Old people trying to help are always useless.

It was always something incredibly basic like:

"Have you tried writing a CV."

Or incredibly stupid like

"Just march in there and demand a job."

Or the most annoying.

"This person needs insert free labour, that'll be good. No they can't afford to hire anyone so you won't get paid."

Nepotism works, if you can use nepotism you might help. Otherwise you probably have no idea what you're doing.