Why New College Grads Can't Get Jobs (It's Not AI) (HM#2)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the show. Today we're talking about what everyone else is talking about, which is why can't new college graduates get jobs? I do believe I have the answer to that and I don't think people are going to like it too much. But I also have a video where I predicted the exact thing I'm going to explain to you today three years ago and now it's happening. And then I'm going to tell you a little bit of what I told a mom who was just saying that she's worried about her 19 year old daughter and a lot of her friends, kids who are 22 to 27 years old have graduated and can't find jobs. And I was able to explain to her why that is. So that's what we're going to dig into today and I'm going to show you some, some of the facts, some of the stats, and then how parents can equip their kids going into this job market to be successful, especially if they have not yet made the choice to go to college. Why are so many recent grads unemployed or underemployed even when employers say that they need workers? And what if the reason that these grads can't get hired has almost nothing to do with AI and everything to do with what colleges train them to expect in the world of work now, why would you listen to me? Well, I worked in AI and machine learning for years without ever buying a college degree. And I found a degree free which helps families of 16 to 20 year olds navigate careers and real hiring in this market.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:01]:
And we've helped hundreds of young adults figure out what skills they need to learn so that they're able to land entry level work. So I know a lot about this and not to use this line, but I literally wrote the book about it. So I want to talk about what's really going on in the market and why these college graduates are not able to get work and how you can help your child avoid this. So the purpose of this episode is to figure out why employers are pulling back from hiring recent college graduates because there's really no question that they are. And here's that video of me predicting this years ago college graduates.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:26]:
You have a shrinking window to use your degree to get you hired over a degree free person. That window is shut. That's what these layoffs are. I would bet a lot of money that they are 90% college graduates, probably recent. The former CEO of IBM just came out and said that degree free people perform the exact same as PhDs Ryan Rolansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, just came out and said skills matter more than degrees, but it's not really that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:46]:
Here's why.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:47]:
One, degree free people perform the exact same. Two, and most importantly for companies, we turn over 39% less and then three, we can take the actual market value salary because we don't have student debt that we have to pay back.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:58]:
The thing that really struck me was that this mom, even though she was applying to the launch program for her daughter, which helps young adults find careers objectively based on their needs and then figures out what they need to do, she still thought something's wrong because all of her friends, kids got degrees and then couldn't get work because she thought, like a lot of parents unfortunately still do, that a degree is a guarantee of a job. But the economy is not delivering that because most recent grads have no work experience. And then they were taught in college that a degree will guarantee them good work or work that they want. And then that doesn't connect in real life, companies don't hire based on degrees anymore. And so it's ruining their expectations. Now the papers that families are buying on average cost 108 to $156,000 and take five and a half years on average to finish. So when families are buying these a hundred thousand dollars products, they believe that they're going to get certain things and then they're just not getting them. So the promise is that they're going to get career access.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:49]:
And that just doesn't match the reality of hiring right now. And I'm going to go into in a minute what's going on from the business level because a lot of people are so worried about the college job connection, they're not thinking at all about the business to job connection. And that's what's really breaking down and why this is all happening. And the other problem is that there's almost no emphasis on real skills at college to the point where professors are using AI to design curriculum and then they're using AI to catch kids using AI to complete those tasks. And then they are punishing them or expelling them or tagging them for using it when they will need that capability in order to get real work in the real world. And there's a name for this mismatch in expectations. It's called the reality gap. It's when college graduates expect that because they went and bought a degree that they are now going to get work that they feel, feel that they deserve.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:34]:
And this is an objective statement about work and what work is available and how much it pays, not on the intrinsic value of people. So this is just about what jobs are available, what do they pay? And then does what you're buying help you get one of those jobs that pay something, or does it change the amount that you get paid? And right now it just doesn't. This is not pessimistic. It's just labor economics. And now we're really into what I wanted to talk about and what I want you guys to see, because here I want to talk about the fact that employers, specifically small businesses, which contribute the most entry level hiring roles in our country, are backing away from hiring recent grads. Nearly 40% of small businesses, which is defined as less than 500 employees, say that they don't plan to hire or cutting back hiring recent grads who don't have an MBA. And then 60% said the same for people who have other professional degrees. Now, one thing I do want to note here is that 48% of master's degrees have negative ROI.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:25]:
