Features
Hundreds of resumes. Countless hours of running down leads and networking. Forty-six first round interviews. Thirty-five second round interviews. Six third round interviews. After running the job search gauntlet, recent University of Oklahoma graduate Stephen Brewster landed a dream job with Stanley Black & Decker. To do it, though, this marketing major treated his job search like a job. And he worked overtime.
“The job market that we saw in 2005, 2006 and 2007 was off the charts,” observes Pam Ehlers, OSU’s Director of Career Services. “Totally off the charts. New college grads were getting jobs without having to do a lot to get them. It was their market. I’ve been in this business for 20 years and I’ve seen really hard times, but that was the top of the really great times. So what we’re seeing now is a tougher job market, but it’s not something I’ve never seen before. But there are jobs out there.”
The message for new graduates being, “Get ready to work to find work.” No more waltzing into the boardroom with a smile, a half-baked resume, dressed at odds with a company’s corporate culture and walking out with a contract in hand. Graduates have to pull out all the stops for their job searches. Mock interviews and immacul
ate resumes. Cover letters made to order for specific companies. Hours upon hours combing internet job sites. Low paying internships. Countless phone calls and emails aimed at expanding networks.
While Brewster’s search was agonizing and employed every tool in the toolbox, with his marketing degree it was probably easier than those of others. Almost every industry needs good marketing people. Unlike many new job hunters, he enjoyed an advantage – his education could be applied in several industries, and this flexibility allowed him to pursue a broader job search. Many recent graduates pursued a much narrower field of study – and their more difficult job searches reflect it.
“That’s the deal with a marketing degree. It’s really broad and allows you to enter many different industries. That was a reason I chose it. I really didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do,” says Brewster.
He knew his search would be arduous, but the competition he met with for jobs still shocked him. He felt that a degree from OU’s School of Business, one of the best in the country, would put him ahead of the pack. He had a 3.2 GPA. But those didn’t give him as much of an edge as he expected. While there were jobs out there, he never imagined the stiff competition he would face. A lot of people wanted the same jobs that Brewster wanted.
The pressure to find a job often extends beyond a new graduate’s need to put a roof over their head and food on the table. The average Oklahoma graduate leaves college carrying roughly $20,000 in student loans.
One thing Oklahoma graduates have working for them is a relatively low unemployment rate. While most states wallow in the double-digits, Oklahoma’s sits at roughly 6.5 percent – the third lowest in the nation.
No statistics exist to shed light on how many or how quickly students are finding jobs after graduation. They don’t exist because they’re impossible to compute. But career counselors who see their offices stuffed day in and day out with job-hunting students don’t need statistics to know what kind of a job market their graduates face.
Meagann Earnhardt, a 2010 Oklahoma State University graduate, is seeking a teaching position. She recently made the short list for a position with Lone Star School, but it went to an older candidate with more experience. She’s hoping another position will become available by August, when public school districts finalize enrollment numbers and budgets.
Unlike Brewster, whose marketing degree gave him a great deal of flexibility in his job search, Earnhardt, who majored in early childhood education, has fewer choices with the narrow scope of her degree. Outside of a few small niches, for her it’s teaching or nothing. There are, however, more places to teach than in just public schools. She’s adjusted her search strategy to accommodate that.
“I don’t mind looking at private schools, especially during these times, because I would go wherever I could get a job,” says Earnhardt. “But my ultimate goal is to teach in public schools.”
Schools, she notes, are moving to online application programs. Demand for these jobs is high, and what few positions are posted are filled quickly – almost too quickly to keep up. In this situation, supply and demand doesn’t just dictate the filling of the positions; they dictate whether or not the positions are even seen by potential applicants. As a result, Earnhardt has had the opportunity to send out only eight applications.
Earnhardt watches her fellow graduates struggle, as well.
“I graduated with 17 people in my program, and offhand,” she says, “I only know of four people that have jobs right now.”
That’s an average number for major league batters, but a miserable one for job hunters.
It’s likely that Earnhardt will end up substitute teaching before landing a full time teaching position. Subbing pays considerably less and comes with no benefits. An optimist, though, Earnhardt points out that subbing would leave her evenings open for a part-time job, a money maker dearly needed for her to achieve financial independence.
Like many job hunters, Earnhardt is deeply uncomfortable with the online application process – even though it’s become de rigueur for many employers. The impersonal nature of the submission process frustrates Earnhardt, who feels that she presents herself better in person than on paper. Her frustration is likely to grow as more and more schools – and other employers – move to digital resume readers, the merciless screening tools that make it more difficult than ever for job hunters to get their resumes in front of hirers.
