Facing a tight but gradually loosening job market, Muhlenberg senior Kali Kambouroglos plans to head home after graduation to find a job in the public relations industry somewhere in central Pennsylvania.
The 22-year-old Lancaster native hopes her degrees in Spanish and communications will help her land a position with a local nonprofit that will allow her to launch her career close to home. She's done some preliminary hunting, without a lot of success.
"It seems like a lot of the jobs require three years' experience," Kambourglos said, browsing books at the college library's book sale. "So it's a matter of finding an entry-level job."
Unlike members of the classes of 2009 and 2010, her odds of landing that first job are looking up, according to the Bethlehem-based National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Companies plan to hire 19.3 percent more college graduates this year than last, the association reported in its spring job outlook survey, released in April.
That's backed up by data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which shows the hiring of workers ages 20-24 rose 2.4 percent in the first quarter of 2011, outpacing hiring growth of workers in the 25-34, 35-44 and 44-54 year-old age groups, according to the Chicago outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
"The job market has really taken a big leg up in the last three months," said John Challenger, the firm's president and CEO. "That is coming just at the right time. The years of 2008, 2009, 2010 were tough years for grads, but companies can ill-afford to not fill their pipeline up for too long. It is still a tough job market because they are competing with a lot of graduates from the previous years."
Companies project 20 applications for every opening they post, according to NACE's twice-annual job survey. That's stiff competition, but it's down from 40 last year.
Much depends on the major. Fields such as computer electronics manufacturing, chemical and drug manufacturing, finance, real estate and insurance are expected to see a significant upswing in hiring, while the government, information, retail and miscellaneous professional services sectors continue to be slow, according to the survey.
For many younger workers, the recession has undermined long-held expectations that a four-year college degree is the key to a successful career, and that the end of college was the automatic start of "real life."
Some have struggled to land that first job while others have opted to delay their careers to pursue a graduate degree. It's a group that entered college before the Great Recession and is graduating into a job market that, until recently, was one of the worst in years.
It's a far cry from new graduates' career expectations just a few years ago.
Twentysomethings — members of a generation known as the Millenials — earned a pre-recession reputation among employers for being impatient to move up the career ladder, unwilling to take criticism and for having unrealistic salary expectations, said Alexandra Levit, a researcher with the Career Advisory Board, a project of DeVry University.
"We saw a lot of pushback from managers," said Levit, co-author of "How the Recession Shaped Millennial and Hiring Manager Attitudes about Millennials' Future Careers." "There was just a lot of clashing going on in the workplace…the recession absolutely has changed things. It has been a major reality check for this generation."
Now, those workers in their 20s, especially recent graduates, are more willing to take career advice, seek out mentors and work to prove themselves to their employers while boosting their job skills for future advancement, she said.
A recent survey of Muhlenberg College seniors showed just about 20 percent had lined up full-time jobs at graduation, said Muhlenberg College Career Center director Cailin Pachter. A larger number were headed to graduate school.
To read the full article written by Scott Kraus and featured in The Morning Call, please click here.
