Employer recruiting on college campuses continues to decline and jobs for new college graduates remain scarce, said job placement officials at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
CU-Boulder's career fairs and on-campus interviewing have slumped along with universities all over the country, said career services Director Gordon Gray. The number of employers interviewing on campus fell from 177 in the fall of 2000 to 92 in 2001. This past fall, it shrank to 82.
"It's echoed by every single employer that it isn't a reflection of CU or its graduates," Gray said. "The employers intend to come back when they're hiring again."
The bleak economic climate faced by last year's graduating class is continuing, said Gray, who will retire in June after 21 years helping CU-Boulder students find work. Nationally, employers are projecting nearly 9 percent fewer new hires than last year.
Jobs in education are providing one of the few bright spots in this year's recruiting pool. Teachers are still the most recruited graduates, he said, adding that teacher retirements and an increase in the number of school-age children are keeping school officials on the hunt for new teachers.
Colorado state economists say that in addition to education, the health care and computing sectors will grow in the next 10 years. Gray said that eight of the country's 10 top projected growth occupations for the next decade are computer-related.
For arts and sciences graduates, the tight economy means that the employer-initiated recruiting that students enjoyed in 1999 and 2000 has dropped dramatically. But jobs are available, Gray said, noting there are many government jobs waiting for new graduates.
"Federal employers are just less active recruiters than in the corporate world," he said. "Jobs are out there - the Web and other applicant-initiated methods to seek out the jobs are what's necessary to find them."
Internships are now more important than ever. "Employers have such a great selection of applicants from which to choose," Gray said. "If an applicant has already proven their worth during an internship, they hold a tremendous advantage. It's very important in all fields."
Mary Banks, CU-Boulder's Leeds School of Business director of career development for graduates and undergraduates, was cautiously optimistic about her students' prospects last spring. Now times are more uncertain. "It's deteriorated to rose-colored pessimism," she joked.
Both undergraduates and MBA graduates have been hard at work looking for full-time positions or internships that could lead to full-time work. "I'm foolishly optimistic about internships," Banks said, noting that CU-Boulder staff have had success finding internships for business undergraduates during the last few months.
Banks is encouraged by the attitude of many graduating business students. Even in the face of dim job prospects and a possible war in Iraq, they are mining for opportunities and considering positions that offer much less salary than they'd hoped for, she said.
Outreach efforts with companies have been successful in making sure companies give CU-Boulder students a chance if jobs become available. Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld, a CU-Boulder alumnus, has been consistent in supporting graduates of his alma mater, and a number of undergraduates will go to New York this spring to begin work with the company, Banks reported.
Sun, Level 3 and IBM also have shown a willingness to give job and internship opportunities to CU-Boulder business graduates. Gray added that the three companies also hire many non-business-major CU-Boulder graduates.
Ann Herrmann, a CU-Boulder career counselor who works primarily with engineering students, said that prospects for new engineers are looking better this spring than last year. "It still seems slow, but better than last year," she said. "The employer attendance at our January and February engineering job and internship fairs was about the same or a little better than last year."
Herrmann said students have indicated that companies are especially looking for graduates to work in civil engineering, aerospace and defense industries.
Dave Kalahar, undergraduate adviser in the CU-Boulder College of Engineering's aerospace engineering department, has been pleased with employers' feedback.
"I just sent out 327 resume CDs about three weeks ago," he said. "I ask employers to let me know if they want to continue getting (the CDs), and of the dozen or so I've heard back from, there's only one that was returned."
Last spring and summer, more than half of the aerospace engineering department's 51 graduates accepted job offers and another quarter of the class moved on to graduate school or military service through ROTC.
Gray, who will likely remain in the Boulder area after his retirement, said technology has been the biggest change during his tenure as career services director at CU-Boulder. "Twenty-one years ago, there was no Internet," he said. "Paper flow dominated the job market. The unfortunate side effect of the technology is the impersonalization that comes with the computing process."
Years of witnessing the perpetual imbalance of graduate supply and demand in all kinds of economic climates leaves Gray with encouraging words for students facing uncertain times.
"The skill and the commitment with which one approaches the job search is probably a better predictor of success than the economic climate," he said. "Committed graduates may not have six offers to choose from, but they'll almost always succeed."
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