“I had this idea that I would study hard, work hard, get the job I studied for, then ask my girlfriend to marry me,” Mr. Mee said.<br />“I want a career more than anything, but I feel like I’m in a position where a 25-year-old would be,”<br />said Mr. Mee, who has hired a job coach and set up his own website to improve his prospects.<br />“It’s hard to manage your finances or even get housing, let alone start a career,” said Mr. Kieloniemi, 23, who added depth to his résumé by accepting unpaid office jobs<br />and internships in New York and Spain, mostly at his own expense.<br />If he could find a stable job in his field back in Spain, he said, “I’d be on a plane the next day.”<br />A sense of relief accompanies a permanent job<br />Yet in a country where more than 20 percent of job contracts are temporary, he was never able to find permanent work in his area of expertise.<br />“We were trapped in the strategy of this multinational, which was just waiting to discard us after two years of hard work,” Mr. Minnaar said.<br />Joost Minnaar, Scientist<br />‘In one fell swoop, all our excitement and engagement vanished.’<br />Joost Minnaar, an industrious Dutchman, had a dream job in Barcelona, Spain, as a nanotechnologist at a German<br />company with 30 other scientists, working on new developments for television, tablet and computer displays.<br />Even mobile-phone companies would not give him a contract; he had to get one through his girlfriend, who has a full-time job as a midwife.