So this is not me saying that your child should go get an MBA if they can't find a job, because statistically speaking, that is not going to help. That's a coin flip too. And currently about one in five of these businesses are saying they will hire no recent grads, or a lot fewer than last year. And the thing that people are not gonna like is why in these surveys, one in eight of these recruiters are saying that they avoid hiring recent college grads because they're unprepared for real work conditions. And another thing that I read recently, and it was a quote from an HR consultant that was just saying that basically what happens, and I believe that this is because of the reality gap. I think the colleges are ruining the most valuable thing that entry level employees have, which is their attitude, because no one expects them to have aptitude at this point, their entry level. But when you spend those first four or five years instead of working your way up and instead of building real experience and real network, instead of doing that, you're paying for something that you think is going to guarantee you good work according to your expectation, and then you get out and that work is not as good as you thought, it maybe doesn't help you live the life you want, or you don't like the working conditions and that you don't like the schedule, you don't like the location, you don't like the industry, and then you get out and you expect to make a lot more than what the market was going to pay. And the market did not change that much in the time since you went to college and then since you graduated.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:35]:
Really, if you go in expecting a hundred thousand dollars, which a lot of grads do, and then you are offered 30, that's kind of going to sting. It's going to make you resent the work that you have. It's going to make your life very stressful because you have to service that student loan debt burden. So it's understandable that grads are not good hires and that businesses are saying, hey, we can't do this because you come. This is the quote that I heard from the HR consultant was basically the problem employers are saying is that they're hiring racing grads. They're expensive to train because they have no work experience, but they have high expectations of what they're going to get from their work when it's entry level work. So it's not very skilled. And instead of having the attitude that you need in a trainee, they come in with expecting a lot more and not being willing to do the stuff that entry level employees have to do in order to be able to move up in a company.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:18]:
And then they leave within 18 months because they get disenchanted. Now, what parents need to know, and I think what young adults need to know as well is that churn is one of the most expensive things that happens to a company when employees come in and when they leave, it's expensive because you have to pay people in order to hire them. You have to. You're paying out benefits, you're paying out so many different things. You're paying hr. It slows down your team, so productivity drops while you're onboarding and training new people because it's. There's always an uptime to somebody getting up to speed in your business. And so for employers, the thing that they're really trying to avoid is this churn because it costs them time, it costs them money, and it can slow down a lot of their business while they bring somebody in.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:55]:
So it's just inherently risky. And that's something that I think colleges are obviously not teaching college graduates. And a lot of that I think just has to do with who's teaching at the colleges. A lot of professors just have never worked in the job market. They have no real work experience outside of academia. So they just don't know how to contribute real value in the private sector outside of their government subsidized bubble. And so they're just not really good at equipping young adults. To go into the actual market.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:19]:
And so when they get out into the actual market, it's rough. And they realize, oh, I just don't have a lot of skills. Oh, this is hard. Oh, I didn't expect it was going to be this way. Oh, I spent all this time and money on a degree and now I can't find anybody that wants to hire me because they think I'm going to leave in 18 months, which statistically you will. And so it's just really rough for employers and it's rough for grads because they need the jobs, but at the same time they're not willing to take the jobs. And then when they do take the jobs, businesses are seeing that they leave really quickly. So now businesses are not willing to give them the jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:53]:
And when this happens, where do businesses go? And this is what I predict was going to happen. Businesses are just going back to right outta high school because it's less risky, because you have less churn and you have the correct attitude. And you don't need people who are very skilled in entry level roles because the whole point of entry level work is to train them. And the reason I'm saying this with so much conviction is because we don't have trouble doing this in the launch program. We do this. And so not even a month ago we had a young man come through who had left Texas A&M, 19 years old, and he decided that that was just not for him. He didn't like it, didn't want to do it. And he comes out and not even three weeks in, we helped him figure out, what do you need from your work? Here are the jobs that fit that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:31]:
What do you need to learn? Okay, he starts working towards those things. And then three weeks in we'd found entry level roles that fit what he was looking for from work. So there was an alignment of expectations, which is really the key thing. And then when these expectations were aligned and we found, oh, hey, your top career option that you, that meets your needs, that you're also interested in, they have an entry level role. Here it is. And then not only did it meet his expectations, but it exceeded his expectations because it was paid on the job training and it was for a career that he had picked that he knew was going to meet his future needs. And they hired him immediately. He went on a paid interview for two days and then immediately they offered him a job.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:08]:
