Do Society a Favor: Hire a Young Person

Do society a favor and hire a young person.

Look around you. Do you have work that needs doing?

Listen to me. Hire a young person to do it.

I don’t usually order people around on my blog, but I’m stepping out of my normal to tell the world–young people need jobs and we all need to be looking for ways to hire them.

Yes. That means you.

Look at that photo.

See the smile on her face? 11 months after graduating from college, she finally found a job in her field.

Wouldn’t you like to help put a smile on a kid’s face like that one?

You’re probably thinking, what sort of job? I don’t have a job for a young person.

Really?

Maybe you don’t have a job for a brilliant, charming and experienced biology graduate-but I bet you have tasks you could hire a high school kid to do for you.

Consider hiring a young person for tasks like these:

Do you have a box of photographs that should be scanned into your computer?

Do you have gutters that need to be emptied?

Any yard work at all?

Do you need someone to drive you to the store or run your errands for you?

How about old videos of your children that should be transferred into DVDs?

Do you have floors that need to be washed?

Kids that need to be taken to the movies?

An elderly friend or neighbor who needs some assistance with a variety of things?

Dirty windows? Hire a kid.

Weeding? Even a young child can do that task.

Garage picked up?

Clothes sorted–you could hire a teenage girl to go through your closet with you and toss the things you shouldn’t be wearing anymore.

Do you know how your phone works? I bet a young person can give you a personal tutorial with ease.

You need work done. Kids need jobs. Society needs kids to work jobs.

CAVEATS:

*Do NOT expect the young person to know how to do the task you’ve hired them to perform. You may have to and you probably should, show them how you want your task done.

*You should work beside them for awhile to ensure they are confident in what they are doing and that you’ll be satisfied with the task.

*Stop by and check on them every fifteen minutes the first hour, then half hourly after that. Offer them a popsicle or a glass of water if they’re outside.

*Let go any expectation of professionalism or perfection–they’re young people and you are doing society as a whole, a favor by giving the young people a chance to learn how to work.

*Don’t judge their performance through the lens of your years of experience.

We’ve hired young people to do the following jobs at our house in just the last two years:

Put in a tree and stone planting for our street meridian.

Put in a gray water system for our garden.

Transfer cassette tapes to mp3s to make CDs.

Fix the ducting under our house.

Install insulation

Put in a garden bed.

Plant bushes.

Read a manuscript.

Put together an excel spread sheet of tweets.

Clean house.

Run errands–including grocery shopping.

Take donated items to the Redwood Gospel Mission thrift shop.

Serve during a party–keeping glasses filled, taking photographs, cleaning up afterwards.

House sitting.

In the past, I’ve paid kids to:

plant gardens, weed, trim bushes, paint, play with my children when my knee was injured, babysit, put together a photograph album of my son’s wedding, sew, return books to the library, walk my dog (another injury), dig up a lawn and replace it, bake cookies (time crunch), drive me to the airport, pick up my children, and sweep the driveway.

One glorious weekend the entire youth group came over and laid down weed guard for my yard and then covered it with bark. They used the money for their mission trip.

I’m sure there’s more.

Am I rich?

No, but I know that kids need both the opportunity to make money and some training.

I could have done a lot of this work cheaper and faster myself, but they needed work and I needed time. First I had to organize the project so they could work, but it gave me time to do the tasks I needed to do that were more important to me than the above.

Once, I needed to write a book in 10 weeks once. I hired everything out–including going to the post office and the library. But it worked well for both my employee and me.

We’re busy at our house, but we’re also interested in hiring kids not only to do work we could do ourselves, but because we know so many need work experience.

One of the young men my husband trained to do odd jobs got so good at it, that lots of people hired him and it helped him get through college.

My husband hires interns at work for the same reason–to give society a well-trained worker who ultimately will give back to that same society.

Where to find young people willing to work.

Church youth groups.

Children of friends.

Scout troops (they need money for camp).

High school counselors

Friends of your children.

Neighbor kids you’ve observed as responsible.

Boys and Girls clubs?

Money

You should check with your local community and your insurance company to clear up any potential problems with liability and/or taxes.

You may want to argue you have no money, but you know what? Neither do a lot of these kids. Make an offer and see what they say.

And if they say “no” time and again, consider offering more money.

The reason is two-fold: for you to get some of these chores done and for them to learn the value of work and to earn some money. (See the movie The Ultimate Gift).

If the kid is in college, trust me, they need money.

Find out the rate your community and neighborhood pays for work–start with how much a teenage babysitter receives for an hour of sitting.

We pay several dollars over minimum wage at our house, to encourage our workers.

Additional points

*If you interview a young person, PLEASE let them know if they got the job or not.

It’s WRONG to not get back to someone if you’ve met face to face to discuss employment.

I know it’s hard to say no, we reject people all the time at my job, but AT LEAST send an email to tell them–either way.

Otherwise, they wait and wait and wait, believing you’re going to call them back.

The days, weeks, tick by with their expectations dying bit by bit because the interviewer did not get back to them.

Totally unfair.

*Remember, the work may not be done perfectly or the way you would have done it yourself.

If you feel strongly about HOW you want a task done, TEACH them.

That’s the main reason you should hire a young person.

They need to learn.

Tweetables

Do society a favor: hire a young person. Click to Tweet

All those chores you never get around to doing? Hire a young person. Click to Tweet

Young people need work; you’ve probably got something they could do. Click to Tweet