Schools

This past month, the Department of Education proposed expanded eligibility rules for its Pay As You Earn (PAYE) program which is designed to help relieve the debt burden for close to six million students.

The program basically does two things. First, it gives some students the opportunity to have their remaining student debt forgiven after 20 years. Second, it allows student loan payments to be adjusted to better match a borrower’s discretionary income.

The proposed changes are getting mixed reviews with lots of analysis. What’s mostly missing though is a more rigorous focus on the “real” discretionary income issue.

While overall unemployment rates have come down to a seven year low of 5.3% at the end of June 2015 most know that there is much more to the story. Among the most alarming is that for recent college graduates, the statistics have been pretty bleak, with only 52% employed full time 6 months after graduation.[1] Compounding the problem is the fact that 49% of 2013 and 2014 graduates consider themselves underemployed or in a job that does not require a college degree.[2] These are the real income issues in our student debt problem.

At a time when graduates are struggling to find meaningful and lucrative work using their hard earned education, they are also struggling with large student loan balances hanging over their heads. When a student stays unemployed for their first 9 months after graduating, their lost wage opportunity is an average of $33,000,[3] equal to an average graduate’s entire college debt.[4] But what students appear to be more immediately worried about is will they find work that matches their schooling or their passions.

This really hit home for me when, five days before her graduation, I received a frantic call from my niece. Instead of relishing the joy and excitement of finally achieving her goal of graduating from college, she was in tears. She had worked so hard, but was without a job - at least not one that counted. Continuing to work at the local sub shop did not count for her.

Final exams were behind her and the uncertainty of what came next was overwhelming - where she was going to live, how she would learn to effectively look for a job and whether she would be able to land work in her chosen field. Not once did she mention her student loans, which are significant. She did mention that there were no classes on campus on job search and she and most of her classmates had little understanding of what a career center could or would be able to do to help.

Job search is hard - a job all on its own. The job market is tough, but, with more than 50 million hires a year and employers talking talent shortage, jobs are out there. The key is to equip our students with what should be considered a basic life skill – job search readiness. Researching the job market, networking appropriately with confidence, building a personal brand, crafting an accomplishments-based resume, developing the poise and clarity of thought to handle tough interview questions – these are critical skills that will shape a student’s path through an average of 13 jobs in a career and determine the fit and fruitfulness of the bulk of their weekday activities the rest of their working lives.

Adjusting student loan payments may help alleviate some pain, – let’s face it, a lot of pain – but the root cause of the problem and moment of truth for our students as they embark on this next phase of their lives is how they will learn to choose a career path and gain the skills it takes to land a job that’s right for them.

My niece was one of the lucky ones. This fall, she’ll be a music teacher in a school she loves and has signed the lease on her first apartment as a college graduate. She worked hard at her job search and she had job search help. In the process, she developed a critical life skill. Her question to me: “Why don’t they teach this stuff in school???”

For a limited time, job seekers can visit us at https://nextjobcom.webflow.io/nextjob-scholarships-recent-grads for free access to our jobseekers toolkit where they can create their own job search plan.

[1] https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-2015-accenture-college-graduate-employment-research.aspx

‍[2] https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-2015-accenture-college-graduate-employment-research.aspx

‍[3] https://www.naceweb.org/s04022014/starting-salary-class-2014.aspx

[4] http://college.usatoday.com/2014/08/26/how-much-student-loan-debt-is-too-much-2/‍

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Tara Orchard, MA., is a Career Transition and Performance and Social Networking Coach. For over 20 years she has provided tangible and actionable insights and perspective to individuals and organizations seeking to develop strategies to adapt and grow.

Tara was advising on Social Networking and personal branding a long time before it was in vogue. She is a freelance writer featured in two business magazines and a member of the Advisory Board for the Career Professionals of Canada. She holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Psychology and is certified in numerous career, personality and psychology assessment tools.

As a career coach Tara brings over 20 years of experience working with thousands of individuals in different industries and careers, from around the world, at different stages of their career. She challenges people to ask themselves questions about who they are and what they want and need. Tara believes in Career Agility and finding an intersection between what is possible and what is realistic today as a part of the process for navigating an ongoing Career Journey. Tara has developed a 4 step career navigation process, "Discover, Prepare, Build, Actualize' and a 5 step psychologically infused social networking strategy for career and business success 'Ready, Set, Go, Focus and Flow" and is always looking for new ways to help people build and actualize their personal career journey.

