Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

3 Youth Unemployment Solutions (And Why It Matters)

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Youth unemployment solutions
Use these ideas to help your young people get a job

We’re starting a new series on Wednesdays that compiles some of our previous posts. We’ve published hundreds of posts over the last year, so you may have missed some of these (shocking, I know!)

This first compilation covers some youth unemployment solutions by providing tips on how to help young people gain a job:

1. Youth Unemployment – Does It Matter? – This post from the early days of Youth Workin’ It’s blog looks at whether we should be concerned about the youth unemployment rate more than the unemployment rate that encompasses people of all ages (spoiler alert – we should)

2. Job Interview Attire For Youth – Before they go for a job interview, young people need to know what to wear. The first of our youth unemployment solutions has a number of activities to organize to help your youth identify appropriate interview clothing, including how to find cheap job interview attire.

3. How To Conduct A Mock Interview – Now that your young people know what to wear, it’s time to practice their interview skills. This youth work session idea on how to conduct a mock interview has suggestions on how to give your youth this essential practice, along with ideas of who to partner with in order to perform these mock interviews.

Mock interviews can be extremely useful in helping unemployed young people gain the confidence they need, while also providing them with vital feedback on what they need to change to become more employable.

4. The Retweetable Job Interview Resource – After conducting the mock job interviews, your young people may have received feedback that they weren’t concise enough in the interviews. If that’s the case, the third of our solutions for youth unemployment could be just the thing to help them.

The purpose of the Retweetable Job Interview Resource is to help young people practice being concise when being interviewed. This enables them to convey the main points of what they want to say without waffling on, or going off on a tangent and not answering the question they’ve been asked.

Question: What other youth unemployment solutions have you used to help young people get a job? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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The Mock Interview – Youth Work Session Plan Idea

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Mock interview youth work unemployment
Practice makes perfect

So, you’ve helped your youth prepare their answers for a job interview and practiced dressing for success. Now, it’s time to put it into practice by giving your youth the opportunity to have mock job interviews with real managers and executives.

Contact local businesses in advance and ask whether they’d be willing to be part of your efforts to reduce youth unemployment. If possible, try to line up interviewers in fields your young people are interested in working in. It’ll be far more useful for young people interested in, say, landscape gardening, to have a mock interview with somebody in that field rather than at a software engineering company. They might even end up impressing the interviewer so much that they’re offered a job!

Give the youth a time and place to attend the interview – maybe it’s at your youth center, a local coffee shop or at a centrally located office. This will also depend on where the interviewers are able to make it to.

Ask the managers to determine whether or not they would hire a youth based on their performance in the mock interview. Ask them to provide constructive feedback for the youth – whether they would have hired them or not – so that they can work on areas they need to improve for real job interviews.

You can use the managers that you work with, but I’ve found it works best when the interviewer is someone that the youth don’t know at all, much like the situation in most interviews.

You could also hold individual and panel mock interviews to give your youth both experiences.

If you’ve found this helpful, you might like our other youth work session plan ideas.

Question: Have you held mock interviews with your youth? How did it go?

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Job Interview Attire – Youth Work Session Plan Ideas

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Youth job interview attireWe’ve recently provided some session plan ideas about preparing youth for the real world.  We even shared one idea on how to teach youth to be concise in an interview.

Job skills during the interview are important. But so is making the right first impression, which is why it’s important for youth to consider their job interview attire.

As you know, the first impression starts from when you approach the building and doesn’t finish until you’re back outside afterwards, during your first point of contact. This may be picking up an application or dropping off a resume, although often these days it’s during the interview.

Depending on your budget, time and number of young people, you may want to try one of these ideas for helping youth understand the importance of job interview attire, as well as how they can look nice on a budget.

1) Working wardrobe collage

Have the youth (boys and girls! – so many people think dressing for an interview is a ‘girl topic’ – it’s just not true) cut out pictures from magazines and make a collage of an appropriate work wardrobe and job interview attire based on different career choices.

