<p>US grads can work outside the US too.</p>
<p>I had a really interesting conversation with the director of recruiting at my company when I was interviewing. She told me that my company, which previously didn’t require a college degree for any of its positions and that’s fairly standard at least at the lower level of my industry, has started requiring a degree to get in the door, and that they interview several hundred people over a period of 6 months for the RECEPTIONIST position “because they can” – we’ve had two receptionists in the time I’ve been here and I interviewed for that position originally myself, so I’ve seen firsthand that it’s true. They promote one girl and then have her keep working her old job for 6 more months while they decide on her replacement. They are going through droves of college grads from top schools for the receptionist position and taking forever to hire anybody just because they know in this job market they have the advantage and they can do it. Our current receptionist has her masters and years of work experience already. For perspective’s sake, THAT’S the world I am living in over here. </p>
<p>I submitted a few hundred resumes the five months or so I was job hunting, and the receptionist positions were the only ones I got called for, and then I didn’t get most of them, according to the interviewer, because they were afraid someone as educated as I am would get bored and quit before I could advance. My company was afraid of that too but I guess they were willing to take a chance on me… it took me a while to find that! I had a strong sense that I was caught in the middle somewhere between overqualified and underqualified, I think that’s the toughest part of the market in my area for new grads-- the only companies that would call me were the ones that ultimately felt silly even interviewing me because in THEIR opinion I was so overqualified-- I didn’t care, I just wanted a job. It seems like some employers have so many choices that they don’t really know what they want. That was my experience, I’m not saying it’s like that everywhere.</p>
<p>And for the record, as one of the loudest complainers I feel the need to clarify, I don’t blame previous generations for what’s going on and certainly not for my personal situation-- and I absolutely don’t think my generation has it tougher than ever before. I hope nobody got that impression from me. I think it just is what it is, and I certainly did a lot of it myself. My motivation for getting involved in this conversation was merely to defend against the assertion that my generation is just doing this to ourselves… I think most of us our doing our best to work with what we have, even if it’s not good enough. We’re young, trial and error is sometimes just how we learn. Nobody but us has ever been a new grad in THIS exact climate with today’s particular set of circumstances, we won’t learn how to navigate it until we try.</p>
<p>I don’t understand companies that spend an inordinate amount of time and resources interviewing candidates. We typically spend between 8 and 16 hours interviewing candidates. That is time that we can’t do work that makes a product that brings in revenues. The number of interviews that we typically do for a new hire in my local group is pretty small.</p>
<p>"If the US was known to have significantly better quality workers, then jobs on the whole come back here. "</p>
<p>Companies give a lot of reason to moving jobs off-shore. Lower wages, taxes, regulation…Low quality of workforce is not usually one of them. Especially in Business. </p>
<p>“While true, it’s an incomplete picture. My company doesn’t target a number of people to hire, we just recruit constantly and take candidates we like as they come. Also, not every business is lowering recruiting quotas, some are actually raising them.”</p>
<h1>of hires each year often fluctuates year to year. But when thinking looking at a longer time horizon, most companies have reduced hiring (although it appears to be better, from my perspective, than the past few years or so) and/or are being more selective in regards to candidate qualifications/stats.</h1>
<p>Obviously there are always exceptions in certain industries/companies. </p>
<p>I agree with those that say for the individual student who does everything within his power is likely to increase his/her odds at finding employment, but even if everyone did his best the employment rates would be practically the same due to lack of business needs. </p>
<p>I don’t really blame the baby boomers (there is only so much individuals can do) but did get frustrated with the earlier pages of this thread when the consensus that the student employment rate is the way it is because they are lazier/not trying and/or are not the same quality of worker as in the past.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>A lot of parents here are fairly familiar with how it is going from the perspectives of their kids looking for work. It seems that some parents have kids that found work easily while others have kids where it took a lot of effort.</p>
<p>BCEagle, if memory serves you were involved in the thread that documented my job hunt. You may remember that I had five rounds of interviews (not including a brief phone screening), and interviewed with close to 15 managers total, including the CEO-- and this is a massive international company. I had my first interview in April and was hired at the end of July. This was for a receptionist position. At the end they had it narrowed down to me and one other person, they chose her to be the receptionist and found another position for me-- within 6 months the other girl was promoted to my position in another dept. This was the only offer I got. </p>
<p>If I were job hunting again, it would be my educated guess that these receptionist positions with upward mobility might be all I’d get… it seems to be the middle ground in my underqualified vs overqualified conundrum. I’d be more than happy with that kind of an opportunity but I didn’t find very many of them last I looked. I cast the widest net possible and applied for everything I could find that I looked even REMOTELY qualified for, but the receptionist sort of jobs were all I got calls for, and it seems like they don’t REALLY want to hire someone like me for that position unless they expect to train and promote me, which isn’t an investment everybody makes in their receptionists.</p>
<p>Some of the happiest employed people I know work in the oddest niche jobs or own their own odd little businesses. As new college graduates 30ish years ago, they would never have been able to predict where life, and their degrees would have taken them:</p>
<p>Newly married, pregnant wife, having just discovered that he HATED teaching, one couple packed up their cars and a trailer, drove back to the small hometown they couldn’t wait to leave five years earlier, rented a crummy house with an old outbuilding in the back, and during a winter of food stamps and misery rediscovered a joy in woodworking that had gone dormant. 30 years later they own a very prosperous woodworking based small business.</p>
