Given you’re prior post I understand. I am from your generation and have dealt with similar problems on an entirely different level. So perhaps it’s not merely the degree but the expectations of the graduate. If you are a poli sci major you need to think outside of the box and be willing to take a chance on yourself and understand that the job in Omaha could end up being a ticket to a better job in a “better” city. (or you may find you love Omaha. Warren Buffet did.)
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This is truly baffling, yet somehow it doesn’t surprise me (but I’m just another grumpy boomer!). What I know for sure is if I or my kids were looking for a job, we would engage Blossom’s help in a nanosecond.
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Wish blossom worked for my daughter’s college!
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My college has an “opt in” box to tick for alums. Are you willing to network with seniors and new grads? Tick the box. Are you willing to review resumes, make suggestions, show how to present a summer job in a more “marketable” way? Are you willing to let a senior shadow you or work as an intern during winter break? Etc.
My college is not unique- many do this. I am always surprised that I typically get one or two calls a year. You’d think if there was a such an employment crisis, my phone would be ringing off the hook. Thousands of alums in such a wide variety of fields doing a wide variety of jobs. And we’ve checked the box that we’re happy to talk to college kids! My friends say the same thing- one or two calls a year.
I do see that for many young people they think that sending a resume off via Indeed or Ziprecruiter is what they think of as “networking”. The last person who called me- with a reasonably esoteric set of interests- I had set up for an informational interview with a colleague of mine who runs recruiting in a different industry than mine. That took me two minutes and I was happy to do it.
I am not unique. Believe me. Virtually every college’s career services team will have a database of alums, broken out by industry, geography, function, so that college students can make a list of how to start to network. It’s free (said another way- you are already paying for this service!) so why not take advantage?
What do people do in Supply Chain management? Make some calls. What do people do in Sustainability- what’s the difference between working at an apparel company (inks, dyes, fibers, making sure that 8 year olds aren’t working in your factory) vs. a yogurt company (cows getting fed hormones and its environmental impact, water and habitat use, containers and lids- yes they are compostable but is the ink on the package toxic if it leeches into the soil?) vs. working at a Think Tank that covers climate and environment? What do people do who work for an auto company in marketing if they are interested in non-fossil transportation (all the major auto companies have huge efforts designed to teach consumers what non-petroleum driving is all about). MAKE SOME PHONE CALLS! Put those college research skills to use!!!
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To make some calls you’d have to use a phone, though . . .lol.
Ha ha ha! Hard to transmit enthusiasm, passion and focus in a tweet, no?
The least used feature on the cellphones of the under-30s…
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I agree networking is a much neglected skill. I remember when my son was a junior in high school and interested in politics. He called up the chair of our county board of supervisors and asked for a summer internship. The guy said no one in high school had ever done that before and hired him for two summers (and he even got paid $15 per hour).
My kid set up a LinkedIn profile (this was age 16) and asked everyone he met in the course of his job (including our state reps) to connect with him. Now as a senior in college he has nearly a thousand connections, but still has friends graduating next spring who have never used LinkedIn.
And in his internship last summer he had to make cold calls (for market research so you have to persuade people to talk to you). He enjoyed it, everyone else hated it and tried to minimize the number of calls they had to make. Political phone banking for elections has definitely come in handy.
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LOL, amused that the boomers think that companies are willing to hire humanities majors for marketing/supply chain/ operations roles. Guess what, the History or Comparative Lit major from HYPS is going to lose out to the marketing/ supply chain management/ finance major from Penn State for these roles. Blossom’s theoretical English major who works in Health Insurance is as rare as a needle in a haystack.
My friends also graduated into a recession and a pandemic (that’s what 2020/2021 is, right?). They are willing to move ANYWHERE — even unsexy places like Nebraska. Still no avail.
I’ve also had 3 people PM me telling me that they share my sentiments and regret their humanities majors. It’s the groupthink on this site that scares them off from voicing their opinions.
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Guess what, the kid who has done no networking or prep for these roles is going to lose out to the kid who has. My kid was very surprised to discover during his DC think tank internship how the students from HYPS had got their jobs through connections, whereas he’d applied through the website in competition with hundreds of others. Guess who worked harder and had more to prove?
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Sorry, my experience is the opposite of theoretical. I have been recruiting for Fortune 100 companies for 35 years; I’ve hired thousands of new college grads ; I’ve run rotational leadership programs (aka training programs) and have designed recruiting and retention programs across a wide range of functions and disciplines.
Y’all can take over when my generation retires and then you can figure it all out all over again. But for now it’s people like me and my colleagues (aka old people) who determine recruiting strategies and targets.
