Written by What are you experiencing out there in the current job market? Have the new graduates found jobs easily or still searching? We want to hear from you!
Posts in category job search
Summer Job Opportunities
Every news source seems to be reporting the same now that summer is here. More bad news for job seekers! Except this time its so bad even high school students can’t find temporary summer jobs. The lack of of seasonal employment is said to be at its lowest since World War II! How is any educated professional or recent graduate expected to find a job when even simple seasonal employment cannot be found? Something is terribly wrong and its just getting worse. Seems like its slowly trickling down to every workforce group. There are countless numbers of students set to start or return to college in the fall, but how can they justify that in this market. Of course many will feel its best to ride this out while getting an education. It could be that for some the better choice could be just forgoing the debt they will accumulate and college. What do you think? Would you start college in the Fall?
Some Education Information
Its summer time and that means new graduates and students are making big decisions for their future come the fall. The following are some great articles we have round up for the week that every educated person or even anyone considering a higher education will find very informative. Some paint a promising future for those committed to pursuing a higher education and others feature a painful truth about the tough circumstances that may continue for a lot of those who have found little payoff for their degree.
Plans for College Need Realistic Boundaries
Learn to Think If You Want to Get Hired
Graduates to Graduates: Stay Positive
http://www.fox11online.com/dpp/news/local/fox_cities/graduates-to-graduates-stay-positive
Student Loans Due? Here’s What to Consider
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505146_162-57448110/student-loans-due-heres-what-to-consider/
Education Epidemic
Plan C…
My journey includes significant experience working within the sports industry. I mention that only to emphasize the irony of the idea of having a Plan C. Yes…I made that up in my head but please be open to my rationale.
During all of the work I have done for organizations from little league all the way up to professional sports, the universal lecture to ALL is have a Plan B! Right??? Right! So I’m just a bit curious if there are any parents, or mentors out there in this fascinating time we are living cautioning young people in their lives as they run up to them with gusto and naivete saying, “I want to go to college”, replying to them, “I support your dream, but make sure you have a Plan C just in case that higher education thing does not work out!”
Historically a college education has carried the weight of being a solid foundation to implement your Plan B effectively. I’m of the opinion the solid foundation that has held our beloved Plan B for so many years has a severe crack in it. Could the irony now exist of having a back-up plan “just in case” our wild dreams of being a college educated, gainfully employed, financially productive citizen does not happen either despite all of your hard work, hopes, and dreams? Educated…now what?
CALLING ALL GUEST BLOGGERS!
We are looking for anyone interested in guest blogging and sharing their experiences,knowledge or just venting. Are you Educated, Now What? ….then we want to hear from you! You don’t have be an experienced blogger as we are all about sharing the real stories of the educated.
UNDEREMPLOYMENT IN 2012
Useless Degree Syndrome (UDS)
Just coming to realize you might have been infected by a useless degree? At what point did you realize there might be a bigger problem?
Symptoms of (UDS)
*Underemployment
*Past due bill payments and you want to pay your bills soooooo badly
*Inability to pay back the student loans for that precious degree hanging on your wall
*Endless job searches with no tangible results
*Growing resentment for trying to better yourself
*Inbox filled with rejections from jobs first thing in the morning
*Responses from jobs you forgot you even applied for
*Unexplained or unprovoked aggression towards underwhelming job descriptions *Uncontrolled twitching of the eye to the term “overqualified”
*Slight depression intermingled with overpowering determination to not be a statistic
*Reoccurring hallucinations that you are regressing in life instead of progressing
*Lack of mental understanding in areas such as:
-Earning a job in your field
-Making almost the same salary I did long before I had a degree
-Non-paid internships
-Not being hired because you are actually the best candidate
THE ULTIMATE JOB SEARCH
The Internet is filled with too many job search engines, agencies and services to count. Each tend to claim they are the best and offer the most postings. The problem is weeding out the scams from the actual quality resources. Some are filled with 1000s of results of which 30 percent may be actual solid opportunities. It takes time to sift through all of those and time is precious when you are unemployed.