What one piece of core advice would Tara share with job seekers in today’s market?“

Always remain aware and open. A successful career is not built in a day but over time through a series of events, opportunities and decisions requiring smart and proactive navigation. By constantly staying aware, which includes self-awareness, industry, career and economy awareness people can position themselves to be ready when an opportunity presents itself or are capable of creating an opportunity when needed or desired.

Part of the awareness process for career building includes understanding your career brand, a tool useful for both career direction and career marketing. An effective brand is built on awareness and then showcased through your words, content and materials (resumes, social profiles) and actions. All the pieces of the career building and navigation puzzle are more likely to come together when awareness remains on your radar.”

‍As a career coach Tara helps facilitate the process of gathering information and gaining insight to build awareness, identify new opportunities and help develop tangible and actionable strategies that can help someone move along the next phase of their career journey.

For more career coaching advice from Tara, follow her on twitter at @CareerChatter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

For a limited time, job seekers can visit us at https://nextjobcom.webflow.io/nextjob-scholarships-recent-grads for free access to our jobseekers toolkit where they can create their own job search plan.

There’s a lot of talk these days about skill gaps – a need for software programmers, engineers, etc. but not enough trained to fill the jobs US employers have open. Less is said about another skill gap – job search skills – the skill it takes for a software programmer to find the right employer, present themselves well and land the job in which they will thrive.

In a study of job seekers in two states, we’ve found that job seekers rate their job search readiness at a C-/D+. This is disturbing. In the average American’s working years, we’ll spend the bulk of our waking hours working in our jobs. But to land those jobs, we spend less time learning job search than we spend learning our smart phones.

I’ve been asking why and how this could be. How could we be so undereducated and unprepared to affect our career outcomes - the number one source of our income and financial well-being over the course of our lives. Ask any recent high school or college grad you know, for example, and the odds are you’ll hear them say – “No, I never really learned much about landing a job.”

Certainly since evolution of public education in the 1800s job search has become vastly more complicated.

Are our schools giving enough support and focus on what their career counselors are teaching - a life skill on par with personal finance?

So where do we learn job search? Where did you learn it? Chances are that you didn’t learn it well. For example, you may have landed your first job or and about half of your jobs, through someone you know. You may have essentially fallen into the job. After all, about half of all jobs are filled through networking. The chances are also great that you have not practiced job search even if you’ve learned it at some point. Americans change jobs, on average, every 3.5 years, which gives us little opportunity to stay sharp.

In the high school biology classes many states mandate, many of us learned how to dissect a frog, which was not only cool, but now part of the great movement in STEM. Perhaps a few weeks of learning the science of job search and dissecting its various parts would be a worthwhile addition for all of our students planning to look for a job?

For a limited time, job seekers can visit us at https://nextjobcom.webflow.io/nextjob-scholarships-recent-grads for free access to our jobseekers toolkit where they can create their own job search plan.

Dixie is a Coach Team Manager at NextJob where she manages a team of job coaches and is also the Quality Survey Manager. Dixie joined NextJob in 2010, as a Certified Homeownership Counselor (through NCHEC). Her non-profit work includes housing counseling, delinquency and foreclosure prevention and financial education.

Dixie’s coaching and employment-related services experience include over 15 years in staffing, recruiting, training, and job-matching while delivering exceptional service and solutions to a large client-base in a variety of industries and skill levels. With an aptitude for decision-making and problem solving, she has been consistently successful in gathering information and providing guidance while helping others feel empowered about next steps, possible outcomes and options.

Dixie was recently a featured job coach in the BrandOfYouJobTwitterViews event held on May 19, 2015 offering coaching advice to contestants vying for one of the 1,000 available coaching scholarships being offered through @FifthThird bank.

What one piece of advice would Dixie give to job seekers out there?

‍"Develop a concise, descriptive, accomplishment-based branding statement/60-second commercial. You'll get a lot of mileage out of that content. It can be used in cover letters, resume career profile and online applications in the "comments box," and of course in interviews when asked to "tell a little about yourself."‍

For more career coaching advice from Dixie, follow her on twitter at @DixiebDixie or connect with her on LinkedIn.

For a limited time, job seekers can visit us at https://nextjobcom.webflow.io/nextjob-scholarships-recent-grads for free access to our jobseekers toolkit where they can create their own job search plan.