As we move into April, graduating high school seniors are finding out about which colleges they have been accepted to and college seniors are preparing to job hunt. In my book, Failure to Launch: How to Get Your Teens and Young Adults to Independence, this begins the great myth. Not Santa Claus, not the Easter Bunny, not the Tooth Fairy, but the College Fairy. Yes, we believe in the College Fairy like we believe in very little else. At the end of high school, there is the great push to go to college. Why? Because having got the best grades at the best schools, and the best SAT or ACT scores, and going to the best colleges, the best job awaits. It is a mantra repeated over and over and over and over. It is as if parents and students are waiting to the meet the College Fairy right after getting that degree and poof, she hands over the six figure job and all its glory. I watch this dance year after year. Students who never worked or managed bills or their own money struggle to comprehend the whole world of “getting a  job”. Successful in academe, they now are rejected for their lack of work experience. Their parents become ashamed and look on mutely. What happened to that great student? Why aren’t they succeeding? I have watched with sadness the trials of last year’s college grads even more shocked and daunted by this economy. Most are not working and are either at home with mom and dad or are being supported by mom and dad. Did you know that even before this downturn in economy, half of all graduating college seniors went  home to live with mom and dad and had no job prospects?

Of course, I get the “maybe that happens to others but not to my brilliant child” syndrome. Until it happens to their child. Why? I call it the Golden Hammer problem. By and large, our generation of Baby Boomers are the first parents who have not done our job with parenting young adults. In times past, parents took on the job of mentoring their young adults. The dads took sons in as apprentices, the mothers trained young girls in roles that would net them a husband and make “pin money” and family and friends were tapped to hire the young adults. We call this “networking”. As a young adult, I thought it unfair that getting a job depended more on who you know, not what you know. It wasn’t fair. Life should be about merit, I though. But it is fair. It was and remains true because people need to depend on their fellow workers and you have to know the person, not the brain content. My sons got jobs as teens through family friends as I did as a teen. Networking.

But the Golden Hammer is our fatal flaw. Baby Boomers have decided that their young adults will get the Mansion of their dreams, i.e. a career and job to live in and prosper by, if the parents give them the Golden Hammer (a college degree). That’s all it takes to get the Mansion. Possess the Golden Hammer. Parents will do anything to get the Golden Hammer. A silver one is all right but we know the Mansion materializes with the Golden Hammer.

Now if you had to build a mansion, would you really think possessing a tool is enough to do it? You would think, “how crazy”. You need a blueprint (career plan and preparation) , good materials (job training and experience), workers (your support team), and some hard work using whatever hammer and tools  you have. The goal would not be the Golden Hammer, it would be the work and creation you and your team put into making it happen. Also, it happens over time, it requires work and planning over time. But we focus on the Golden Hammer without a plan, team, or any sort of materials and wonder why the Mansion isn’t materializing.

I am always amazed that after kindergarten, parents don’t ask their kids what they want to be when they grow up. As my kids worked at various jobs in high school, they came to know where they didn’t want to work and what they liked about the jobs they had. By the second year of college, I require them to work in their field of interest. My son is graduating this May and will work in his Uncle’s business where he has worked summers for two years. He has saved the company money, picks up concepts and responsibility willingly, they like him and he likes them. People tell me I’m lucky to have a family member to hire  him. This was not luck. This was a plan and it worked. He could have found out he hated it. We would have tapped other friends and connections in the exploration. This summer is my youngest son’s critical summer. He is planning on doing work in a mini-Peace Corps project for six weeks as he hopes to join the Peace Corps when he graduates. After a two year committment in the Peace Corps, he goes to the top of the list for any government job he applies for and if he wants to do non-profit work or international business, he has a resume of experience. I’m always in the background researching, promoting, and helping set these plans in motion. That is the job of a parent in this age group. They need help setting up these plans and exploring these career options.

Any young person going to college needs to have an idea of how that college experience is going to benefit them with a job and career. They need to know what jobs are at the end of the degree and how much they pay. When I help young people and parents, I tell them that without work experience, their child may bypass the lowest of the entry level work, making less than $12/hr.  but typically they will start only one level up at $15/hr. or so, still in the working class or poverty level. It will be a few years of work experience before they make middle class wages of about $20/hr. or $40,000 a  year. Of course, there are some majors like nursing, teaching, engineering and the like that will start you out in middle class wages, but in almost all of these you have been out there doing hands on work in the areas from which you can be evaluated as an employee. It is the work and planning that will get  you on the road to building the Mansion, not possessing the Golden Hammer.

If your young adult is graduating and not sure about where they will work, start doing research now on their field of interest and what sort of certification they may need or work experience to land these jobs. The chances are that once you see what the jobs require, your young adult is headed off for job training and certification. At the very least they may need to work in their area of interest at entry level and that is fine. Don’t wait for the Golden Hammer to create the Mansion. Create the blueprints now.

Tags: college degree, golden hammer, job, mentoring

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.