Turning their backs on today’s job market, many recent college graduates are delaying the inevitable job search by seeking asylum in graduate schools.
A TU graduate and art history major, Katherine Felts always planned on attending graduate school. Taking a year off before graduate school, though, has given Felts a taste of the job market.
“I always knew that I needed to go to grad school if I wanted to have a career in art history. I’ve been mentally preparing myself for that, but after I graduated, I really started to feel the pressure,” she says.
“I felt that maybe I really needed to go to grad school because finding a job right now is very difficult, especially if you want to be in your field. I was working four jobs to pay the bills until the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art hired me. It was tough.”
Felts didn’t fall into that job. She earned it after a demanding internship with the museum. In a sense, though, 23-year-old Felts is lucky. She came to the market with a strike against her – a liberal arts degree. Energy is a core business in Oklahoma, and companies in that sector want to see graduates with degrees like engineering, geology or computer science.
Students with liberal arts degrees are finding themselves far outside their fields – often in the service or retail sectors. Many of them are looking at graduate school with an eye towards obtaining a more practical degree. The rub, of course, is that more students applying to graduate school means tougher competition for acceptance.
“As far as going to grad school, I had a couple of advisors at TU that strongly recommended it,” says Felts. “The job market is so bad. In comparison to that, getting into grad school has become even more competitive because more people are going back because of the economy. That lays a whole new level of difficulty on my situation. Admissions are that much more competitive and it’s a little scary.”
Even with relatively good economic conditions, many Oklahoma graduates find it easier to explore out-of-state opportunities. That’s not the result that concerned groups, such as the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, want to see. In an effort to keep graduates in Oklahoma, it created Greater Grads, a program aimed at keeping Oklahoma graduates in the state.
“We need to keep these students here in Oklahoma,” says Joyce Burch, the program’s director. “Our colleges and universities are doing a great job of educating them, and we’ve got about 120,000 of them in the central Oklahoma region. We just need to keep them here after they finish school.”
Greater Grads offers an intensive internship program that provides graduates with more work experience, beefs up their resumes and encourages them to lay down roots in Oklahoma.
Burch is a bit more pessimistic about hiring conditions in the state.
“Overall, for any graduate this year it’s more difficult,” she says. “I think that in Oklahoma it’s a little easier for them. Our unemployment rate is much lower than the surrounding areas and places that they typically try to move to. I think that it’s more difficult but they have a better chance here than they do in other places. What I tell students is, ‘It’s not like it was three years ago when companies were fighting for new hires and offering signing bonuses. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good opportunities out there. You just have to go find them. They’re not going to find you.’”
Her advice for job searching graduates is simple: Take the right steps and don’t give up. Graduates can’t throw up their hands and give up looking for jobs in Oklahoma. For some candidates, it may take up to a year to land a job, but prospects aren’t going to be any better anywhere else.
Earnhardt, despite the setbacks in her job search, remains positive.
“I understand this is a tough time, but I’m still staying positive through it. I’m not feeling sorry for myself,” she says. “I understand that these things take work, and I’m ready to fight for it. I’m not just waiting for a job to be laid in front of me.”
The optimism and perseverance of hard-chargers like Earnhardt seems to be every bit as important as the rest of the tools in the job searcher’s toolbox. The jobs are out there but the inevitable rejections will come. The unsaid advice from employed graduates and job searching experts alike is “toughen up.”
“Since I’ve been working, just in the past four weeks, I’ve had two companies call and inquire for me to come in and interview just because they’d seen my resume on www.hiresooner.com. There are positions out there. It really isn’t rocket science,” says Brewster. “(Graduates) have just got to get out there and do the work.”
Back to school
In the country’s current tough economic climate, many college graduates are wondering whether it might be a safer bet to attend graduate school, rather than navigate the chancy waters of today’s job market.
Many University of Tulsa graduates seem to be playing it safe, according to Art Tyndall, assistant director of Career Services at the school.
“Many students we’ve surveyed are opting to go to graduate school rather than search for employment in this economy,” he says. “Our graduate enrollment is doing very well right now.”
But as TU alumni flock to post-graduate studies, John Bury, assistant dean of the Graduate School, offers some words of advice.
“Graduate education is not an alternative to a job; it is a job – sometimes a second job,” he cautions. “It should present a relatively clear pathway to a job, career or professional aspiration as its end goal.”
