Hiring Prospects Grim For College Grads
March 10, 2009
Rob Kuznia--HispanicBusiness.com
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In normal times, graduation day is an eagerly anticipated rite of passage for the nation's college seniors, who are raring to jump into the real world of gainful employment -- and rid themselves of the Ramon-Noodle blues.
But with the economy in tatters, graduation day is looking more and more like a thing to dread.
With the unemployment rate reaching a 25-year high, the hiring of graduates this spring is expected to fall by 22 percent from last year, according to a study released last week by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
The grim hiring prospects aren't lost on the students, said Claudia Duron Burke, a career counselor with UC Riverside, where Hispanic students make up a quarter of the student enrollment.
"Many of them are freaking out," she told HispanicBusiness.com. "There's just a lot of nervousness. I've had some students come to the point of tears during drop-in sessions."
According to the survey, the decline has been particularly steep in the past few months: Two-thirds of the employers interviewed said they altered their hiring plans for the Class of 2009, mostly in the form of cutbacks. Also, 44 percent of the respondents said they'll be hiring fewer graduates this spring than they did a year ago.
Mirroring the results of the NACE survey is the shrinking number of job postings in the career center of UC-Riverside.
In a year-over-year comparison, the number of job postings from September to January for full-time, part-time, federal work-study and internship openings at UC-Riverside has fallen off by 12.6 percent, Duron Burke said.
Meanwhile, the school's student enrollment has increased by nearly 9 percent in the past two years, she said. In other words: The school has more students, and employers in the area have fewer jobs for college grads.
But career counselors say there's no need to panic. Instead, they say, it's time to prepare.
Frank Ramirez, also a career counselor at UC-Riverside, said he normally advises seniors graduating in June to start shopping for jobs by as early as January. Not this year. Now, he says, they should start looking right around the first day of school -- in September.
Ramirez also advises students not to let the bad economy spook them out of following their passion.
"We tell them: 'Find something within an industry you want to spend some time in,'" he said.
The counselors warn that in times of economic distress, grad school can seem deceptively safe for soon-to-be graduates.
"It's not a place for you to be hiding," Duron Burke said. "If you're just trying to hide, the admissions folks are going to know that."
UC-Riverside senior Ana Valladares has been looking for a job since January. Although she doesn't have anything lined up yet, she feels she's off to a good start, largely because she heeded the counselors' advice to start early.
Valladares, who works at the career center as a peer adviser and is majoring in international relations and sociology, landed an internship the summer before her senior year. As a result, she feels better connected to the field in which she wants to work: public health and social work.
So far, she's applied for one job at a non-profit organization and received a call back for an interview. She said some of her friends have been having more trouble.
One is going straight to grad school; another is taking the year off.
"We are nervous, but trying not to show it," she told HispanicBusiness.com. "It's not a good year to be graduating from college."
Experts say the unemployment rate among college graduates could exceed 4 percent this spring the highest since they began collecting the data in 1970, according to College News.
Ramirez said Hispanic and black students could be feeling the pinch more than others. The economy, after all, has taken a disproportionate toll on those families. While the national unemployment rate released in early March was 8.1 percent, among Hispanics it was 10.9 percent; blacks, 13.4 percent.
"With a lot of the students, their parents might be really affected by this bad economy," Ramirez said. "The students feel the burden is on them. They feel now it's time for them to actually rise to the occasion and get their dream job. Dream jobs are not so tangible right now."
Still, for all the gloomy statistics and forecasts, another NACE survey showed that many students are optimistic, the College News article reported. Fifty-three percent felt confident they would be hired in three months.
"We are hopeful; we know we have a degree," Valladares said. "That should help us get into the door for at least an entry level position."
Source: HispanicBusiness.com (c) 2009. All rights reserved.
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