And that's not an uncommon story. That happens pretty frequently. And that was for a field engineering role, by the way, in healthcare. So it was a good job, pays more than the median master's degree, and he just walked into it with no experience but a snow cone place. But it's because when he interviewed, he was humble, his expectations were correct, and he had a real understanding of the entry level work that he was going to be going into. So it was easier to exceed his expectations. And statistically speaking, because of that, he's not going to churn, he's going to stay. And when you stay at a company, it's worth it for the company to take the risk to train you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:39]:
And so that's the reason that college graduates are now no longer attractive hires. Like for parents whose kids are under 20 years old, that's the group that we work with. They're in a really good window right now. If they've realized they don't want to go to college, now is the time to act. Now is the time to help them figure out what they need to do to get into the entry level work that fits their needs. Because their attitude is right, their expectations are right, and they're young enough to switch into, hey, I'm just going to get entry level work and get trained, as opposed to on the other side of 20, where we've seen a real diminishing in those returns, which is why we don't work with that age range anymore. Because if you've come through college for three or four years, you know, there's just this mismatch of expectations and what you're going to go into. For our team and for our strategists, when we see that what we identified was just that, it really is the colleges doing a massive disservice to young people by teaching them unrealistic market expectations.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:28]:
Because the people who teach at colleges don't know anything about the market. And that's just the long and short of it. People can, and I'm sure will, get as upset about that as they want. But it's just a fact that academics know very little about the outside market because they've never been in it. And a lot of their profession and advancement in that profession is based on them buying more paper from the college, not necessarily on their performance or the value they contribute. And then when they are working towards tenure ship, and that's just not something that exists in the private market. So they're just not really equipped to help young adults enter a world where AI is very much a factor, not in that it's taking jobs, but that it's revaluing them and moving around the market and so it's just too dynamic for people that are so fixed in an archaic system. And that really is the core problem.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:11]:
Now let's go back to the employers, because when they're deciding who to hire, they're not starting with degrees, they start with risk. And right now, recent grads just represent to them a really high cost and a really high risk for most employers, especially when employers are smaller. Let's go back to the unemployment data. So according to the latest labor market data, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates, which are 22 to 27 years old, is now higher than the overall national unemployment rate. So in the second quarter of 2025, recent grads saw unemployment soar to about 5, 3%, while the overall US unemployment rate hovered around 4%, which means that degree holders are struggling more than the average worker to land a job after they graduate. So national data is confirming what a lot of families are witnessing firsthand and what that mom was talking about, which is that recent grads are now entering a job market where having a degree isn't making them easier to hire, it's making them harder to place, and it's because of college. And it's really important to understand why employers are hesitant to hire them. Because if your child is under 22, you can take action now to prevent this by helping them find real skills and helping them find strategic entry level work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:15]:
And strategic entry level work is helping them find work that ladders up into the career they want to be in. Even if it requires a degree. They can always buy one later. But the point is to get them into the industry now, early, and they're less likely to churn out, because that is when employers are more likely to say yes and hire them and give them a chance. And I do want to say something here because I think what a lot of people hear when I say this kind of thing is, oh, you know, just go have your child work in fast food or what have you. No, no, no, I'm talking about going through, helping them figure out what careers actually fit, what they need out of their life, what they need to learn, and then going through and figuring out, okay, what are 10 entry level feeder careers that go to this one? Which ones are available near us? Which ones are you going to apply for that'll help you build the experience. Like, if your child wants to be an interior designer, then go apply at a furniture store for sales, because that type of job is going to be a feeder job into interior design, because fundamentally, a lot of interior design is a sales job. Conversely, if you didn't want to be on the sales side of interior design, then have them go find a receptionist job or some sort of office admin or assistant job at a construction firm or at an interior design consulting firm.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:20]:
That is what I'm talking about. And yes, they can get those jobs. This is something that our team does. And so we see this happen, happen all the time. And that's why when I see these headlines about grads not being able to get a job, I know it's because of their degree. Because we take kids who are 18, 19, 20 years old and we don't have any trouble placing them in entry level roles when their expectations are aligned. So they interview well and the company sees that they're not going to churn out and they're going to be worth the risk of training and taking the time to hire them. So I want to explain the logic that employers are using as well.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:49]:
