Wanted: Focused, Directed and Connected College Grads

For new college graduates to succeed in today’s tough job market, they need to be focused, directed and connected, according to Phil Gardner, Ph.D., director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute (CERI) at Michigan State University. CERI conducts research on the transition from college to work, college labor market conditions, and issues related to career development.

Over 2500 employers responded to the Recruiting Trends 2009-2010 survey, which describes  trends related to economic sectors, location, company size, and academic majors. It reports  that the college job market is holding steady for 2010, after experiencing the significant drop of 35-50% last year.

Opportunities for the best-prepared candidates
In their 2009-2010 survey, CERI reports that until the Baby Boomers decide to retire and make room for young professionals, companies will continue to be extremely selective in their hiring. They are in the driver’s seat to choose the cream of the crop of new grads. So it’s not just “What you know” but also “What you have done” that makes a new grad stand out from the pack and get noticed by an employer.

According to the report, “There are many signs that employers are beginning to view advanced skill and competency proficiency as a fundamental hiring factor in addition to major/disciplinary knowledge.” Students can develop this skill and competency proficiency through internships, part-time and summer jobs, course projects, career-related activities and involvement in student clubs, and so it’s wise to get an early start in their college career. To be able to do so, students have to have focus and an early sense of career direction.

The trends survey found that it is small companies (less than 500 employees) which expect to increase hiring. This is contrary to media reports. Medium size companies continue to be squeezed, and large companies intend to keep new hiring consistent with last year, while continuing to eliminate jobs. For a long time now, this has been a trend in large companies, where hiring and job elimination occurs simultaneously.

The survey identifies three employer themes:

1. Flexibility – Employers are looking for graduates with both technical and “soft skills,” as well as new hires who can adapt to changing conditions. Soft skills encompass people, leadership, team and communication skills, work ethic and positive attitude.
2. Technical disadvantage – Graduates in many technical fields are not in demand right now due to the slowdown in manufacturing, architecture, engineering design and development.
3. Business shift – Employment is holding steady with last year, except for a lack of demand for accounting graduates. This is interesting because typically the hiring landscape is quite favorable for these graduates.

Academic majors that still sizzle
With an increased emphasis on sustainability and funding from stimulus packages, the hottest graduates this season are Environmental Science majors. Statistics majors are also in demand. Students who can immediately contribute to more effective business results using the internet are valuable, and those would be majors in e-commerce, entrepreneurship, web design and multi-media. Engineering majors typically fare well in the job market, however this year jobs are scarce  for electrical and mechanical engineering majors, better for civil and computer engineering. Information technology and management and systems information systems majors will be sought after this year, while hiring for computer science majors and programmers is down.

Communication majors in interactive media, public relations, advertising or sales are well-positioned for this year’s job market. According to the trends study, K-12 schools are having trouble projecting staffing needs. Many districts have gone through staff and budget cuts, and their federal and state funding has not come through. Education majors have their work cut out for them; they will have to be the right person at the right place at the right time when positions open up. At the college level, it’s the non-academic positions that have been severely hit.

The good news is that 33% of the responding companies indicated that they seek young talent with  a variety of majors. They however, keep raising the bar on the their expectations for performance, and with so many graduates from which to choose, they can afford to cull out the cream of the crop, “the graduate that has the full package of extraordinary critical thinking, communication skills, leadership, initiative, and an innovative spirit” – and has the experiences and resume to prove it.

Current hot majors – like hot jobs – is good information to heed, but remember it is short-term, looking at hiring trends for just next year. This information should not discourage a student from a career direction or major that is on the slower-hire list in this survey. In the same way, just because this 2009-2010 survey reports that employers are hiring graduates with a particular major, it does not mean that students should react to the data by changing their academic major to one of the “hot ones.” Researching careers related to majors is a critical first step. Then take a longer,  carefully thought-out view and make plans accordingly.

Overall, Gardner’s alert is “Competition will be fierce.” There are just not enough jobs out there,  due to the recession and the slowdown in the retirement rate of the older Baby Boomers, who are in their mid-50s to mid-60s. So whether graduates are in the in-demand majors or not, the best prepared candidates will clearly be the most attractive candidates to hiring managers this season.