Many Young Graduates are looking for jobs in all the wrong places because they haven’t been educated about the New Normal. They are basically knocking on all the wrong doors because that is all they know and all they have been taught. However there are few opportunities on the other side of those doors.

Their parents are more than happy to share the way they landed their jobs but they may have found them by replying to a newspaper ad ten years ago. Their Guidance Office advises them to intern but how many scaled down companies have the resources to implement an intern program? Sure they still happen but they are an exception rather than the rule in today’s world.

Today, Graduates have to cross the great abyss of no experience. They may have a great degree from a great school but no experience and face conservative hiring practices because hiring managers are not aligned to the new normal. It is the old which came first the chicken or the egg dilemma.

I used to work for JWT for ten years in Toronto and Chicago. I loved it. The Chicago office of JWT produced some of advertising’s great campaigns and was founded in 1891. That office closed a couple of years ago in the land called the New Normal. Yet I continue to do advertising and lots of other marketing things but not in the John Hancock Center but at my home office.

For the ten plus years of my consulting career I have always used college students and graduates as paid interns. First my kids. One of them is now working for a multinational agency in Chicago overlooking where I worked in the John Hancock Center and the other is an entrepreneur adapting to the New Normal.

My interns have made me smart with the strengths of youth and I have provided them with some real world experience to train them for the world of today. It has been a great exchange of skills. Who is best to sync my devices? Me or them? Who knows the best new apps? Who is current on technology? Them. Who knows the best new music? Who has a larger network? You get the picture. It’s a great and fulfilling exchange that benefits both parties.

In the New Normal there are a myriad of consultants and sole proprietors plying their craft. They could benefit from the task solutions that paid interns can bring to the table and they can provide the experience those young graduates need. Knock on their doors. They will open with opportunity.

I know that it has worked for me. Some of the graduates of the Hank Blank New Normal Graduate Degree program have been Allyson Hohener, Andrew Olson, and Ryan Smith. Young smart talent. Their internships made their experience much narrower to cross and my work easier and my life richer.

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