Graduates Confident in Job Market

Graduates Confident in Job Market

By: Christine Detris

“If I have to hear the word economy one more time…” mumbles Drexel University senior Kelly Owens. Owens, a student in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, keeps an open-mind and an upbeat perspective when it comes to the daunting 2010 job market.

Owens currently works part-time in Fairmount Park’s Marketing and Special Events Department. She plans to stay there for the duration of the summer while she looks for something more permanent. She says she prefers to work in an area more specific to her interests and degree, a major in design & merchandising and a minor in public relations.

“I think the economy is terrible just like everyone else. But you know what? I don’t have anything to begin with, so I really have nothing to lose,” she says.

Owens has a passion for fashion and one day aspires to be a personal stylist. She applied to over 25 jobs but was either turned down or never heard back from them.

Still, she is confident in her skill-set and resume, which she thanks Drexel’s co-op program for.

Assistant Director for Career Services at Drexel, Andrew Duffy, says that Drexel students usually tend to benefit from their co-op experiences. According to Duffy, about half of Drexel students receive a job offer from a previous co-op employer, while 30% actually take the position.

Maintaining the same mindset as Owens is Drexel senior Ty Tucker. Tucker spent five years at Drexel drafting a full resume that boasts four internships. He will graduate this June with a bachelor’s degree in corporate and public relations.

Tucker says he has applied to over 50 jobs within the marketing and sales sector and continues to search. He says students “must keep a positive attitude and keep working hard” to eventually land a position. The problem, he says, is that people with more experience are being hired over fresh graduates.

He might be right. An article from Cleveland.com quots Heidi Schierholtz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute n Washington, D.C. Schierholtz states that college graduates are not only competing with each other for jobs, but they also must compete against people with more experience who under normal circumstances would already hold secure positions.

“Young workers are getting slammed. They are really seeing the brunt of this because employers, when push comes to shove, are shedding their less experienced workers first,” Schierholtz says.

Duffy, disagrees with the idea that more experienced workers are the ones receiving job offers. He says that college students are more up-to-date with new technology, and that employers can “mold” a recent graduate more than someone who has been in the business for years.

While Tucker and Owens have backgrounds in public relations, marketing, and events, Drexel students in other fields seem to be having more luck. Duffy says that engineering, business, and healthcare fields are doing well, although not as well as they have in the past.

Katy Haggerty, a senior in Drexel’s nursing program, recently secured a job at the Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, NJ. She will be working as a registered nurse in the hospital’s telemetry unit.

Haggerty completed her third and final co-op at the medical center in 2009. She says she believes she was hired because a previous nurse left her position, leaving an opening on the floor. Haggerty was offered the position after applying to 19 other nursing jobs at various hospitals.

Haggerty also says that many of her peers in Drexel’s College of Nursing have received job offers and even more have regularly been going on interviews. She is optimistic about the nursing field and according to the United States Department of Labor Statistics (BLS), she should be.

The BLS reports that in April, employment in healthcare grew by 20,000. Of those jobs, 6,000 were in hospitals alone. In the past year, healthcare has seen a rise in employment by 244,000.

Drexel nurses appear so assured that nursing major Laura Gable has not even felt the pressure to begin her job search. Gable says she has been too busy finishing her final semester to even think about applying for positions.

“I feel very confident—my co-op gave me a lot of experience in patient care and I learned more there than I did in clinical,” Gable says. Currently, she works part-time as a nursing aid at Cooper Hospital in Camden, but has not expressed interested in working there full-time because she is still deciding where she wants to reside.

For students who do not feel as secure in their job search as Gable, Duffy offers words of advice. “Networking is one of the best ways to get an opportunity,” he says.

Duffy suggests career fairs as a strong way to build contacts. However, he says many students have unrealistic expectations of career fairs and expect a job offer right away. Instead, Duffy says students need to use the event to meet others, and hope for an interview at most.

According to Careerbuilder.com, America’s largest online employment website, 21% of employers say they plan to hire more college graduates than they did last year. This number, combined with 16% who say they are paying higher salaries than last year, can only add a glimmer of hope to graduates still searching.