What is a good path for a young man?

[scaredyclassic]

My middle son recently graduated wuth a BS in construction mgt and is having some difficulty finding any job.

I find myself with no advice or insight.

What path or advice might be good for such a young man. Hes a bit confused.

[barnaby33]

West? All jokes aside, I’m not sure anyone will have a good suggestion. Not since the Great Depression has our economy and culture been so turn asunder. I’d make one of three suggestions.

1)If he loves construction or the world of building buildings, stick with it. Take a job swinging a hammer or as a plumber for a year or two. It won’t hurt his long term prospects.

2) If not use this time to find out what you love. Too many of us graduated uni with no idea what we wanted to do. Peace corps? The civil engineer corps in the Seabees, both could be options to explore figuring it out.

3) Learn to code. The construction industry like every industry is undergoing radical change and software will be at the vanguard. Learning to program can help almost anyone in almost any career.
Josh

[zk]

I was an air traffic controller for 35 years. I very highly recommend that as a career path for anyone who has the aptitude.

It’s a bit hard to tell whether a person has the aptitude or not without giving it try. But if a person is intelligent and quick-thinking, that’s a very good start. By quick thinking, I don’t mean witty or even good on his feet (in conversation). I mean just being a fast thinker. Flexibility (the willingness to change the plan) is also very important.

With a BS degree he is qualified to apply. No specific training or education is required to apply. Although if he does get the job, I’d recommend learning as much as he can about flying and aviation in general (most applicants don’t do that, but they should). Open bids come out every so often. The last one was about 2 or 3 years ago, I think, so the next one might be soon. They have in the past gone a decade between open bids, so if he’s interested, be sure to jump on the first bid that comes out.

There is a period of training in Oklahoma City, then on-the-job training at an actual facility. If he doesn’t have the aptitude, he will probably fail one of those two training programs. (I say probably because some with very weak aptitude do make it through, unfortunately. If you don’t have the aptitude and you do make it through, you might not enjoy the job all that much.) If he fails then he’ll have to fall back on his degree.

The pay is very good (more than most college graduates), and the job security and pension are fantastic. You work with sharp, fun, and very interesting people. There is never work to take home. When your shift is over, you’re done. The work itself is very rewarding and, for me (and for the majority of controllers who are good at their job), extremely fun. I really, really loved it. If I had to do it over again, and my options didn’t include things like baseball player or internet billionaire, I’d pick the same career.

Feel free to ask me any questions here or via pm.

[svelte]

[quote=scaredyclassic]My middle son recently graduated wuth a BS in construction mgt and is having some difficulty finding any job.

I find myself with no advice or insight.
[/quote]

First commenters have given some good advice already.

Did he choose construction management because he likes hands-on construction, or because he likes to manage?

If he likes hands on construction, I think Josh is on the money. Do a year or two of framing, etc…then when the economy turns around he’ll have a degree *and* real-world experience. If it takes awhile to turn around, he can always choose the path of this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtXVIqkc3iBk0bV5gvcNWgw

I watch his videos a lot and he explains how he got to where he’s at. I believe he says he makes six figures now as a handyman and doesn’t even have to find new customers – he has a large client base and can pick his work. He is based out of Denver I believe.

If he doesn’t like hands-on construction, then he needs to figure out what he does like to do. That may take awhile and require multiple fresh starts. Not so much recently but a couple of decades ago most of the software developers I knew had a degree in something else, and it varied quite a bit from psychology to HW engineering and even business management. Having the degree and experience are the key things. He has the degree. Now he has to decide what experience to start working on.

When my sons graduated high school, one of them thought he wanted to be an auto mechanic. He showed us a brochure for a school up in LA that wanted like $40K a year to teach him. We told him: tell you what, get yourself a job as a mechanic right now, hold the job a year and if you like it, we’ll spring for that school next year. He made it six months and decided it wasn’t for him. Cha-ching saved myself $40K. He is now in college working towards an engineering degree.

[Coronita]

[quote=svelte][quote=scaredyclassic]My middle son recently graduated wuth a BS in construction mgt and is having some difficulty finding any job.

