Businesses are searching for newly-graduated employees to fill now-open jobs.

Job Market On Rise For Former Students

By: Madeline Ward

Posted: 5/6/07

Some students are scrambling for the summer to secure interviews for internships, sifting through pages of entry-level positions on careerbuilder.com and calling back cards from last-minute career fairs, while others are weighing their options on which job offers to take.

"This is shaping up to be a great year for college recruiting," said Brian Krueger, president of collegegrad.com.

A recent survey conducted by Krueger's company of his clients found that 55 percent of their entry level employers, which include the likes of Walgreens, Lockheed-Martin and even the Peace Corps, plan to hire more college graduates this year than last year.

"The hiring increase that we're seeing is consistent throughout the nation and across all majors," Krueger said.

His optimism is justified. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), a guild for career councilors at universities across the United States, showed businesses in general plan to hire 17.4 percent more new college grads than last year. This is much better than previous years where college grads were overlooked in favor of unemployed professionals or recent grads that already have a few years of experience.

"As far as the forecast, this is the best job market for new graduates since 2001, said Andrea Koncz, the employment information officer for NACE. "At that time employers predicted a 23.4 percent increase, but then the economy went south, and employers planned decreases to college hiring in 2002 and 2003. Since then, the increases have been getting larger and larger, and this year in our original Job Outlook 2007 survey, employers planned to increase hiring."

Employers plan to hire more new grads than they did last year, and NACE rated the job market for new college graduates as "very good." In last year's survey, The Job Outlook 2006 survey, they rated the job market as "good."

Though the market is far from stagnant, it is more specialized and this can confuse some seniors who have only been given a general idea of their options. There are many different choices for many different majors. Often, students don't know where to look and are spooked by the prospect of doing research and discovering jobs on their own.

Matthew Flood, a 10th-semester graduating senior, put his own spin on things as an economics major.

"I would suggest taking a look at the summer internship you did the summer before you graduate for references," Flood said. "I am choosing a job as we speak. I have had three offers and I am now choosing between which one to take."

Flood's degree in economics opened the doors to his Wall Street options.

"I want to be a financial advisor, and since we work largely off commission I have a tough choice," Flood said.

He was currently weighing each company's job offers and suggested that other students do the same. The best advice Flood gave was to look at the company's history and see how they have done financially. If there are multiple offers it is worth looking at the signing bonus and house pricing in the area to make sure that a job doesn't place you in more debt just because of a living arrangement.

Finally Flood said the most important thing to decide is "if you like working with the people themselves."

With millions of college graduates flowing into the market there is an uncertain element to the process. Many students believe that they will have a job the second that they graduate and be on the fast track to their careers only to find that they are receiving unemployment checks for the next two months.

Others will receive jobs right on the spot and be confused as to why they were ever worried about finding an application for their liberal arts degree. One of the boons for UConn students is the proximity to major metropolitan cities like New York and Boston and major Connecticut cities like Hartford and New Haven.

For those seniors who don't have a job lined up there are plenty of other options to choose from that will give them a "real world" experience.

Barbra Campbell, a Ph.D. student in English and teaching assistant, advised students to be concerned about their post-graduation situation.

"I took a year off," Campbell said. "I ended up working part time at Sears, babysitting and cleaning houses with my BA in English. I wouldn't recommend doing that."

However, Campbell was more upbeat about the idea of students taking a break for the summer while having a job lined up for the fall.

"If you've gone from high school and then straight into undergrad, I would recommend that you take a break," Campbell said. "Backpack across Europe, join the Peace Corps or Teach for America. For me, the job market for a BA in English is tough. Once I finish I would like to teach at a university, preferably with community interaction."

Some students are uncertain of their path. Kelly Vass, an 8th-semester English major with a minor in political science, doesn't know where she will go.

"No idea, I applied to a couple of places but I am kind of picky," Vass said. "As much as my mom says a job is a job, I want to work around the things that I love. So I applied at Borders and Starbucks."

As students walk down the aisle in their graduation gowns with resumes and health insurance costs on their minds, they can rest a bit knowing that no matter what their major is, as the baby boomers retire, Generation Y is wanted for hire.