Reader Dilemma: 'My son has been unemployed since university – how can we find him something suitable?'

Two of my children have settled into good jobs since university, but my son seems unable to find a job. He was doing work experience for a while, and everyone said he was brilliant, but though he’s been offered a few jobs since, he won’t take them for various reasons. One was too far away, one needed him to work one weekend in four, another needed him to create a website, which he said he found too daunting – though he knows a lot about computers. He’s now been out of work for nine months. What can we do to help him find something suitable?

Yours sincerely, Dodie

The word that leaps out at me from your email is “suitable”. I’m amazed that you, or your son, are assuming for one moment that he’s going to get a “suitable” job at this stage in his life.

What were your first jobs? Were they “suitable”? I worked for ages as a typist, cleaner and shop assistant when I was young – long before I got a job that involved any kind of writing. And that was during a period when jobs grew on trees.

What your son needs is a job, any job. The longer he stays out of work – and nine months is quite a long time – the greater this chasm of unemployment will appear to be on his CV.

“What were you doing,” the interviewers will ask, “just after university?”

When your son answers: “Nothing. I just applied for jobs and turned them down,” it won’t look good.

What a lot of young people think is that if they accept a job that isn’t “suitable”, they’ll be stuck with it for ever. A lifetime appears to stretch out ahead of them, a life of a two-hour commute to work, or a weekend tied up every month, or being endlessly forced to do things they can’t do – and fail dismally at them – till finally they’re sacked in disgrace.

With the software and apps that are around on the web, frankly anyone can create a website these days. I was going to add “even me”, and then I dithered. But thinking about it, yes, if my life depended on it, even me. Creating a website isn’t being asked to walk on a wire between the Twin Towers or thrust his head into the mouth of a lion. As any fool can drive, pretty much any fool can construct a website, particularly if they are under the age of 30.

And anyway, he should be working at something, even if it’s unpaid. Charity work, unpaid intern – anything.

None of this advice will have any effect if it comes from one of you. If you can possibly get an older, successful male professional to tell him this, all the better. And tell him to butter your son up as well. He needs confidence. He needs to be told he’s got huge potential. He’s more likely to believe it. And he must remember that whatever anyone says, how he looks makes a huge impact.

Tell him that all this “they’ve got to take me as I am” stuff is rubbish. Clean hair, clean shoes and, if he’s wearing a suit, not some ghastly shiny remnant from sixth form worn over a nylon shirt, but something new and smart, with an elegant tie or some other outfit that spells success and confidence in himself. You may have to fund the look, but it’ll be worth it in the future.

You’re overprotecting him

Your son sounds rather overprotected. Is he still living at home? Are you helping him financially? Does he contribute anything towards his keep?

I wonder if he takes all this for granted, so has no sense of urgency to make his own way. Why do you feel it is still your role to “help him find something suitable”? That is his job, not yours. It’s time to let go. That is the only way to make him realise he is a man now and that life is not perfect for anyone.

Be kind, be mildly interested if he wants to talk to you about his plans, but do not get so involved. Do not make it easy for him to be lazy. If you do, then you are holding him back.

Jenny

by email

He needs professional advice

If I may say so, your son sounds a little unfocused in that he knows what he doesn’t want but not what he does want. I worked as an adult careers adviser and his predicament is by no means uncommon.

The problem is that circumstances could overtake him so that he feels compelled to take something. This can be a recipe for getting trapped in a career he didn’t really choose (once it starts paying the bills and other commitments come along – engagement, marriage, kids, mortgage, car etc). This is not a blueprint for a happy, fulfilled life.

He might benefit from talking to an adviser from the National Careers Service. There are psychometric and other aptitude tests he can take that might help him in his decision-making process.

Neil Crawford

by email

Maybe he’s afraid

You don’t say whether your son went to university. Is he afraid that whatever he does, he won’t match the success of the other two? Is he depressed because he isn’t as academically successful as the other two? And are you expecting him to be?

Perhaps he would be better off with a trade. Is he good with his hands? Have a look at the evening class options – it could be that he may find an interest and therefore employment that is better suited to his talents.

Finally, is he taking advantage of your patience and motherly love, leaving you with the worry of whether he works or not? If so, then he needs to take responsibility for his own future, and you need to dole out some tough love.

Irene Lewis

Caldicot

Even though they had broken up after six months, my son and his girlfriend, a single mother, occasionally slept together. Now she’s pregnant. My son wants her to have an abortion, but she refuses. We dislike this woman intensely. She lives three hours away from us – and yet we can’t abandon a child who’ll be part of our family. She says my son needn’t have a role in the child’s life, but my son feels obliged to take some responsibility, even though he’s just starting out in life with a new job far away. His life will be ruined by one night of stupidity. What can we do?

Yours sincerely,

Peter and Barbara