Bush depression days, and they didn't even consider Twitter, Google or Toyota.
The elder one had just graduated from her fashion-business school, and there was NOTHING in the way of jobs. Zip. She loved the field, even though she went into it knowing that less than 1% of aspirants really make it big. After months of looking, she landed a job with a jewelry wholesaler, not really her field, and the place went under anyway in less than 15 months. Out on the street again, she looked around, and all the jobs said "minimum three years experience." She asked, "how am I gonna get three years' experience if no one will give me a job to get the experience?" She was living in a shithole of a place in New York City, sharing the rent with someone she met online and whom she had to save after finding her ODing on some kind of awful drug. She finally decided to try a harder sell, got an interview at Lord & Taylor for one of those "minimum 3 years of experience" jobs. She went in there, and said, "look, I'm not an idiot, I can learn fast, and I don't have three years' experience because I can't get three minutes' experience if no one will give me a chance!" They gave her a chance. She is still with them now, and making enough (just barely!) to afford to live in midtown Manhattan, which she loves.
The younger one also went to college in the USA, got out of a "second tier" law school in 2010. Still the Bush depression. Even Harvard and Yale grads were told that positions open to them would not be available until things picked up, so they got signed, but had to go wait on tables for a year. My daughter, of course, had no chance even at that. She searched everywhere, and finally hooked up with a British law firm that needed someone with exactly her niche skills in their Frankfurt office. She hadn't been planning to move back to Europe, since she wanted to live near her sister in New York City, but there were just no jobs in her field (international law) to be had in the States. She worked her ass off for the British firm and was so good that she and her boss got head-hunted by a NYC firm for THEIR Frankfurt office. She did so well there, that she put in for a partnership (unheard of, and really kind of pushy for a 31 year old). The firm NEVER gave partnerships to 31 year olds, but they also knew how well she worked, and that other head-hunters were out there. So, she became their youngest partner at 31, and now makes twice what I do.
I had offered both of them jobs with my outfit when things looked bleak, but both of them said no, not unless they were starving and eviction threatened. They were intelligent, capable young women with an education and goddammit, they were gonna make it on their own if at all possible. It sure as hell didn't come easy or immediately, and the fashion business is ALWAYS perilous. Lord & Taylor fired about a third of its NY HQ staff in a recent downsizing. My daughter saw herself on the street. Instead, her boss got put out on the street, and she was kept. I reminded her that if she got canned, my offer still stood (we have a New York office), and she said it was not even a subject for discussion unless she feared finding herself on the street.
I admire them for wanting to make it on their own if at all possible, and they both made it possible by essentially refusing to believe anything was impossible.
I travel to the Nordic countries on occasion, have plenty of friends there, and speak Swedish well enough that I am often taken for a native speaker, especially when speaking to Norwegians or Danes. There are street people there, too, and "arbetslös" is not by any means an unused word up there. There are plenty of people from Norway, Sweden and Denmark who choose to live elsewhere. You can get by, but it's not necessarily the paradise some in North America make it out to be. You can be lucky or unlucky in Scandinavia just like you can in the USA. Your chances are better if you believe in yourself, because that helps convince employers to do likewise. The best way to get turned down for a job is to go into the interview believing from the start that it's going to go down that way.
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