So full time jobs with benefits will cost 15 to $20,000 outside of the pay that someone is going to get because of all the costs associated with hiring somebody. And this is not something they're teaching in college. Because these young adults just don't understand that. Because they don't understand that. They don't understand what they're asking or how. And I'm not saying don't ask higher than the listed wage, quite the opposite. I'm a big believer in negotiation and that's what we teach in the launch program too. But here, understanding on the flip side, what employers are looking at, why would they hire a College graduate who's 24 years old, has no skills, has been on a college campus for the last four years and expects to make $65,000 for a role that is listed at $45,000 that is entry.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:29]:
And that they will have to train them in the business. Why would they do that? Why would they take that college graduate over a 19 year old who just wants to work? Well, the answer is they wouldn't. And that's the calculus that employers are doing. Because training takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of money. So when employers do that, what they expect is they expect that person to be there a long time, otherwise it's not worth it and it costs the business money every time they make those hires. And so when they get burned so many times, they stop hiring certain demographics. And that's what's going on with grads, basically. It's not personal.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:56]:
It's not because employers suddenly hate college graduates. It's just that they can't afford to pay for training that doesn't produce return very quickly when statistically speaking, they're going to lose that employee. And really the disservice here, and I hate this for families because they're paying so much money. And then the institution that they're sending their kids to that they believe is going to prepare their children for work, is actually doing the opposite. It's teaching them the paper matters more and it's going to give them an edge and it's going to give them marketability and it's not doing any of those things. It would be more useful for them to go to Toastmasters and learn to speak in public or to just have basic polished phone manner than it would be to have a college degree right now. And a lot of students are finishing with no practical experience and they expect to make more entry level than mid career professionals with 20 years of experience. The thing that I really hate about this too is so many young adults would be able to go into the careers, into the fields that they wanted if they were just told, hey, go find strategic entry level work that will help you to get into that field as opposed to go buy a degree and then going back and realizing that you can no longer afford to go into that entry level work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:56]:
And that's something that I feel really strongly about too because I've heard stories from so many people and I remember interviewing someone on my podcast named Bradley who wanted to be a pastry chef. And I feel very much that he was robbed of his ability to do that because at 17 he signed loans for culinary school and then he was no longer able to afford to take the entry level roles to work on the line in a kitchen in New York City that he would have been able to do had he not gone to college. And so that's why I'm talking about this now. Because if your child is younger, figuring out where they need to be in this puzzle piece now is so key for helping them get into the door. Actually, I'm even talking about big companies as well. So like, if your child wants to end up Tesla, then starting to work for Tesla and being on their payroll is a better move than sending them to college and then hoping that degree will somehow translate into some corporate job over there, get them in the door and have them work and have them learn. And what's going on with employers right now, a lot of things that happen have happened before and they're going to happen again. So there's a lot of trends in our country right now that are kind of pointing to that there's a huge trend back towards homeschooling, which our country has done before.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:58]:
It's the one room schoolhouse. It was just a community school where there's one teacher and there's multiple age ranges and everybody just kind of learned together. And that's coming back because we just periodically cycle through everything. Nothing's new. Hemlines go up and down. Oh, what's going to come back I think is that gold watch era of employment where or people staying at a company is going to be rewarded. Because it's getting so expensive for companies to pay to train people that what they're going to do is put a lot more effort, a lot more time into giving people raises, into making people feel appreciated, into improving their benefits so that they can keep people who work for them so that they don't have that turnover and that churn. Because that's what's really slowing companies down.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:33]:
It's really is that reality gap that's doing in these young grads. Because when they get out into the market and they have entry level tasks which are not always fun or interesting and they have market value pay and then they have learning curves, they just get really discouraged, which you can't really blame them because they didn't think that that's how it was going to be because that's not what colleges led them to believe they were going to get on the other end of that a hundred thousand dollars purchase. And that's the reality gap in action. So basically that mom, I talked to her friend's kids thought they were just going to walk into good mid level jobs and instead they are walking into a market where they're not prepared and they don't have any relevant skills. And so when they try to apply, they're just not getting anywhere, which is also super discouraging and makes it even harder for them to continue to do that. And while I'm thinking about it, there's basically two universes forming. There is this universe where employers are going to invest a lot more in the people that they do hire because they're going to be a lot more valuable to them because of all of the knowledge that they have about their business and how much it takes to hire and train them. But then on the other side you have people who cannot anymore get into this world are now going to go to contract work and they're just going to have multiple contracts.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:37]:
