<p>Unemployment claims report this morning were down 50K from last week to the 352K level which indicates modest job growth. It’s actually pretty good news compared to the claims number for the last year. We need to get under 300K for faster job growth but hopefully the better numbers are a trend. Unemployment in NH was 4.9% for December and I think that MA is doing quite well for unemployment too.</p>
<p>Son’s job is quite challenging in that they have him doing IT stuff while he’s reading up on the algorithms stuff. They didn’t have his office set up for him though so actually working in the office has been challenging.</p>
<p>This strikes me as analogous to the flood of applications going into schools partially due to the common application. Except for the job aps don’t cost anything and don’t really take much effort.</p>
<p>It probably pays to target your applications, but I guess people figure, “What the heck?” As a matter of fact, I don’t believe I really had the ideal qualifications for my current position, but somehow I got the job, really enjoy it, and have done better here than any other place I’ve worked in the past. </p>
<p>But I was looking almost ten years ago. I’d hate to look for a job now, except for the fact that I am in sort of a niche area so I have recruiters contacting me, and I work with a lot of different organizations many of which have indicated they would likely hire me if I wanted to bolt. That wasn’t always true in my case.</p>
<p>I think, repeat think
that today’s applicants have been creating their own website and letting potential employers use a search engine to scan the universe of resumes. In DS field it helps to show off the “products” that he has created-The Portfolio.</p>
<p>It is surprising how much nice content even most new grads can amass for a ‘portfolio’.
Takes creativity and effort to present accomplishments in an appropriate format.
Some young applicants are better at promoting themselves than others.</p>
<p>Long, long way from the process of 30+years ago when I basically EXPECTED to win the job of my choice by waving my newly minted bachelor’s degree at a prospective employer. I was young and naive so maybe it really wasn’t so easy even back then but worked out for me, fortunately.</p>
<p>It gets easier after the first job - you just drop the awards, competitions, etc. section. Then you can drop non-professional jobs later on.</p>
<p>I was recruited by a headhunter after a year in college - I didn’t have to apply because my skills were in such high demand. I just was lucky enough to have the right skills at the right time. I’m sure that it happens today too.</p>
<p>The GDP number yesterday showed growth in the fourth quarter but a bit less than expected by economists. It came in at 2.8% vs 3.0+ which was expected. The growth number for the whole year was 1.7% which was lower than 2010. The articles that I saw blamed the lower growth number on consumers spending less overall in Q4. That was a little surprising to me as luxury goods companies are doing quite well and I think that low-end stores are too. It appears that companies catering to the low-end and high-end are doing well leading to the term - barbell economy. Basically the middle-class is cutting back. 2012 looks like another year of risk for new grads on the job front.</p>
<p>Questions about building a portfolio.
S is around 6-7 months into his first job as a graphic designer. He works for a small graphic design company. My S has had great opportunities to work on a wide variety of projects, many of which he is the sole designer. When he is updating his portfolio does he need permission from his boss to include the work? His boss is the one who gets the jobs and is for the most part the contact with the client.</p>
<p>Weekly unemployment claims fell to 367,000 in this week’s report, a number consistent with slow jobs growth. I’ll look at the details later today to see what the anomalies are. It could be people exhausting their benefits. Some of the consumer company earning reports this morning were pretty good and some were pretty bad. We’re muddling through so to speak.</p>
<p>I asked a coworker if his son had a job lined up - he’s going to a very well regarded tech school (somewhat better than WPI) and will be graduating this spring with an engineering degree with a good (> 3.0) GPA and an industry internship last summer. He is looking but hasn’t had any interviews yet. I only see this coworker once every six weeks or so I’m interested to see his son’s progress.</p>
<p>Just curious about STEM GPAs–is 3.0 considered “good” for engineering? If so, is 3.5 then considered “great”? Just curious, since I don’t know about these things. Good luck to coworkers’ S, BCEagle.</p>
<p>mom60, perhaps your S can ask his students from his U more about protocol in creating a portfolio of his work. I would guess that employer and client MAY need to sign a release to allow him to use the work in his portfolio, but don’t know what. His professors should know more & help him figure it out.</p>
<p>HImom,
From my s’s experiences, some employers actually put in their job description a minimum GPA in order for them to be considered. IIRC one required a 3.3, one required a 3.5. Many will want at least a 3.0 (I guess considered good enough). 3.36 was considered good. 3.78 was considered great!</p>
<p>Fascinating–I guess it’s a different world. Hopefully, after a few years on the job, the job experience will matter more than any GPA anyway for those more elite/exclusive jobs, IF S decides he wants to pursue them. So far, he seems to be settling in nicely at his federal job. Time will tell! He may get a graduate/pro degree as well anyway, especially if employer wants to pay/subsidize it, as website claims.</p>
<p>A lot of companies will toss resumes under 3.0 unless you have something else going for you (an insider recommendation or otherwise critical skill). In today’s job market, you’re competing against more people with higher GPAs that would have otherwise already picked up jobs so you are at a disadvantage for the HR screeners that don’t understand the skills that are really needed.</p>
<p>BCEagle- my cracker-jack team of “HR screeners” would take great offense at your characterization. We are not self-employed- we use the criteria that the leaders of the business units set out for us. When the president of a division tells us “I don’t like slackers so don’t forward anyone with less than a 3.0 GPA”, it would be really hard to sell a candidate with a 2.5 even if you think we are absolute morons who have no idea of the skills required to do the job.</p>
<p>And I’ve been leading recruiting teams for 25 years… and have an MBA… so even though I have to learn about new technologies and new business functions all the time, it’s pretty hard to convince me that I am lacking the intellectual horsepower to understand the resume of a 22 year old kid.</p>
<p>But I do notice that my slacker neighbors like to rail against the morons in HR who keep deep-sixing their resumes!</p>
<p>What is the median GPA for a graduating engineer? Is it 3.0? Significanlty lower or higher?
