Time mag’s Young & Jobless article this week is no surprise. College grads have no better idea on how to land their ideal job than anyone else, booming economy or no. “College seniors… are often finding that not even impressive diplomas and face-to-face networking can coax a job out of a sluggish economy.” I was pleased to see Time’s Create a Job sidebar but it’s a bit of a misnomer: it’s not “create a job” in the What Color is Your Parachute? sense. It’s “start a business.”
I had lunch with one of my twenty-something sons this week. He quit high school a few credits shy of a diploma, and has never gone to college. He’s had a good-paying web design contract job for a couple of years, working out of his house for an outfit in NYC. But he’s grown tired of working alone and is not sure he really wants to keep doing web design. He’s opted to end the contract at the month and asked me to coach him a bit on figuring out what next. He’s heard enough from me over the years about mission and passion and creating an ideal job that he’s decided it’s time for him to take a whack at it. So I gave him my new copy of Parachute and he’s agreed to work the exercises in it over the next month. He’s got something cooking in his brain already… not quite formed in his head enough to tell me, he said, but he’s already so excited that he feels “like a kid.” Hah.
It might be interesting for me to revisit those exercises with him. It’s been a few years since I’ve done them completely. Who knows what I might learn?