English majors in health insurance rare? There are likely 50 generalists (marketing, PR, HR, customer relations, speechwriters, investor relations,) professionals for every single technical specialist (actuary, statistician, MD) in an insurance company. Do the math. And these numbers exist for every single industry-- how many people at Boeing design airplanes? Fewer than you think. Everyone else? Not an engineer. How many people at Pfizer develop vaccines? Fewer than you think. Everyone else? Running an actual corporate enterprise- marketing, sales, investor relations, comp and benefits, media relations…
Anyone can regret any major. What counts after the fact is what you DO about it. Sending you PM’s must feel great but it sure doesn’t generate a paycheck, health insurance, or a 401K.
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I’ll just throw out there that this is the kind of all-or-nothing thinking that can make one feel discouraged (in any realm). I’d suggest that re-examining that general belief might be a useful endeavor…
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You can use a lot of exclamation points. At least that is what I see young kids doing at work. LOL
Many of us have recent experience as hiring managers, and we will be able to suss out the type of defeatist woe-is-me thinking that you are talking about. If you can’t sell yourself in a job interview, you have work to do…the problem isn’t the undergrad degree in many cases.
I don’t understand why people would be afraid of voicing their opinion in an anonymous forum.
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Humanities majors often have a decent employment rate soon after college, as they are often willing to work in a wide variety of different fields that may not directly relate to major, although typically not as high an employment rate as fields like computer science. The issue is often more being underemployed than not being able to find anything.
Some specific numbers are below from the Yale survey, which was posted earlier in the thread and has a high response rate. I used class of 2019 since class of 2020 may be influenced from COVID.
Yale Class of 2019 (collected 6 months after graduation)
English – 11% Seeking Employment
Philosophy – 10% Seeking Employment
Psychology – 9% Seeking Employment
Humanities (all majors) – 7% Seeking Employment
Mechanical Engineering – 5% Seeking Employment
Applied Math – 5% Seeking Employment
History — 4% Seeking Employment
Physics – 4% Seeking Employment
Economics – 3% Seeking Employment
Engineering (all majors, no CS) – 3% Seeking Employment
Computer Science – 1% Seeking Employment
A comparison with U Washington is below, which appears to use the same software as Yale, reporting same stats format. I am not sure why the rate of seeking employment appears to be so high for UW engineering. Perhaps there is a strong local economy influence in 2019, particularly with the 2019 Boeing 737 issues (2 crashes, model grounded, more recently ordered to pay $2.5 billion in damages). Boeing is centered in Washington and is the most common engineering employer among UW grads. In 2018, mechanical engineering had a 6% seeking employment, which blew up to 39% in the following year.
U Washington Class of 2019 (collected <0 to 7 months after graduation)
Mechanical Engineering – 39% Seeking Employment
Electrical Engineering – 24% Seeking Employment
English – 22% Seeking Employment
Engineering School (all Majors) – 22% Seeking Employment
Humanities School (all Majors) – 17% Seeking Employment
Economics – 15% Seeking Employment
Psychology – 12% Seeking Employment
Applied Math – 8% Seeking Employment
Computer Science & Engineering* – 8% Seeking Employment
Physics – 7% Seeking Employment
Philosophy – 5% Seeking Employment
History — 3% Seeking Employment
*UW does not appear to offer a major called “Computer Science”
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There is groupthink in the working world. No question.
You log on to Zoom calls on time; you don’t crunch granola on the call even when it’s taking place at 8 am and you didn’t have breakfast. When your boss asks for a status report, your response is “when do you need it?” and not “I’m super busy this week so I hope you don’t need it soon”. When your bosses boss says “Can you check the second paragraph of the executive summary you wrote- is that decimal point misplaced or did we really have an error rate of 30% when it has historically been .03%?” the “groupthink” answer is “let me verify the numbers and get back to you with a corrected version” and not “gosh, can’t you figure it out for yourself that it’s clearly a typo?”
Groupthink. The norms of the working world.
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We’re seeing the same thing. Friend of D’s had a great job offer this Fall. She turned it down. Didn’t like the location and didn’t want to do “that” job even though it was in her field. My H’s company is hiring and told D to tell friend to send her resume and reach out. That was over a month ago…no resume, no contact. She told D she doesn’t want that location either. I’d bet money this will be a student still looking for work after graduation and complaining about the job market.
- Fellow cranky adult (although I’m Gen X)
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Not only they’re much pickier about their jobs, but many don’t care about their jobs. The large number of people who are quitting their jobs we hear about these days aren’t all people close to their retirement ages. Many of them are in their twenties. It’s a different labor market.
If this is in reference to the Great Resignation, I would hesitate to attribute that to Gen Z “not caring about their jobs.”
@blossom - yes! send them to Nebraska. Home of WB 
healthy economy, 2% unemployment rate - lowest in the nation. some come, and stay, because they like it!
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