I find myself with no advice or insight.
[/quote]

First commenters have given some good advice already.

Did he choose construction management because he likes hands-on construction, or because he likes to manage?

If he likes hands on construction, I think Josh is on the money. Do a year or two of framing, etc…then when the economy turns around he’ll have a degree *and* real-world experience. If it takes awhile to turn around, he can always choose the path of this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtXVIqkc3iBk0bV5gvcNWgw

I watch his videos a lot and he explains how he got to where he’s at. I believe he says he makes six figures now as a handyman and doesn’t even have to find new customers – he has a large client base and can pick his work. He is based out of Denver I believe.

If he doesn’t like hands-on construction, then he needs to figure out what he does like to do. That may take awhile and require multiple fresh starts. Not so much recently but a couple of decades ago most of the software developers I knew had a degree in something else, and it varied quite a bit from psychology to HW engineering and even business management. Having the degree and experience are the key things. He has the degree. Now he has to decide what experience to start working on.

When my sons graduated high school, one of them thought he wanted to be an auto mechanic. He showed us a brochure for a school up in LA that wanted like $40K a year to teach him. We told him: tell you what, get yourself a job as a mechanic right now, hold the job a year and if you like it, we’ll spring for that school next year. He made it six months and decided it wasn’t for him. Cha-ching saved myself $40K. He is now in college working towards an engineering degree.[/quote]

Being a car mechanic is only fun when it’s only your car. Most of the time, it sucks when you have to fix other people’s problem and your life depends on it. People that do well care more about running the business than actually doing the hands on work…

[Coronita]

I don’t think the degree matters as much as him self figuring out what he wants to do. For some people, they are lucky what they studied in college is what they ended up doing. For a lot of people that wasn’t the case…

I graduated with a EE degree thinking I would work on communication systems and digital signal processing and almost no practical software experience…But after 2 years out of college, my entire software career was based on 2 UCSD extension classes I took in C++ on Qualcomm’s dime, and a lot of books I read myself…That and moving to the bay area for some time to work with the jobs that I wanted to do at companies were willing to take a chance on a new kid with very little prior experience…

Unfortunately, there are some careers these days that ridiculously require more advanced studies/degrees, for the sake of advanced degrees.. For example, it use to be you could be a physical therapist with a bachelors. But my understanding is those days are long gone…

[scaredyclassic]

Thanks, friends.

I will give him this thread.

Painful to watch. I now see how uncomfortable my parents must’ve been as i struggled to find my way. For so incredibly long. Floundering. dejected. Lonely. I was fixated on myself. I didnt care how they felt about my problems.

[Coronita]

I tell my daughter all the time…

“If you don’t know what you want to do, that’s fine. But you at least should try “something” and figure out if this is something you definitely don’t want to do…The dirty secret is that the majority of the people out there don’t have an extreme passion for what they are doing or extremely hate what they are doing…So you might as well pick the highest paying career/job/business you can obtain that is “tolerable” until you find what you really want to do or until you need to make changes to accommodate your lifestyle… if you ever are lucky enough to figure what your real passion is during your lifetime… All this emphasis of “follow your passion” frankly is bullshit. most people don’t have that extreme passion in anything, and if that is what you are counting on to motivate to do anything, there’s a high probability you won’t do anything for a long time…I mean, it’s not like you came running to us and said mom and dad I got to learn how to play the violin or I will die!!!! It was probably more like, ok I’ll do it because you forced me to at gunpoint the first year despite my kicking and screaming, and after about 2-3 years fortunately you didn’t think it was that bad and wanted to continue with it, unlike your ice skating lessons I wasted my money on which in the end you decided you didn’t want to be the next Michele Kwan…wish you told me before all those years of private lessons, lol ”

I hate how my kid says how much she dislikes something even before trying…we never did that…we didn’t have a choice when we were their age.

[scaredyclassic]

It only took me 60 years, but i can finally relate to my dad.

