Parents – Protect Your College or Undergraduate Child from Future Unemployment Queues

It is no longer news that graduate unemployment is on the increase. Most people believe that it is the duty of government to ‘sort’ it out. Whereas the government, going by its pronouncements agree with this; that task is however being seriously hampered by the parlous state of the economy within the UK and beyond. And going by current predictions, that trend is set to continue for many more years.

What can parents do to stimulate the creativity and innovativeness of their children to be job creators and not job seekers? What do future job hunters need to do to stand out and more importantly, get ahead of the crowd upon graduation?

There is no gain saying that future graduates will face tough competition for the available jobs. In other words, many future graduates will suffer some extended period of inactivity and inability in applying their knowledge, creativity and innovativeness. It will be a shame indeed that some will lose some of their youth to anxiety about finding jobs.

While pressure is being mounted on government, parents too should take some responsibility about turning things around. They should ask themselves the question ‘What can a parent do to encourage, develop and support their children to be job creators not job seekers of the future’?

Particularly, parents of teenager currently in College, A’ Levels or University have a golden opportunity to make this happen.  This crop of teenagers will be affected more than those who are in secondary school today. They are the ones who will be graduating within the next 6 – 8 years when the impact of the recession will only just be receding.

The key question for such parents to answer is: ‘What can I doing to enhance the career prospect of my child? This is particularly important unless of course you have an empire that your children can walk into upon graduation. Otherwise, parents have a big role to play.

The crowded unemployment market is not so much a respecter of the graduate’s academic prowess, their University status or other excuses which were sufficient in the past. There are benefits to those attributes, but they are no longer adequate in today’s market situation. The reasons for that are not far to fetch; for one, there are thousands of academically clever graduates every year. And for another, international labour mobility is at its highest with people able to travel far and wide in pursuit of employment.

But there are a number of actions parents can take to ensure that their children stand out and ahead of the crowd in the search for future jobs. These actions include the following:

One, encourage them to make a decision as to what they would like to do in the future. Youngsters have a worrying trend of not knowing what they want to do when they ‘grow up’. Ask most of them what they would like to do and the answer you get is ‘I don’t know’.

It is difficult to say what is responsible for this state of things – is it due to the fact that they are spoilt for choice or simply because they are confounded and confused. Or is it because they lack the courage to embrace the ideas in their heads? Whatever be the case, one fact remain true, in order to get ahead, they have got to decide and work with something until they are sure what they want.

Secondly, help them capture their ideas. Teenagers are thinking machines with thousands of ideas flowing in their head daily. Unfortunately, their beautiful, brilliant and potentially beneficial ideas are allowed to waste away. With support and direction, these ideas could turn out to make our world a much better place.

Thirdly, help them discover and explore their entrepreneurial side. Capturing their creative and imaginative ideas is a good place to start. Ideas are gems that if nurtured can be translated to businesses. It is about time our children became job creators rather than job seekers.

This is a great opportunity to discharge the second part of your parental duty – that of ensuring that they put their talents to optimum use. If it be true that ‘there are only two lasting bequeaths we can give to our children, one is roots; the other wings’; then this is the later of those bequeaths. Remember that by the time they graduate they would have become their own person. In essence this is about one of the final chances to discharge parental duty. It is a chance you must grab and discharged with total commitment.