What advice would you give to school leavers who cannot find a job?

Answer 1

if you mean graduates, they must persevere and send many CVs to different organizations, if you mean drop-outs, this is a different story, these ex-students, will have to be satisfied with low wages, usually minimal rates, never having a good chance to really establish a career, so better time spent by staying in school, no matter how difficult, a good job will turn up, never give up!

Seek out opportunities to undertake voluntary work experience or in some countries they will have Government based work expoerience set up for the unemployed school leaver to have access to. Many of these programmes will have opportunities to access the world of work where you will train on a formal programme and access apprentiship skills and qualifications in a career/trade of your liking. It can also allow you "job tasters" these can be used to see what its like in a hands on situation in different vocational pathes. At the end of a skillbuilding period you can opt for specific trade or careers routes having seen whats its really like.

Many charities will have options available to help in this area as well. Talk to careers advisors about this - The focus here is to gain "experience" in the work place, establish transferable skills and gain an insight in to the "normal"working environment (which is vastly different to the world of education) . This experience can be entered in to a resume (CV) and give potential employers an insight in to your ambitions to gain employment. It will als act as a reference point for you which is vital. In additon by gaining this type of work experience you are also building a network of people who may have information about vacancies that you could try applying for.