I thought he was so boring, stable, anxious, fearful, cautious, repressed, irritating, obvious, habitprone.

Pot meet kettle.

It strikes me that my 60 years, if it didnt overlap with his 60 years, and his 60 years, had it not overlapped with his father, would stretch back 180 years, or back to 1840. Im not sure why this fascinates and alarms me. Maybe its another way of saying, TOO SOON OLD, TOO LATE SMART.

Or this sense that we stumble through life with no experience, led by parents who have us when they are no more than children themselves.

[barnaby33]

[quote=scaredyclassic]It only took me 60 years, but i can finally relate to my dad.
[/quote]

You forgot narcissistic. This thread isn’t about you. It’s about choices that a young man might make post college.
Josh

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=barnaby33][quote=scaredyclassic]It only took me 60 years, but i can finally relate to my dad.
[/quote]

You forgot narcissistic. This thread isn’t about you. It’s about choices that a young man might make post college.
Josh[/quote]

ah, right. Narcissistic. Good point. Narcissistic yet self-loathing. let’s get back on track. Suggestions?

[sdrealtor]

My advice would be try to figure out what you want to do instead of what you think you are supposed to do sooner than later. I spent a bunch of my early career and education doing things I thought I was supposed to do. Was wasted time. I would also consider entrepreneurialism. Growing up I had no exposure to concept of starting one’s own business. I thought you went to school and got a great job. There are so many more and often better options out there

[svelte]

Should tell you how I found my career also. When I graduated HS, I was convinced I wanted to be an architect. I was 2 years into a 6 year architecture degree at a major midwest university when I decided I was badly mistaken…didn’t like it at all. Kind of like flu said, it’s one thing to be drawing/working on your stuff…entirely different when someone else is calling the shots!

So I quit school, quit my job, packed up my bags and moved to California. Still confused as to what to do, I worked odd jobs for a year and basically did nothing but manual labor during the day and play at night. My buddy was a computer science major so I tagged along with him to the computer lab when he worked on projects. That lit my fire, that’s what I wanted to do. So I applied to a California university and got in as a computer science major.

That’s how I found my niche and I never looked back.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=svelte]Should tell you how I found my career also. When I graduated HS, I was convinced I wanted to be an architect. I was 2 years into a 6 year architecture degree at a major midwest university when I decided I was badly mistaken…didn’t like it at all. Kind of like flu said, it’s one thing to be drawing/working on your stuff…entirely different when someone else is calling the shots!

So I quit school, quit my job, packed up my bags and moved to California. Still confused as to what to do, I worked odd jobs for a year and basically did nothing but manual labor during the day and play at night. My buddy was a computer science major so I tagged along with him to the computer lab when he worked on projects. That lit my fire, that’s what I wanted to do. So I applied to a California university and got in as a computer science major.

That’s how I found my niche and I never looked back.[/quote]

If we could know that everything would work out during our darkest confusion, the ride would be more fun. well, maybe fun is the wrong word. Less scary. less turbulence. I wonder if there is more pressure on young people to feel like they’re on the right path from the start nowadays.

[Coronita]

Sometimes in life having no choices but one choice is a good thing. My sis listened to my parents and majored in bioengineering at berkeley. She hated it and almost flunked out. transfered to econ… Got a bunch of odd jobs over the summer, nothing major. Had only one interview for a full time job while job hunting. She got the offer and took it because she had no other options… ended being an investment banking at one of the big firms paid crap, but ended up doing M&A so it turned out good. Fast forward to today…same sibling got screwed over by a few companies, including last one who let her go, we think because they found out she was going on maternity…since it wasn’t performance related, since she was top performer. Was juggling kids and tried to reenter workforce and again got only one offer from a tiny company that allowed her to work at home… That company just IPOed this last month.

One of my younger cousin was in a similar boat. Wasted dad’s money and half way through medical school decided she hated it, lol. Switched into finance and got one interview with one job at the almost failing Barclays, when everyone else was jumping ship. She had no options, so stuck with it. Today she’s a Managing Director there…Funny how life screwups always end up working itself out in the long run.

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