<p>Guy I know who loved to fish and hunt got a masters degree in fisheries management (or simething like that), works for the DNR, and spends much of his time on lakes and rivers. He is not rich but, oh, my gosh he is in heaven!</p>
<p>Another guy I know got involved with rock climbing while in college, and started a business around rock walls, rock climbing, climbing tours, etc.</p>
<p>Several college friends who worked as resident assistants as undergrads continued that line of work and are now housing directors, student activities directors, and deans of students at various colleges and universities.</p>
<p>A friend who majored in nothing related to parks or animals took a summer job in a national park loved it, stuck around after the summer, and now, thirty years later, gives educational talks about wildlife management. </p>
<p>None of these friends are wealthy. None of them are doing what they expected they would be doing 30 years ago. </p>
<p>They were willing to take a risk, though, and that’s an attitude that we don’t encourage in our kids these days. Not a lot of the parents I know would be just fine with their young graduate making the decisions these friends of mine made.</p>
<p>"They were willing to take a risk, though, and that’s an attitude that we don’t encourage in our kids these days. Not a lot of the parents I know would be just fine with their young graduate making the decisions these friends of mine made. "</p>
<p>This is true. But also the perception that Recruiters would look down upon you, more so in the past, for the nature of your past work experiences (after graduating college) when evaluating you only exascerbates matters. </p>
<p>Like I said earlier, my mom didn’t start her career until years after she graduated. She was a waitress, traveled, had fun, worked odd jobs, but then was able to successfully start her career later in life. I’m not sure that today, and probably moving forward, that type of transition would be as likely. Could be wrong though.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Christ, and people say government is bloated and inefficient…</p>
<p>This is the main reason why I had to turn down Duke University, I could not rely on the job market to help me pay off my loans.</p>
<h1>liberalartseducation</h1>
<p>Three steps to getting a job.</p>
<p>1) Develop a skill
2) Move to Silicon Valley
3) Get involved.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>15 managers and the CEO seems like overkill (unless she works closely with said CEO). But sadly, it’s worthwhile to most companies because it’s even less efficient and more damaging to morale than having to fire someone for chemistry issues. And for receptionists/administrative assistants that’s quite crucial.</p>
<p>@saketm - I have a friend who did that and ended up at Facebook.</p>
<p>Part of the reason, at my co in particular, is because we’re the home office headquarters-- we have much stricter hiring rules than the branch offices do. It’s a general rule that nobody gets hired at this office without the CEO’s okay, usually by the time you get to that point they’ve decided to hire you but they need his approval to make an offer-- which you also have to write an essay to get. You meet with all of upper management, some people from HR, and any managers of departments they’re considering putting you in.</p>
<p>The recruiting person I had this conversation with said they know it’s crazy the way they do things, but since they can, they do-- they can afford to sift through candidates for months looking for the best and brightest. We’re also a company that likes to keep a talent bank, so we have a steady stream of people coming in and out the front door to fill openings as they appear and they will make an opening for someone they want-- that’s what they ended up doing for me, I ultimately didn’t get the receptionist job and got hired in a different dept. This interview process is standard operating procedure for every position here, management positions take even longer. One of the managers I interviewed with said she interviewed for six months for the job. </p>
<p>Now, MY co is obviously WEIRD, but what does it tell you about the market here that THIS was the only job I could get!? 
We hire new people all the time, and they have the security of knowing that in this market, most likely, people will still be on the market four months later and willing to keep coming back in for yet another interview if someone better doesn’t come along.</p>
<p>“they know it’s crazy the way they do things, but since they can, they do-- they can afford to sift through candidates for months looking for the best and brightest.”</p>
<p>If so, they can’t afford to do other things that would actually further their mission. I don’t buy that they are able to make materially better hiring decisions by investing the additional time. There are diminishing returns; someone with a personality problem who can hide it for 3 rounds can almost certainly hide it for 5. This is waste, and I know plenty of private entities, for- and not-for-profit, that do it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My two majors are both allegedly in demand. My school is in the top 10 for both programs. I have gotten almost no responses to internship applications, and half of them were rejections.</p>
<p>I’d literally be better off if I had joined the Air Force after high school. Oops!</p>
<p>“I have gotten almost no responses to internship applications, and half of them were rejections.”</p>
<p>What year are you, Mortal? If you are less than a junior, it can be very tough to get internships in almost any field. Most internships specify junior or above.</p>
<p>First semester junior (yay AP credits and summer school). I do realize that can be an issue but some of these internships did say sophomores and above. And others made it sound like they really just needed someone with a pulse who can learn quickly.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, you can still join the airforce after college. That ship has not yet sailed.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, I didn’t say that I thought it was a good way of doing things! I wouldn’t know anything about it, but if I had to take a guess I would think that very few of the people they were ultimately going to decide NOT to hire make it past the first one or two rounds. I think the rest are probably just introductions so managers can sign off on a decision that’s already probably a done deal as long as they don’t blow it. That was the feel I got, anyway! I know there were only two people left in my particular cycle when I went into round two, they’d already narrowed it down that far and ultimately hired both of us. I also know the first round lasted about three months, and we got the call for round two after that… all subsequent rounds occurred within a month of each other.</p>
<p>They’re just not in a big hurry to hire people because they know they don’t have to be. They figure most people will still probably be looking for a job a few months later if they want to call them back after playing the field, and if they’re not still available they have enough people to pick from that it’s no big deal. We have enough people already that a position can afford to go unfilled for a while, in most cases.</p>