. We live in a very rural area where there is not public transportation and most of our gradautes are traveling outside of our immeadiate area to find employment. What are some tips you could offer to helping these graduates get motivated to get their licenses?
I think that having students graduate and then opt out of the full-time job market is probably not that unusual. We have a lot of female students who put off starting families until they are near completion of our program. That said, I found the idea of having such students sign waivers to be of interest. I wonder though if there are any legal or financial aid problems associated with doing so.
Hi James
This is a frequent topic for discussion. I think that students who say they don't want to find a job are really afraid of the job search process. It would be interesting to see what extra employment skills training would do to address this fear. Fear can be an enormous barrier to anything. Learning how to overcome fear can be a life time lesson.
Best wishes
Susan
I believe in effective note taking during the interview process. Part of admissions and enrolment is a question and answer paper. Why they want to enroll in school. What are their goals? Where they see them selves in five years. And other fact-finding and Value based questions. So it can be discussed with them upon graduation or if the issue comes up you can explain or show them their enrolment and Q & A sheet about what they said they wanted to accomplish upon graduation.
James
James,
Students who say they don't want a job are really saying they have a fear of leaving school and going through the job search process. So it is up to the school to provide as much practice, experience, and knowledge as possible about finding a job. Break down the lessons into sections and require that the student complete one section before going on to the next. Each section should be designed to eliminate a major fear. When there are no fears, students will look forward to the job search. Good luck, Susan
I try to expalin to them the real world and give then examples like, talking about people or things that turn them off. I ask them about their family and family memebers they do not want to wind up like. Or a friend they know that they do not respect. I try to be dipl0omatic about this but find there hot spot for what motivates them.
Hi Kevin and Amy
There have been many exchanges about this issue. One point to focus on is the grad's fear of the job search. That might be so strong they would rather hide out than go on a job interview. So suggest you do whatever it takes to get them over the fear of finding a job. It is probably a lot of little things like not having the right clothes, fear of talking, fear of failure, being rejected, looking silly, and on and on. Plan role plays and practice sessions. Plan some group "therapy" to talk about fears. It's a challenge. Career schools are designed to overcome them.
Susan
AMy,
Having read your posting, and the several replies that followed...I can honestly say "I feel your pain!" It doesn't make sense for me for someone to work hard in school and complete the course, and then refuse to look for work!
What I have found, however; we haven't done a good enough job in motivating that individual to want to look for work in the industry we trained them in. So I try to have one on ones with soon to be graduated students, and figure out where their heads are in terms of job search. Sometimes I can point them in a direction that hadn't been discussed before, there by getting them excited about the choices.
Kevin
Hi Maria,
What a great job you did of summarizing the issues of students who say they don't want to get a job. In our opinion, it is about fear of going for an interview and failing. It's fear of the unknown when actually on the job. That's why a lot of interview skills and job awareness training is needed. Also shows why intern and externships can be so important. We still believe in a lot of handholding to get the student to and through the interview process.
Great summary. Susan
