The college-to-office path is dead: CEO of the world’s biggest recruiter says Gen Z grads need to consider trade and hospitality jobs that don’t even require degrees
https://fortune.com/2026/01/06/college-to-office-path-dead-ceo-randstad-recruiter-gen-z-millennial-grads-trade-jobs/
94 points · 39 comments · view on lemmy.world
39 Comments
silvadinlabop@lemmy.cafe · 33 pts · 237d
Because millennials have like 40+ years of work left and they can’t retire.
Ach@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 237d
Jokes on them I'm just gonna die.
silvadinlabop@lemmy.cafe · 11 pts · 237d
I had a dream that I died as a Walmart greeter.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 237d
Black Friday?
silvadinlabop@lemmy.cafe · 3 pts · 236d
I think it was a Wednesday. 😭
Mantzy81@aussie.zone · 23 pts · 237d
I did this as a Millennial (actually xennial) and recommend it. Most of my friends went straight to uni. I got a trade, worked 10 years and then started a degree in my late 20s. No fees as I saved up having done trades, and worked up from there. Now doing science water work for state and federal government.
Also I don't hate my work unlike a lot of my friends (especially those who did IT)
SlippiHUD@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 236d
I started an IT degree and my first summer internship was such a shit show I quit college. I'm a locksmith now.
jj4211@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 236d
Who are you, and how did you get in here?
SlippiHUD@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 236d
axexrx@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 236d
Im on that cusp too. Ended up dropping out after realizing my summer job fine dining chefing / bartending pulled more than my degree would.
Maeve@kbin.earth · 14 pts · 236d
Hospitality so you can work like a dog to kiss rich, entitled snobs' collective arse, for low, low pay! Hell no, retrain your robocops.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 235d
Seriously. This CEO just wants cheaper contractors and hotel stays.
kikutwo@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 236d
No, hospitality so you learn how to communicate and provide excellent customer service. These skills apply to the next career.
Maeve@kbin.earth · 4 pts · 236d
With all due respect, I've worked public facing jobs all my life. I said what I said.
kikutwo@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 236d
I think my bartending experience was what taught me to be able to get quick rapport with new insurance clients. Don't disagree with what you said at all.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 236d
its exactly kissing customers asses, that what it is, even if they are in the wrong.
kikutwo@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 236d
This has been true for over a decade.
tidderuuf@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 236d
I said the same thing a few weeks ago and was bombarded about being a boomer and being the cause of these issues.
Seeing your upvotes I'm hopeful people are starting to wake up and realize this isn't a generations issue or an immigration issue or education issue. It's a wealth and equity issue which will continue until people wake up and realize the billionaires of the world don't want the 99.9% of us to have a fast track to middle class, they want us to stay low and keep fighting each other for scraps.
kikutwo@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 236d
That's hilarious. Plumbers don't even do clogged drains anymore in the US. You know who can afford the six figure Contender center consoles with mega horsepower? Landscapers.
axexrx@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 236d
Only way I can get a plumber or electrician in my town to anything besides new construction / fresh install is to ask my friend who runs a 60 home caretaking / property management company for a recommendation.
For plumbers they usually threaten to walk, unless you agree to let them just do a replacement for a new fixture (one was a 5 year old hot water tank..)
The only difference is if I get their number through my friend, I get to tell them, "if you walk, ill tell < friend's property management company> and they'll lose your number, and tell all their buisness contacts to do the same.
As someone working a trade, I hate to have to twist their arm, but its litterally the only way to get work done.
kikutwo@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 236d
Yes! The good ones can pick and choose
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 236d
The trade of universities is research. Anything else is diploma inflation and needs to stop.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 235d
Is it? That's not why we built the land-grant university system, for instance.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 236d
also university dont offer volunteering experience in most cases, or try to obfuscate it. the seats for lab work is so limited only a small number of people are even aware of it, plus i know that PI are extremely picky who they will let in thier labs.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 235d
Must depend on the university. Research labs take a ton of undergraduate interns around here.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 235d
ours is a state school, a commuter of sorts. maybe thats why, they have pretty much dont want to advertise thier labs to the students. some got mad even for asking them about lab work,1 got pissed even for asking them for references.(thats why there is significant blame on our school, or other state uni in my area, which is why they all suffered severe enrollment shortfalls)
phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 236d
And on almost the same day, my son transitioned from college to a good-paying job. So maybe this CEO was overgeneralizing?
mudstickmcgee@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 236d
Or maybe your son was lucky.
Good on him though happy for the both of you 😊
phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 234d
He's had to swim against the current for years, through multiple wrong turns and dead ends. He's got an intense personality and was resistant to playing the necessary games to get ahead. But over time, he's become more pragmatic. So yeah, there may have been some luck involved, but being first in his class helped too. (And is it luck to have been born smart? To have persistence? To have a supportive family?)
My other two kids (older) also got jobs in the fields they did their degrees in. In my daughter's case, two of 30 people in her graduating class with the same degree as her actually found work in their field and remained employed in it a year later. Her take: "They're bougie kids who expected zero-pressure jobs with no deadlines."
Regardless, the CEO comes across as a self-serving, smug greedhead, and I suspect his messaging is not intended to benefit anyone but himself.
RagingRobot@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 236d
The CEOs are shortsighted for what to do in their business so they project that into everyone else.
Congratulations to your son. He is going to do awesome! Don't let the world tell you any different. People are resilient
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 236d
shortsighted is an understatement, they refuse to spend time or money to train fresh graduates like they should, but instead relying on cheaper labor in many fields, like H1B visas, or someone already experienced in the fields that got there before the advent of JOB SITES Online, this excludes almost all future fresh graduates from the field.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 234d
In short, recruiting companies are parasitic middlemen.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 235d
The CEOs job is to serve as a shiny object and to fart out mountains of inspirational drivel. They're human LLMs.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 236d
probably the majority arnt getting into thier fields they got a degree in.
i know people with MS and couldnt find one in stem.
return2ozma@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 237d
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/jAmlO
fodor@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 236d
The funny thing is that Fortune Magazine is written for CEOs to feel good about themselves. So they could have a title that sounds interesting, but it tells the average person nothing at all about life and it never will.
The funny thing is that this is really obvious if you just consider the context of the speaker and listener. The CEO wants more money, which means probably more people using their company, so they have a financial interest in saying things that will cause that to happen. So the actual situation is that the CEO is saying something because it will benefit him and that what he said might or might not be true.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 236d
it was dead before the pandemic, most often then not its nepotism that gets you into most fields, having connection is pretty much another form of nepotism, other than given a job directly by a person in the company. if you seen the forums on indeed, and pre-astroturfed glassdoor review yea its all the same complaint. hospitality/trade while stable isnt very attractive to some people.
hanrahan@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 236d
Doctor, Nurse or a trade
Be useful to the world.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 235d
If history is any guide, now would be the perfect time to pursue a career that requires office work. Whenever corporate forces start encouraging people to go into a path, it's because they want to increase the supply of labor in that field and to drive down wages. And the herd does follow along. We're going to have tons of people skipping college to go to trade school. The result? Carpenters and plumbers earning pennies.