And again, this is kind of the back to the future thing. Like the future is the past, which is a lot of people used to be self employed in our country. And it looks like everything is moving back that direction. You're going to have these two worlds which is, hey, you're a super high value employee, we do care about you, we're going to put a lot of time, effort and energy into making you stay here because it's expensive when you leave and we need you to make our business run. And that's actually really good for employees. And it's really good news if you're a parent and your child's under the age of 20. Because I think you have a very high leverage time to help your child get in on this and be able to be in that section that is, hey, we've, we've trained you, we treat you well, you've got good benefits. You, you like working here and aligning their expectations with the work that they're going to do so that they're happy with their life and they're content.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:21]:
And then on the other side of that, and this sometimes will happen later for employees who are high value. But is that self employment? So if people can't get work, they're probably just going to move into self employment and just do contract work and pick up the valuable skills that they didn't use or that they didn't learn in college or if they don't want to be an employee, that's the direction that they're going to go. And you see that a lot with Gen Z because they're really interested in business ownership and it looks like their actions are lining up with their interests. All right, so out of a thousand hiring managers, these are the biggest problems that they said that they had with recent grads. And so again parents, if your kids are under 20, take note. And if your kids are over that age and they're struggling to find work, this is something that you can help them do. Another piece of advice that I give to people is to take their degree off their resume and maybe focus on any other skills that they have or entry level work that they've held before. Even if it was like a lot of kids and it was lifeguarding or fast food or grocery store work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:10]:
33% of hiring managers say recent grads lack work ethic and 24% say they're unprepared for their workforce. They're unprepared for the workforce because college doesn't prepare them for the workforce and they lack work ethic because if you think about it, they've been essentially working a remote job that they can choose to go into or not go into, borrowing from their future selves for the last few years, that's a tougher thing to fix. But a lot of that can be fixed by helping them figure out what it is they actually want from their life. And then what work is going to help them get there, as opposed to taking their degree and trying to just pigeonhole it into something so that their degree connects to their career. Because that'll make the degree work worth it or justify the time, energy and money spent in order to get it. So if your child's under 20 years old, the best thing you can do is help them find entry level work and then help them to stick to that work. And as far as them being unprepared for the workforce, even with AI, it's going to be really important for young adults to be able to write emails and then follow up with tasks that they've been given. Another thing that I think is kind of underrated here is going to be being responsible for the tasks that you have.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:09]:
So if you don't get it done, oh, hey, I wasn't able to get this done, but I tried this, this and this. Do one of these things work or can you help me with X, Y, Z? And that is one of the ways that your child can stand out as showing that they are prepared for the workforce. And then one key thing is that one in four recent grads under prepared for interviews. I've also seen a lot of things saying that Gen Z has brought their parents to interviews. So if your child is in between 18 and 27 years old, do not go with them to interviews and then make sure that they are prepared for interviews by explaining to them how to answer problems that they've solved. Because a lot of hiring managers are looking for how they think because their aptitude is not relevant because they don't have any actual marketable skills at this point. And the way that parents can help with this is they can prep their kids, look up sample interview questions, tailor them, use AI to tailor them to whatever industry this is. And just ask your child these questions at the dinner table and get them to make the mistakes and say the things, but do it for the first time before they actually go into the interview.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:05]:
We were just prepping a young adult for an interview that he had and going through like, hey, you know, how did you fix this problem? What was the time that you did this? How do you work with teams? How do you. He was interviewing for an audio engineering position and so, you know, going through like, how do you listen for something that's a hit? If someone's underperforming that you brought in, how do you. How do you tell them that? What are you going to try to improve? And then asking him, oh, hey, you know, how much. How much are you expecting to make? And teaching him how to say, what's the budget for this role? And then. And then teaching them how to go back and forth for negotiation so that they look like they've prepared and it's not the first time that they've been in an interview. On the same note, during interviews, hiring managers say recent grads struggle with eye contact, dressing appropriately, and then negotiating compensation. Like I was just saying. So ways you can help your child fix this is.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:48]:
