Parents: YOUR KIDS NEED to WORK

"I'd have hired the kid, but he had absolutely no work history," stated "Dan from company X" to me while interviewing at the college campus I work at.
"I don't know whether after 10 hours doing the same thing each day he's going to put his fist through the computer monitor! He had no work history for me to look back on to see if he can hold a job."

The quote above, and ones similar to it are beginning to be heard more often by me and other recruiters across the country.
We are finally taping into the generation of kids who were raised on the attitude that they were unique and special and got participation medals for sports even though their team lost 32-1 in soccer (thanks W.R) for that example).

These are the kids whose parents told them they should "concentrate on school," or that "school is your job" and bought them whatever they needed. These kids never had a paper route, raked leaves, cut grass, shoveled snow for money, not to mention having the high school job like working at McDonald's or a movie theater. Parents are doing this because they have the means to do so. There is a belief that since they had it better than their parents, and they have the means, that they need to use their "wealth" to take care of their kids for everything. I've seen parents tell kids that
getting good grades would be all the kids needed to get a good job.

Parents I'm telling you this isn't the case!
Employers want to see a work history.

A parallel example is having credit and going to a bank for a loan.
If you have good credit, the bank will talk to you.
If you have bad credit, the bank may not like it but they have a history to see where you might be having troubles. See if there is a pattern of on-time payments in a a sea of bad payments.
If you have no credit and have done nothing to build credit (getting a pre-pay cash limit credit card, buying something on installment payments), the bank isn't going to look at you.

Employers are they same and generally will not look at your kids for employment unless they can see a work history.
They want to know if your kid can be responsible enough to show up day in and day out and do work that the employer is counting on them to do. Are they willing to do the grunt work now and work their way up the ladder of success? Are they motivated to achieve more success and get a leadership position at that company?
Can they hold a job and still get good grades and participate in extracurricular activities?

Let me interject here and say that by employers I'm talking about those that are hiring people for professional, skilled trades, and other "grown up jobs," although the same can also be said to some degree for those employers that we generally think of as "kid jobs" or "first jobs (i.e McDonald's and movie theaters).

Let your kids get a job!
They can learn what it takes to keep to a budget.
To buy their own stuff (think about what that will save you!)
To achieve success and recognition from a boss for a job well done.

Let them get fired. 
Allow them to understand the consequences for not meeting deadlines or even showing up.
Let them struggle to make ends meet before stepping in to help.

As  a parent I can say this...let your kids grow up and experience life!
Do this and you won't have to deal with the aftermath of employers telling your kid that they can't get hired because they ahve no work history.

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy