I recently joined LinkedIn. A little less recently I graduated with a master's degree in Economics. I'm 27 years old and for some time now my father's been throwing phrases at me such as this one:"I'm only obligated to pay for you until the age of 26." So, yes, I am looking for a job. Its not a new thing to me. "Been there, done that" after finishing undergraduate studies and it wasn't very successful. Maybe because I graduated in November 2008, just when the crisis was starting to dominate as the world's No.1 "sorry we can't hire you" excuse, but who knows...
So, I'm on LinkedIn now and I consider myself to be active there. I expanded my network to over 225 people in about a fortnight and I am now trying to make this network work in my interest. As I was reading the news feed on the homepage, there seemed to be a lot of "My first job..." titles authored by people known and unknown. And it got me thinking about why my mind is drawing a blank about MY first job. It's not that I haven't worked. Even as a child my parents would make certain tasks into "jobs" and "pay" my brother and me to do them. I've also done a number of internships that I guess qualify as work, but I still wouldn't call any of them a real Job. As my father would put it:"You're 27 and don't have a day's worth of work experience."
Most people posting these articles on LinkedIn were talking about them delivering newspapers, working as lifeguards, and whatever kind of a summer job you can think of. But this is not something typical in Serbia. Sure there were kids my age who got jobs as waiters during university years, but isn't that already too late to start working? And especially so in a country where people don't have much money (but yet love to sit around in cafes all day drinking coffee with friends)? Probably has something to do with the "children" living with their parents basically till the day parents die. One does not simply move out of your parents' place in Serbia.
So, I guess what I'd like to see is a society that promotes work from a young age (not in a child labor kind of way), and have them do professional internships by the time they're in high school, so that as university students they could be looking for full time employment with relevant experience "under their belt". Revolutionary? Hardly. But there seems to be a lack of both demand and supply for summer jobs, which is actually a waste of resources when you come to think of it. And I do believe that you need money to be changing hands a lot to have a functioning economy, which Serbia isn't. Not really.
So, I'm on LinkedIn now and I consider myself to be active there. I expanded my network to over 225 people in about a fortnight and I am now trying to make this network work in my interest. As I was reading the news feed on the homepage, there seemed to be a lot of "My first job..." titles authored by people known and unknown. And it got me thinking about why my mind is drawing a blank about MY first job. It's not that I haven't worked. Even as a child my parents would make certain tasks into "jobs" and "pay" my brother and me to do them. I've also done a number of internships that I guess qualify as work, but I still wouldn't call any of them a real Job. As my father would put it:"You're 27 and don't have a day's worth of work experience."
Most people posting these articles on LinkedIn were talking about them delivering newspapers, working as lifeguards, and whatever kind of a summer job you can think of. But this is not something typical in Serbia. Sure there were kids my age who got jobs as waiters during university years, but isn't that already too late to start working? And especially so in a country where people don't have much money (but yet love to sit around in cafes all day drinking coffee with friends)? Probably has something to do with the "children" living with their parents basically till the day parents die. One does not simply move out of your parents' place in Serbia.
So, I guess what I'd like to see is a society that promotes work from a young age (not in a child labor kind of way), and have them do professional internships by the time they're in high school, so that as university students they could be looking for full time employment with relevant experience "under their belt". Revolutionary? Hardly. But there seems to be a lack of both demand and supply for summer jobs, which is actually a waste of resources when you come to think of it. And I do believe that you need money to be changing hands a lot to have a functioning economy, which Serbia isn't. Not really.
