Each year’s crop of graduates faces the inevitable question. What’s next?
For the tough-luck Class of 2009, that decision has been especially daunting. But expectations of an impressive answer have given way to sympathetic nods. Only one in five seniors who applied for a job had found one by springtime, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Common stigmas faded this year, students say. Waiting tables has become a good option. Going home to figure things out bears no shame.
The sense of entitlement supposedly characteristic of the millennial generation is largely absent, says Steven Rothberg, president of the online resource CollegeRecruiter.com, as students necessarily keep open minds.
“The bar has been lowered,” Mr. Rothberg says. “Any job right now is a great job.”
Students have expanded their searches, considering a broader array of companies, industries, and geographic locations. Interest in public-service opportunities, already growing, has surged, with applications to Teach for America up by 42 percent and the Peace Corps 16 percent over last year. Predictably, more students have decided to pursue graduate school.
Liz Aiello pondered that path. But Ms. Aiello, who graduated last month from the University of Texas at Austin, opted to wait a few years, gather her thoughts, and start to pay back her loans.
As it turns out, she says, “taking time off is more stressful than anticipated.” She has tried to cut herself some slack. For now, Ms. Aiello, an English major, is volunteering part time at a women’s health clinic and submitting her résumé wherever she can. Administrative-assistant positions at the university look particularly attractive, she says, for their benefits and security. She would be grateful for a retail position, too.
“If I have to, I’ll get a bunch of different little jobs,” Ms. Aiello says. “I will apply to anything and everything.”
‘Fear to Career’
Career counselors are working to keep pace with worried seniors.
“We’re trying to meet the Class of 2009 where they are, which is, ‘I’m scared. I’m freaked out. What am I going to do?’” says Chris Dito, manager of career-recruiting programs at the University of California at Davis.
Students will graduate from Davis on June 14, and Ms. Dito expects to see them in droves for the following two weeks. She has lined up a series of back-to-back workshops, called Hire Me! Academy.
Many other institutions have ramped up their career services and refined their approaches for a tight market. Kalamazoo College held a series of “career dinners” this spring for graduating seniors to meet with job coaches. Luther College canvassed alumni via e-mail to produce leads for students, and Carleton College created an e-mail list to share seniors’ professional profiles with alumni and parents.
A tip from a professor helped Andrea Sinclair set her course. The public-relations major at Kent State University had already taken advantage of the recession special at the nearby FedEx Office: 25 free printed résumés. “I applied for just about everything under the sun that I thought I could do,” she says.
Then Ms. Sinclair’s adviser, who knew she had a certificate in nonprofit management, recommended her for a job that came across his desk. She interviewed for the position, with a local organization that helps disabled adults find employment. The group hired her on an AmeriCorps Vista grant that will pay $865 a month.
“I got a lucky break,” Ms. Sinclair says. She plans to apply the program’s $5,000 education grant toward a master’s degree in health-care administration at Cleveland State University, which she hopes will improve her chances of finding a permanent full-time job.
Hideout With Homework
Graduate school provides a time-honored recession hideout, and many students are hunkering down. According to the Council of Graduate Schools, applications to many programs are up, some as much as 20 percent, while others have seen declines. Some career counselors reported seniors’ staying a fifth year to add a second major, and several institutions offered financial aid to seniors to enroll in graduate programs.
Erin Cornelius didn’t expect to stay on at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, but back when she decided to major in English, employment prospects abounded.
“It wasn’t going to be a very big deal what my degree was in,” Ms. Cornelius says, “because there was going to be a job.” Alas, she says, this year she began wishing for “marketable skills.” When she saw a friend in nursing struggling to find work, she figured that her own choice was fast food or grad school.
Ms. Cornelius considered one- and two-year master’s programs, but none particularly intrigued her. Law seemed interesting, she thought, and three years would give the economy more time to recover. She worried about accruing debt but received a scholarship from Alabama’s law school and now plans to take out what she considers a manageable $50,000 in loans.
Beyond refuge from the recession, Ms. Cornelius says some of her friends see another perk to graduate school: “They don’t want to get kicked off their parents’ health insurance.”
Excuse to Wander
Venturing into a tough market demands ingenuity, and Richard T. Berman thinks that’s a good thing. In nearly three decades counseling students, Mr. Berman, career-services director at Carleton College, has seen many of them become single-minded too quickly. “It’s amazing to me on what bases undergraduates make decisions,” he says.
In the absence of much information or direct experience, television shows and relatives’ advice influence students’ choices, says Mr. Berman. Uncertainty is unsettling, he says: “We’re much more comfortable when we’ve made decisions, and we’re not so good at doing the exploration.”
This year requires some exploring.
Evan Rowe, a political-science major who will graduate from Carleton this month, tried to remain flexible. He was drawn to community organizations and public policy, but when an older friend forwarded a posting for a job at Google, he followed up.
Mr. Rowe interviewed for the position, part of a nontechnical training program, in November, and waited several months for a verdict. When he got the job, he decided to try it. “What mattered to me is that I could learn a lot,” he says.
He compares the perfect job to one true love. “Not any such thing,” he says. “There are many different ways I could be happy.”
Katharine S. Brooks is encouraging students to wander. The recession is a good excuse, says Ms. Brooks, director of liberal-arts career services at the University of Texas at Austin and author of You Majored in What? Mapping Your Path From Chaos to Career (Viking 2009).
Many students are pursuing transitional opportunities this year, she says. One wants to leadis leading wilderness trips for troubled youth; some are going to teach English abroad to work in service jobs. “They’re being a little more creative,” she says.
Ms. Brooks looks forward to checking in with the Class of 2009 in two or three years. “‘Well, I was planning to do X, but then, just as I was graduating there was a recession,’” she imagines she’ll hear.
“My hope,” she says, “is that ultimately it will be a much more interesting story.”