2) Working wardrobe scavenger hunt

Have the youth do a photo scavenger hunt to find pictures of people (with their permission) or shop windows and then show the pictures off and critique their findings. Maybe even find definitely for-work and definitely not-for-work outfits. (n.b. consider these points when planning a youth outing)

3) Working wardrobe fashion show

Have some or all of your youth bring $5-$10 (or find room in your budget if your youth aren’t able to come up with the cash) and plan an outing to the thrift store or charity shop. Have them put together a job interview outfit that falls within the budget and type of job they are applying for. Then head back to your center and show off the outfits in a fashion show.

Remember to preface all of these ideas with a youth work session on proper work and job interview attire. It could be part of the same session or hold several work related sessions and end with one of the ideas above.

Question: What’s one activity you would suggest to teach youth about appropriate job interview attire? Let us know in the comments below.

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Job Interview Techniques – Youth Work Session Plan Idea

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Youth work session - job interview techniques
Are your youth all a-twitter about their interview?

When preparing youth for the ‘real world’, one type of skill that cannot be overlooked is job-readiness. Not only resumés, CVs or on-the-job training, but job interview techniques and skills. How to dress, what questions might be asked and ideas to help youth stand out against many others competing for the same role.

One important skill to master for job interviews is saying just the right amount of information. It’s important to educate youth about being concise, teaching them how to find the balance between sharing too little and over-sharing.

Today’s youth work session plan is a fun and challenging activity using the idea of 140 characters from the social media site, Twitter. This resource is designed to help youth answer common interview questions in 140 characters – the amount of characters allowed in each ‘Tweet’. It helps them distill their experience, talents and passions into a few brief sentences.

While it’s unlikely that they’ll only need 140 characters worth of information in a job interview, it’s a good tool to help youth focus on the most important qualities to share about with each question.

You can download the “Retweetable Interview Resource” to use for your own youth work session – let us know how it goes!

Question: How do you help youth improve their job interview skills?  We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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Youth Unemployment – Does It Matter?

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Youth unemployment - does it matter?
Are youth being hung out to dry as well?

Since the credit crunch hit in 2007/08, unemployment has been going up, or plateauing at already high levels. Youth unemployment though has been much higher compared to the national average unemployment rate – about double the rate for adults.

In the US, youth unemployment is 18% vs a national rate of 9%. In the UK, youth unemployment is 23% vs a national rate of 8%. Ireland’s youth unemployment rate is 27% while Spain’s rate is almost 45%.

The thing is, does youth unemployment matter? By this I mean – should we care more about youth that are unemployed than about people of other ages that are unemployed? Isn’t this just ageism against young people in reverse? My answers are yes, yes, no.

Why do I think youth unemployment matters more?

They’re unable to gain skills – an adult who’s been laid off will likely have a number of years of work experience and skills behind them to help them find another job. Young people entering the workforce don’t have that benefit, so it’s harder for them to gain the skills they need, meaning that…….

It’s harder for them to get a job longer term – not having workplace skills results in young people being less employable, making it more likely they’ll be unemployed longer term

Negative self-worth – it can be extremely demoralizing being turned down for jobs all the time, which can easily lead to young peoples’ self-worth being impacted. Never getting a job could understandably lead to young people saying “Why bother?”

Social mobility – if young people aren’t earning, they can’t afford to move out of home. This leads to an increase in the number of youth living with their parents still, on top of those who were already priced out of the housing market before the credit crunch

For me though, the biggest issue here is this – long-term societal issues. In the short term, youth unemployment is just as bad as adult unemployment – either way, someone’s out of work. The longer the youth unemployment rate stays high though, the less likely it is that they’ll be able to – or want to – join the workforce. Imagine how society will be affected over the coming decades if 1/5 of working age adults are deemed unemployable.

Tens of millions in the US alone would be on welfare, unable to or lacking motivation to get a job. Families will be living in sub-standard housing as they can’t afford any other option. Lack of money will impact on nutrition, their childrens’ education, crime and so many more factors.

Less employment would mean less money in the economy, resulting in employers that couldn’t afford to hire more workers even if they wanted to. Lower employment results in the government taking less in tax, meaning they have to make up the shortfall elsewhere, either through higher taxes on those who can get a job or by cutting spending – perhaps on services the unemployed rely on. As technology in business moves on, people unable to gain the skills needed for jobs would simply be left behind.

So, youth unemployment – does it matter? I think yes – how about you? Let us know in the comments below.

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