QuintZine -- delivered free to your mailbox on a biweekly basis -- offers readers a
number of exciting and informative career and job-hunting features and links.
Letter to QuintZine from Jeni Rosenthal:
I am a part-time student, and I work as well as do career counseling as a small business. I am a real believer in young
people developing their own businesses. In today’s labor market, the chances of getting a job and that being the only job
you work at the rest of your life are very slim. Experts say that people in my generation will have to work more than one
job because there are more part-time opportunities and more contract work.
My dad worked for a company for 25 years and thought he had a pretty secure future, but the people who managed the
business were financially irresponsible
and had to lay off a lot of people. My dad found himself out of work in his 50's and had a very difficult time trying to get a
job. He eventually started his own business and now is very successful.
From his experience, and now that I live in a very remote community in Northern Ontario, I have learned that a young person
should have the skills to develop their own businesses or create their own jobs if necessary. The place that I work at now did
not have a position open for me, but I proposed to them an idea that I believed would be beneficial to them and showed them
how I would be able to make it work and they eventually created the position for me. This in a way
was using some entrepreneurial skills.
Make sure your newsletter does not place too much emphasis on just getting jobs and that it shows young people the
importance and feasibility of working for themselves. So many young people I know think the only source of income they
have available to them is just getting a job and don't realize they have many of the skills and ideas needed to start their own
business. If your newsletter doesn't already deal with these options I think it really should. Maybe you could show some of
the programs available to help out youth entrepreneurs and start small businesses. There are lots of youth business-plan
competitions that give young people start up money and provide them with mentorship from a larger more established
business that does similar work. Check it out!
