It is currently the time of year when domestic college students are leaving campus to enter the workforce. As a visiting scholar at an American university, I have naturally become concerned about the employment situation for American college students.
The University of Missouri, where I am based, has a career center. Previously, I attended a seminar hosted by the center's International Student Career Counseling Department, which provided guidance to international students on how to find jobs in the United States. Coincidentally, the three speakers that day were all Chinese (two of whom were from Taiwan), which made our subsequent communication very convenient.
Ms. Li, who works full-time at the center, explained that their career guidance for students is primarily approached from two directions. First, they offer career development courses where specially trained upperclassmen teach underclassmen how to write resumes, search for job opportunities, and handle interviews. They also invite distinguished alumni back to campus to share their success stories, and students can even earn credits for taking these courses. Second, they provide one-on-one counseling. For example, they use specialized software to conduct career interest tests for underclassmen, and for those whose career interests are far removed from their majors, they suggest changing departments or majors. For upperclassmen, in addition to helping them revise their resumes, they provide mock interview practice, which is recorded so students can take it home to review their own performance during the "interview."
Ms. Li handed me a list of 10 questions they use for mock interviews, and after looking them over, I found some were truly difficult to answer. If an employer asks you, "What is your greatest weakness?" or "Have you ever done anything that violated the rules?" how should you respond? Regarding the first question, Ms. Li's advice is: "First, your attitude when answering must be sincere. Second, the weakness you mention should not conflict with the position you are applying for. The focus should be on emphasizing that you are a motivated person and explaining how you plan to improve this weakness." Regarding the latter question, Ms. Li believes: "There is almost no one who has never done anything that violated the rules. If you answer 'no,' the other party is likely to think you are dishonest. The best approach is to admit to having made a mistake, but explain that there was a reason for it and the consequences were not serious." I asked Ms. Li for an example, and after thinking for a moment, she said: "For instance, I once skipped class because I had to complete an important assignment."
According to reports, not only does the university's career center help students find employment, but individual departments also have their own career guidance centers. Alumni provide industry-specific employment information, and professors write recommendation letters for students, which helps improve the "hit rate" of employment.
Of course, on American campuses, there are also job fairs similar to those we see in China. However, they are smaller in scale and primarily organized by individual departments, with only a few companies attending at a time, which makes it easier for both supply and demand sides to engage in detailed discussions. More people discover opportunities through specialized websites established by the university, where employers and graduates can post their respective information and contact each other directly.
In the career center, three rows of photos and profiles of nearly a hundred famous alumni hang on the wall, including billionaires, political figures, scholars, and famous actors. Among them, Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart and a former richest person in the United States, was a 1940 economics graduate of the school (see photo on the right). On a row of bookshelves in the corner, there are hundreds of books related to employment, categorized in great detail. There are books covering career interests and development, interview techniques, and internship guidance; there are guides on how to find jobs in government departments, how to work in corporations, and how to work in non-profit organizations (see photo below); there are also resources to help people with disabilities find employment, tips for LGBTQ individuals, and job-hunting tricks for minority groups.
It is worth mentioning that the U.S. Department of Labor publishes a thick "Occupational Outlook Handbook" every year, providing accurate information for student employment. The book collects data on the job demand in the U.S. labor market at different times and the knowledge and skill requirements for different occupations, with a focus on predicting the impact of economic development on future employment needs. Relevant content is also published online (http://online.onetcenter.org/), and this website has become an official site that American college students must visit. Here, you can look up information such as the annual salary, demand, and promotion speed for a specific occupation.
In fact, while government and school assistance is important in solving the employment problem for college students, the accumulation of the students' own work experience is indispensable. In the United States, it is common for college students to work part-time. I have encountered international Ph.D. students working as waiters in restaurants many times, and even I occasionally deliver takeout for a fellow countryman's restaurant to experience the life of a part-time worker. Xiao Zhao, a Chinese international student who works part-time at the career center, told me that one of her American classmates worked three jobs this summer—as an hourly nanny, a restaurant server, and a cleaner—to earn tuition for the next semester.
Xiao Zhao, who is studying for a Ph.D. in psychology, is currently counseling American middle school students on employment. Because only about 30% of high school graduates in the United States go to college, most people face employment issues after graduating from high school. For this reason, American high schools offer career courses (0.5 credits). In addition to teaching career theory, teachers require students to shadow someone in a position they are interested in for a day to see how adults work, and then return to the classroom to share their experiences with everyone. Even my daughter, who is in seventh grade in the U.S., has teachers who teach them how to go online to take career interest tests and design their future ideal careers.
Borrowing the Chinese saying "the children of the poor take charge early," I think "American children become independent early." Ms. Shi Xiaomei, president of the Columbia China Friendship Association, has a son and a daughter with her American husband. She explained that their children started delivering newspapers, working as hourly nannies, or mowing lawns for others when they were in middle school, and they kept the money they earned for their own use. When they went to college, the family only provided tuition for the first semester, and they had to cover their living expenses by working part-time. I know a Chinese professor who lives in a wealthy neighborhood, and his daughter, who is in high school, works as a server at a shopping mall twice a week.
At the Walmart supermarket, it is mostly students who organize and collect shopping carts. A 10th-grade Black girl generously let me take her "work photo" (see photo on the right). She told me that she works 5 times a week for a total of 15 hours, and her pay is $7 per hour. She plans to save this money for college in the future.
In the United States, from first grade to 12th grade, anyone (including foreigners) can enjoy free education. However, college is fee-based and quite expensive. Some students who cannot afford tuition for the time being work to earn money first and then go to college. I saw a young Black man doing manual labor at a Chinese supermarket (see photo below) who had just graduated from high school. Because he didn't have the money for college, he planned to work there for a year first. Even more interestingly, the son of the supermarket owner also works in the store (driving a forklift), and his parents pay him an hourly wage, while the tuition he pays for college is earned from the "wages" he gets from his parents.
When students work part-time, they not only cover their own tuition but, more importantly, they gain work experience, assess their own capabilities, and lay a solid foundation for entering formal jobs in the future.