For the sake of argument, I’ll assume it’s 3.0. That means 50% of students graduating with BS degree in engineering have less than a 3.0 GPA. Therefore, if it were common for resumes under 3.0 to end up in the trash, the unemployment rate for graduating engineering students should be around 50%. Is that true? I doubt it, but I honestly don’t know any of these statistics. You tell me.</p>
<p>I know about the place I work. We don’t look at GPA at all. And we hire lots of entry level engineers. But it’s a government agency, so it’s probably different. And of course, that’s an anecdote from an anonymous source.</p>
<p>Cool. Then you’d have no problems spotting all of the problems with
the job posting below and would be able to match a candidates skills
with the job requirements understanding that there are equivalent
products to those mentioned which would mean that the candidate has
experience in the product area but not the specific product.</p>
<p>Nobody can be an expert in every area that companies hire for. That’s
why we have hiring managers. HR is for first-level screening.</p>
<p>General Overview</p>
<p>The successful candidate will be responsible for carrying out multiple programming and system administration projects simultaneously under the direct supervision of the Systems Manager. The position is designed to aid and support the computational needs of primary investigators doing biomedical imaging research.</p>
<p>Responsibilities</p>
<p>Primary responsibilities include but are not limited to:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Administration and management of high performance computing clusters.</p></li>
<li><p>Troubleshooting and repair of hardware, software and network problems</p></li>
</ul>
<p>on cluster nodes, servers and user workstations.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Enforcement and compliance with all hospital-wide policies including providing laptop encryption.</p></li>
<li><p>Providing computer support to individual users.</p></li>
<li><p>Administration and management of web servers and relational databases.</p></li>
<li><p>Development of programs to support efficient use of computer cluster resources.</p></li>
<li><p>Development of web-based applications to improve management of the centers grants and administration of resources</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Requirements</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Masters degree in computer science or equivalent computational-based curriculum.</p></li>
<li><p>Minimum of 5-7 years experience in UNIX systems administration and web-based programming.</p></li>
<li><p>Extensive experience with web programming (via python, PHP, and/or Perl) including use of Javascript/AJAX, CSS, XHTML/HTML validation standards.</p></li>
<li><p>Solid experience with relational databases; preferably Postgres or MySQL.</p></li>
<li><p>Strong verbal and written skills. Ability to communicate effectively.</p></li>
<li><p>Familiarity with jQuery and Drupal a plus.</p></li>
<li><p>Knowledge of biomedical imaging, neuroanatomy and statistical analysis programs a plus.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I would guess 2.5 at public universities. There wasn’t a lot of grade inflation at my son’s school (public) and only about 1/3rd made it through a year of physics. Perhaps the average GPA is higher at private institutions?</p>
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<br>
<p>Well, engineering grads may not necessarily be working as engineers.</p>
So 50% of them are unemployed or working in careers completely unrelated to engineering? Again, I find that hard to believe. I suppose it could be true, but I suspect I would have read something about it, as opposed to all this talk about how everyone needs to go into a STEM field. That’s a pretty shocking fact if true.</p>
<p>And actually, since I really believe median GPAs in Engineering are likely lower than 3.0 (like you say, maybe 2.5), it would be a lot more than 50%.</p>
<p>The unemployment rate for new engineering grads is around 7% from numbers in threads in the engineering forum.</p>
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<p>Not what I said. I didn’t use the word ALL.</p>
<p>I would also guess that many go on to grad school.</p>
<p>Read some of the stuff by Mark77 at the Engineering Forum. I don’t believe that things are as bad as he says but it’s clear that engineers all don’t get engineering job offers before graduation.</p>
<p>My department head got me my first job. It was a small department. The career center had about 1000 people to place. My department head had less than 20. </p>
<p>Another thing that works (worked twice for me) When your son sends his resume to that perfect dream job wait 2-3 days then call the company. Tell them you applied and want to make sure the resume got there (not lost in cyber space) and wait for them to pull it up. Then say, well since I have you on the phone, Do you have any questions about my ability to do the job? On the spot phone interview. You have put a voice to a piece of paper and made yourself more of a person in their eyes and you (your son) have shown yourself to be a go getter. I found it worked well with smaller companies. With larger companies you have to worm your way through things like LinkedIn and local ASME events to hopefully get a name that can give you the name of somebody who knows the right person to speak to. Yea it really can get that complicated. </p>
<p>And HR, HR’s number one job is to make sure the company doesn’t hire a bad person. They really don’t care how many good resumes get tossed as long as they personally aren’t blamed for letting a disaster in the door. If the job sits vacant for 6 months in the process that just proves how hard their job is and how important they are to the company. Go around HR every chance you get! You want to talk to the hiring manager who knows that you can’t have 8 years experience in a piece of software that was only invented 2 years ago!</p>