So eye contact is a tough one because you just have to teach them how to look people in the eyes. And then dressing appropriately is easy to fix. Collared shirt and slacks. It's never a bad thing to be overdressed for an interview because all that tells the employer is that you care, is that you care about what you're doing and why you're doing it. That's not a bad thing at all. And I think tech has made it so that people think that if you're wearing a hoodie, it makes you look more competent at your job. But just looking like you care at this point is definitely more valuable than looking like you're the smartest guy in the room because you're pretending not to be. And again, I cannot stress it enough.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:18]:
Do not go with your child to an interview. I don't care how old they are. Don't do that. Sit in the car. Even if you're driving them to the interview, sit in the car. And then the other thing is that 55% of hiring managers had to fire a recent college grad. 2024. That's a really tough thing to fix.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:32]:
If your child's graduated college, the way you can fix this is maybe taking their degree off of their resume and testing to see if they get actual calls back. That's something that's definitely worth doing. And then the next thing would be if Your child's under 20 years old and does not have a degree yet, then helping them to figure out how they can make themselves a valuable part of the team. So whether they're working for, like, a printed community newspaper and email, an email list, you know, how do you. How do you add value? Like, how do you help that company make money? What are creative ways that you could help them expand their business or grow it? And then Being able to articulate those things, like, hey, I've noticed that when you guys publish your articles, you could format them a little bit better. And like, this is a good way to do this and just showing that you have potential to grow in that role. And that's not even hard to do. It just takes a little bit of research, a little bit of prep, and then a little bit of follow through.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:18]:
Like having one or two things that you think you could fix or help in the company is also good. And it's not, again, this is something that can be done by looking at a website for 30 minutes. It's not like this is going to take a whole lot of time. I was talking to the vice president of workforce development for East Coast State and quite literally I'm going to say what she said, which is that have a pulse, show up, communicate and be able to learn on the job. It's not that hard, guys, but it's made a lot harder when you have $100,000 of debt resting on your back stressing you out and making it so that if you do get the job that you want and it's entry level, you're not going to be happy with it because you learn the wrong expectations before you had the skills to fulfill those expectations. We've reached an inflection point with degrees because they're no longer a signal of your potential value to employers. And the whole credentialing system now at this point has completely lost its legitimacy. And that means what a lot of parents have been suspecting and are starting to feel, which is that college is no longer a reliable path to work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:09]:
It has nothing to do with work now. It doesn't know if it's career training, it doesn't know if it's education. And then academia can just flip flop whenever they're failing at one. And now for families, it's just a financial drain and there's no job on the other side. But like I said, it's not that hard. What we're looking for here is a few different things that can change everything. So work experience early. So don't delay that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:28]:
Get them real jobs before they buy college degrees and then focus on skills that actually transfer. So problem solving, reliability, and then the ability to speak in public, look people in the eye and talk on the phone. And I'm not kidding, I'm not oversimplifying, that's your core little skill set for any job. And then the third would be just entry level market signals. So like looking for internships, apprenticeships, Paid on the job training and then short cycle credentials like in healthcare or cybersecurity, depending on what your young adult needs from their work, and then what entry level roles ladder into those careers so they're able to see there's a future on the other side of the work that they're doing. So that the motivation piece, which these HR consultants are saying is the huge problem does not exist for your child because you don't have to motivate someone. If they see that the path to getting what they want is on the other side of this thing that they have to do. Which is another thing I think too, that's wrong with grads is so many of them don't end up working in their field of study at all.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:20]:
It's only 22%. And so there's very little chance that what they just did for the last four or five years has any connection to the jobs they're trying to get now. And so it's difficult for them to feel motivated, which I think we can all sympathize with. But basically there's a ton of opportunity right now and even for recent grads, but they just have to be willing to test different things on their resume to get interviews, and then they also just need to be willing to adjust their expectations to be more realistic. They're competing for the same jobs as 18, 19 and 20 year olds, and so they just have to change their expectations. I know that they went to college, I know they spent all that time, all that money, all that energy, but it doesn't change the set of circumstances they have now. But they can change their circumstances now if they change their mindset. Now.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:57]:
Recent grads can't get jobs not because AI is taking their jobs, but because college has ruined their expectations and their attitude, which is the key piece for getting entry level work. The good news is that can be fixed. The real challenge now is helping them interwork with skills and experience and actual realistic expectations. So if it felt like this added some clarity instead of panic, then subscribe and share this with a parent who needs to hear this perspective.