Young millennials and Gen Z grads are having a hard time breaking into the world of work. Millions are unemployed as AI steals entry-level roles—and experts don’t see the dire situation improving, instead warning that the traditional college-to-office path is forever broken. Verizon’s chief talent officer, Christina Schelling, says now is the time to embrace non-degree retail and hospitality jobs.
“There’s a path that you have in your head that you’ve built up for however long, and anything different from that maybe doesn’t feel good enough,” Schelling told Fortune.
“But my advice would be to recognize that within yourself, put it aside and just start somewhere.”
Schelling would know: The Verizon chief has an impressive resume, having previously led people teams at Estee Lauder, Prudential, and American Express. But before breaking into the corporate world, she worked part-time with children with special needs.
“Even I’ve had experiences with jobs I never knew I would be in,” Schelling added, but ultimately each job she did added up and led her to where she is today; In charge of the hiring and career growth for over 100,000 staff at the Fortune 500 (#31) firm.
“Although I may or may not have stayed that long in that space, it’s all a build.”
Retail, hospitality and manufacturing jobs could be a launch pad to corporate management, the Verizon chief says
Young grads are already questioning whether their expensive college degree was “pointless.” They’re likely to feel even more grieved that experts are now advising them to turn their backs on the subjects of the studies, after shelling out thousands in student loans and wasting years in a classroom, when they could have nabbed a retail job straight out of school.
But Schelling rejects the idea that working in a shop is settling. When we spoke, she had just come back from touring Verizon’s stores—and what she saw there undercuts the stereotype of retail as a dead end.
“There were amazing retail professionals whose aspiration is to be a retail professional. There were also people that I met who went to school for more corporate jobs,” she said, adding that the majority had data science degrees or technology degrees. Some told her they didn’t like the culture in their post-grad office jobs. Others said they’re able to get promoted faster in retail.
“Whether they have a long-term career in retail or not, their initial thought in starting their career was not retail, yet where they landed is exactly where they should be,” Schelling insisted. “They were happy, learning and growing and really building a resume that could go in lots of different directions.”
After all, she says, it’s up to you where you then take the skills you learned on the shop floor. Just because that’s where you start your career, it’s not where it needs to end.
“The transferable skills that come from a hospitality job or a retail job or a manufacturing job are so transferable when it comes to working in teams, when it comes to conflict resolution, relationship management, understanding and assessing the customer needs, understanding customer experience, you get management practice,” Schelling said. “So there’s just so much of that that is important for any job that you are building, even if it doesn’t feel like the path that you thought you would start building on.”
“And hiring managers, by the way, love that build.” As a hiring manager herself, she insisted that instead of being looking down on, retail and hospitality jobs are a big “plus” in her eyes.
“Even when I think about general managers, or our most senior executives, from a development perspective, I love nothing more than for them to be rounded out by going into those places or having a resume that reflects some of that,” Schelling added. “I actually think that helps differentiate you and stand out. And I don’t know if people know that when they’re just starting in the in the workforce—I certainly didn’t know that.
Schelling’s not wrong. The CEO of the world’s biggest recruiter says Gen Z grads need to consider hospitality jobs too
Plus, any experience right now, is better than none.
Last year in the U.K. alone, more than 1.2 million applications were submitted for fewer than 17,000 graduate roles. And unfortunately, even the CEO of the world’s biggest talent company, Randstad, doesn’t see Gen Z’s “hiring nightmare” improving.
Under Sander van ’t Noordende helm, the staffing company places around half a million workers in jobs every week—and like Schelling, he recently warned that young grads may have more luck landing bartending, barista, or building jobs, than the cushy office jobs they have set their hearts on.
“We all grew up, with our parents saying, ‘go do something in college or university and then do something in an office,’ that path that used to work for a long time is starting to break,” he said
“People need to reflect on—taking a student loan, going to college and being trained or educated for a profession that is rapidly changing—whether that’s still the right path.”
Are you a graduate who’s resorted to working in retail or hospitality instead of your desired field? Fortune wants to hear from you: orianna.royle@fortune.com
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