In a day when you can gain an entire education online and specific job search firms such as The Ladders exist that a large service or search specifically catered to educated individuals has been created. It would certainly thrive in this economy with more job seekers than ever. There are a few niche job search sites, but what we need is a service who gathers all employers who only want those educated candidates and can then match them with job seekers whose education has been verified. This would be a huge advantage for job searchers and employers alike. Employers would have a trustworthy resource pool of educated candidates looking for employment and job searchers would have access to postings from employers they know value their education. This my friend would be The Ultimate Job Search! Hopefully somewhere between the niche job search websites and popular sites such as Career Builder or Monster this will be developed at some point. It would be a positive step in restoring value to a hard earned college education and giving the educated the leg up that they deserve in the job market.
Zero Unemployment
An interesting article came out recently about zero unemployment. It claimed that the unemployment rate of certain niche degrees was 0 percent. Now of course everyone would love to graduate and find a wonderful job right away, but that’s far from reality. However, their seems to be some fields that claim their are more jobs than workers right now…hard to believe considering the economy. Students majoring in Astrophysics,Actuary Science, Pharmacology and Geophysics are said to have job offers rolling in even before they graduate. This may be true for some schools and some areas, but is certainly not the norm. Not to mention those majors are difficult and not what your typical college student dreams of pursuing. Another tricky thing to consider in the concept of zero unemployment is the fact that it does not count those students who move onto graduate school as unemployed. That is a major glitch considering that the majority of those involved in these fields go onto obtain a masters degree or higher during their education.
The point is there is really no guarantee of which education niche will land you a job right away. Even professionals in these highly sought after fields claim the abundance of jobs will change soon just like every other field as more graduates enter the job market. There may be some degrees that are safer bets than others, but the bottom line is a higher education should be worth more than it currently is no matter what the degree focus. If you are going to spend tens of thousands of dollars and dedicate four years of your life or more to specializing in something it should pay off in some way some how. That’s sadly not the case and degree is no longer a degree and education is going to have to change if we ever want to begin to fathom a zero unemployment rate.
Education That Will Actually Get You A Job
We would like to thank that after college everyone would promptly find a job opportunity and gain employment right away. Sadly that’s not how it works at all. Some may be unemployed after graduation for a long period of time. Recent graduates are finding employment opportunities scarce all over the country. Although according to some new statistics some degrees and majors may be more susceptible to unemployment after finishing their higher education. Kind of makes all those student loans that have been racked up over four years even more painful.
Degrees in Arts, Humanities and Architecture have shown the highest rates of unemployment for college graduates. Architecture would make the most sense since the collapse of the housing and new construction bubble a few years back.
Degrees in Health, Education and Engineering have shown the lowest rates and seem to be able to find jobs more easily in the tight economy. It seems hard to believe that education is one of those considering all the cuts that are consistently taking place in schools. Perhaps it is just easier to find employment opportunities in Education and whether or not that lasts more than a few months was not factored into the equation. Overall graduates with an education in a technical field seem to have a lower chance of suffering unemployment.
Currently the national unemployment rate is at 8.2 % and the unemployment rate among college graduates has been at a record high.
Stay tuned for a continuation of this subject in our next post.
WHAT BILLS?????? EDUCATED AND STILL CAN’T PAY THE BILLS!
So tell me, in today’s job market what exactly constitutes a good job for a college graduate. Or, maybe I’m using the wrong verbiage, what constitutes an appropriate job for a college graduate. Lets start with the salary shall we…. first order of business lets just make sure the job actually has a salary!
Reverence for a college graduates desire to do whatever it takes to have a successful career often becomes void because they are working towards a “possible opportunity” that really does not exist. Graduates often have faith that their hard work, networking, or being in the right place at the right time in front of the right person will override the fact that their employers only truth is that they are going to capitalize on college graduates free labor.
At this point the whole unpaid internship or volunteer job shadowing game is quite disgusting. As bad as most people do want to work, and do want to obtain legitimate job skills that will make them an asset to the company of their choice, this choice does not make their bills vanish into the abyss of paid in full land!
