Job market frustrating for college graduates
April 14, 2009 by admin
Filed under Job Search
By MELISSA LEE / Lincoln Journal Star
Katie McIllece’s resume should have employers lined up at her door.
A 3.63 grade point average at Nebraska Wesleyan University, where McIllece will soon earn a communication studies degree with minors in business and marketing.
A marketing internship at the Arbor Day Foundation that was supposed to last six months but has stretched over a year and a half because her boss didn’t want to lose her.
A stint as president of her sorority and leadership positions in a host of other campus groups.
McIllece should be coasting through the final weeks of her college career.
Right?
Not in these recessionary times.
In fact, with Wesleyan’s May 16 commencement looming, McIllece has yet to finalize her post-graduation plans.
“It’s been stressful and frustrating at times,” she said, recounting hours spent poring over job sites for openings in business, marketing or college recruiting.
“I’m going to be really thankful when I find a job,” she said.
Her luck may change soon — McIllece has interviewed several times with a marketing company in Des Moines — but for now she takes comfort in the fact she’s not alone in her uncertainty.
Hiring of college graduates is expected to drop off significantly this year, ending a streak of positive hiring reports dating to 2004, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Employers, in fact, say they plan to hire 22 percent fewer college graduates from the Class of 2009 than they did from the Class of 2008, the association found in a March survey. And the average starting salary offer for a new graduate will slip 2.2 percent this year, the association said in a report released Wednesday.
Those findings mirror the state of the general U.S. economy, which shed 663,000 jobs last month alone.
Locally, the recession is not as severe: Lincoln’s jobless rate is among the lowest in the country, and the city has a large share of workers in government, health care and education, all growing areas even in the downturn.
Still, experts say, some of this year’s graduates will have to resort to backup plans, such as taking jobs outside their areas of study, moving to a city they hadn’t planned on or returning to an old summer job until hiring improves.
“It’s difficult to come out of college in the teeth of a recession, and unfortunately that’s what we have here,” said Eric Thompson, director of the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“It may not be as bad here as it is in other parts of the country, but it’s still pretty tough.”
Staying positive
McIllece, who estimated she’s sent out about 15 resumes, has a few job requirements: She’d like to end up in Lincoln, her native Omaha or Des Moines, and she’s hoping for a marketing job or, ideally, a recruiting position in higher education.
But she’s also staying flexible. McIllece said she knows she likely won’t land her dream job right away, and that’s OK.
“It’s not going to come as easy as it has (in the past),” she said. “But I’m going out into the real world, and that’s exciting … I’m trying to view it as a challenge.”
Tom Salistean, a UNL senior business administration major, also is keeping his spirits up even though UNL’s graduation is May 9 and he doesn’t have a job locked up.
With help from UNL Career Services and connections through family and church —not to mention his 3.91 GPA — Salistean has landed seven or eight job interviews, success he’s found pleasantly surprising.
“Considering all of the panic in the media, there are still a lot of companies hiring,” he said.
In fact, Salistean has turned down several companies, confident a better fit will emerge.
He said he expects a job to come through in the next few weeks.
If it doesn’t, Salistean is prepared: Thanks to careful saving, he has enough money to last him about six months. And, he joked, he still has a room at his parents’ house.
“I’m not overly worried about this in the end,” he said.
‘Opportunities are there’
Career advisers say they’re doing their best to hammer home the message hiring hasn’t stopped altogether.
Some sectors actually are growing. Health care in particular is doing well, Thompson said, and other experts say they’ve seen good opportunities in accounting, government, agriculture and education.
“I’ve been in my job for over 10 years, and this is certainly the most challenging market I’ve seen,” said Janelle Andreini, interim director of Wesleyan’s Career and Counseling Center.
“But the thing we’re trying to beat into our students’ heads is it’s not as if jobs are not out there. What we know is that a job that might have had 30 applicants in the past is going to have 100 applicants. Employers really get to pick the best of the best.”
With that in mind, students must be open-minded, Andreini said. Instead of holding out for a dream job, a student could accept an offer that may be a stepping-stone to the dream, she said.
Journalism majors, for instance, might need to start at smaller newspapers than they originally envisioned.
“I don’t think we can stick our heads in the sand,” she said. “Those opportunities are there.”
Yet: “Whether there are enough of those jobs to go around, I’m not sure.”
Indeed, fewer companies are posting job listings at Husker Hire Link, the UNL Career Center’s employment Web site.
In December, the site had more than 1,300 listings, said Career Center Director Larry Routh. As of last week, that had fallen to 939 listings, a 28 percent drop.
And at a recent on-campus job fair for education students, representatives from 63 school systems showed up, down from 77 last year.
Internship opportunities in many fields also have shrunk, Routh said.
What that means, he and others say: Networking, through family, friends, professors and even social sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, is more crucial than ever.
McIllece, for one, has found personalized cover letters, face-to-face visits and aggressive networking have served her well. She even connected with one company through an old neighbor.
“You have to take advantage of everything you can think of,” she said.
Job searches in this market involve much more than surfing the Internet, Routh said.
“In these times, employers can be more choosy,” he said. “They’re going to be more impressed with a candidate that’s gone the extra mile.”
The lucky ones
Some students are finding success even in tough times.
Union College senior Allison Koch has dreamed for years of becoming a dean at a boarding school like the one she attended.
But Koch, a math education major, knew landing that job out of college might be a long shot, especially given waves of school consolidations in the face of the recession.
So in February, she bought a new box of resume paper and began sending applications to schools across the country.
She didn’t get many bites, so she began to prepare another batch of resumes, this time intending to apply to more public schools, her second choice.
Koch also formed a backup plan: If no job came through, she’d return home to Holyrood, Kan., to work at her family’s telephone and cable company, where she’s worked during summers since she was 14.
But just before spring break, Koch got a call from Highland View Academy, a Seventh-day Adventist boarding school in Hagerstown, Md., near Washington, D.C.
The school needed a head dean and math teacher. Would Koch fly out for an interview?
Koch found Highland View a perfect fit — and school leaders felt likewise. The same day she interviewed, she was offered the job.
She’s thankful she won’t be needing most of that resume paper after all.
“It’s such a huge relief to know where you’re going to be,” she said. “I look at my classmates, look at their struggles, and I could not ask for more.”
Union’s Division of Computer Science and Business hopes this year to maintain its 90 percent placement rate — the percentage of graduates who find a job in their area of study within three months — even though hiring has tightened, division chairman Barry Forbes said.
Faculty routinely help students craft resumes and cover letters, Forbes said. And all computer science and business students must complete an internship, a requirement Forbes believes helps them develop the real-life skills necessary to land a job down the road.
“Students are doing OK so far,” he said. “There is certainly a higher awareness (of the recession). There are some that are anxious; others are, ‘Well, we’ll see what happens.’”
Getting back on track
With the U.S. economy still losing jobs, graduates may find they need several years to rebound, said Thompson of the UNL Bureau of Business Research.
As is usually the case in a recession, the most outstanding students still should be able to land jobs, Thompson said, “though it’s bad enough now that that may not be 100 percent true.”
In the short term, some students may find themselves taking alternative paths, he said.
Some may head to graduate school to wait out the recession.
Some may take jobs for which they’re overqualified.
Some may move back in with their parents.
Thompson is confident the students will eventually land on their feet.
“Students are pretty resilient people,” he said. “They’re trying to make the best of it.”
