How to Help Your Child Get a Job

How to help your child get a job can start with you. The key word here is “help”. Your son or daughter is very capable as demonstrated by how far they’ve come, yet you’re probably still frustrated that they still aren’t card carrying members of the working world.

What’s going on here? Is it the economy? Is it them? Is it you?

Chances are it’s a combination of all of these, so it’s important to be more resourceful and strategic than ever. Here are some tips for you parents on how to help your child get a job.

Identify the real issue: Not knowing what you want to do for a living is very different than knowing what you want to do but not knowing how to go about doing it. If your child is one of the lucky ones that knows what career path they want, then your role becomes very clear. Help them by structuring a job search plan that includes networking, preferably with your professional contacts. If your child does not know what they want to do, then you are in a very different situation. You can best help your child by finding a career counselor through their school or university, or within their community, to do assessments, exploration and planning with them. Your best help will be to steer them toward the exploration and planning needed to get started down their path.

Build on their strengths: Regardless of where your child is in their career development, always focus on their strengths. If they are a good communicator, encourage them to use the phone and face-to-face meetings to do their networking. If they like helping others, encourage them to explore the helping professions like medicine, mental health, education, nursing, etc.

Explore their fears: Sometimes young folks can’t get up and going because there is something else going on that is preventing them from taking the first steps. Explore this with them, and help them identify the obstacles that might be getting in their way. Perhaps your child is shy. If this is the case, then face to face networking and interviewing may be intimidating. Learn how they perceive starting this stage of their lives and get a professional involved to help overcome these barriers.

Provide context for the ambiguity: Starting in kindergarten, we lead structured lives. For young adults, that structure disintegrates, and poof! They are expected to survive and thrive. Help your child understand the realities of the working world and lay out how your path unfolded. Giving them context to this ambiguous undertaking will undoubtedly relieve some anxiety and help them figure out where they could start.

Allow them to be part of the process: It’s so hard for parents, who have pushed and pulled and loved in every direction to help their kids become a success, to just let go of being in the driver’s seat. Working collaboratively with your child not only will empower them to make important decisions for themselves, but it models good leadership skills.

Your child will be a success, it just might not happen on your timeline. The economy is tough, sentiment is weak, and kids get lost in the vortex of ambiguity after college. Take a few moments to step back to this time in your life and remember, it wasn’t easy for you either. You are their biggest cheerleader, and the one they look to as a model for what to do. The interpersonal approaches represented in the above steps are great ideas for how to help your child get a job.

Tweet

 Julie LaCroix, M.A.,  has a private practice in Newport Beach, CA,  which serves adults of all ages looking for help with how they got “stuck” in their careers.  Maybe it’s the wrong job, maybe it’s the wrong field altogether.  Or maybe you just don’t know what else is out there.  Her practice is designed to help you, wherever you are in your career journey. She earned a B.A. in Psychology from UCI and an M.A. in Educational Clinical Counseling from Azusa Pacific University.  Email Julie at www.julielacroix.com.