Both Bury and Tyndall remark that graduates also can consider alternatives to graduate school and employment, such as joining programs like the Peace Corps and Teach for America.
Bette Scott, director of Career Services at the University of Oklahoma, agrees with Bury that students must consider more than the economy when deciding whether or not to apply for graduate studies.
“I advise all my students, ‘If you’re going to graduate school, have a reason. Make sure that what you want to do requires that degree.’”
Scott notes that while some graduates are choosing to continue their educations due to the economy, there are many who are financially impacted by the job market and are unable to pursue studies at this time.
Director of Career Services Pam Ehlers of Oklahoma State University also emphasizes the importance of practicality in graduates’ decisions.
“Sometimes opting for graduate school during a down economy is not a bad idea, providing you have a plan after you graduate,” she advises. – Tara Malone
Do what you love
While majors in engineering, finance, energy and technology often enjoy success after graduation, what about students who choose an education in languages, arts or natural or social sciences? According to experts at Oklahoma universities, these courses of study should not be dismissed.
When asked what majors are often underrated, Bette Scott, director of Career Services at the University of Oklahoma, says it is typical to – erroneously – overlook such majors as English, history, communications and sociology. But a graduate’s employment prospects rely on far more than his or her specific field of study, Scott says.
“A lot of the time, it’s not what students major in that employers care so much about. What they are looking for is someone bright, intelligent and willing to learn – students who think outside the ‘major box,’” she comments.
Art Tyndall, assistant director of Career Services at the University of Tulsa, says that there are plenty of employment opportunities for liberal arts graduates, if they learn where – and how – to look. He cites the ever-growing fields of “green” technology and biomedicine as lucrative options for natural science majors, while graduates in fields such as communication and English often choose careers in journalism or public relations.
“Liberal arts majors have to market themselves differently,” says Tyndall.
However, the versatility of their options can pay off.
In fact, some liberal arts graduates choose their careers in a field entirely unrelated to their majors – a freedom not as easily afforded to students of more specific academic areas.
“You could become the CEO of Hewlett-Packard like Carly Fiorina was, with a degree in philosophy and medieval history, or Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and U.S. Treasury Secretary, who majored in English,” says Tony Hutchison, vice-chancellor for strategic planning and analysis with the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.
In Pam Ehler’s opinion as director of Career Services at the University of Tulsa, there is no such thing as an underrated major. Like Scott, she agrees that it’s not always the degree; rather, Ehler says, “It’s how one prepares for the future job market.”
Ehler recommends students supplement their studies with work experiences such as internships to make them more marketable and prepared for employment.
“The college degree is only one facet of career preparation,” she says. – Tara Malone
“The job market that we saw in 2005, 2006 and 2007 was off the charts,” observes Pam Ehlers, OSU’s Director of Career Services. “Totally off the charts. New college grads were getting jobs without having to do a lot to get them. It was their market. I’ve been in this business for 20 years and I’ve seen really hard times, but that was the top of the really great times. So what we’re seeing now is a tougher job market, but it’s not something I’ve never seen before. But there are jobs out there.”
The message for new graduates being, “Get ready to work to find work.” No more waltzing into the boardroom with a smile, a half-baked resume, dressed at odds with a company’s corporate culture and walking out with a contract in hand. Graduates have to pull out all the stops for their job searches. Mock interviews and immacul
ate resumes. Cover letters made to order for specific companies. Hours upon hours combing internet job sites. Low paying internships. Countless phone calls and emails aimed at expanding networks.While Brewster’s search was agonizing and employed every tool in the toolbox, with his marketing degree it was probably easier than those of others. Almost every industry needs good marketing people. Unlike many new job hunters, he enjoyed an advantage – his education could be applied in several industries, and this flexibility allowed him to pursue a broader job search. Many recent graduates pursued a much narrower field of study – and their more difficult job searches reflect it.
“That’s the deal with a marketing degree. It’s really broad and allows you to enter many different industries. That was a reason I chose it. I really didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do,” says Brewster.
He knew his search would be arduous, but the competition he met with for jobs still shocked him. He felt that a degree from OU’s School of Business, one of the best in the country, would put him ahead of the pack. He had a 3.2 GPA. But those didn’t give him as much of an edge as he expected. While there were jobs out there, he never imagined the stiff competition he would face. A lot of people wanted the same jobs that Brewster wanted.
The pressure to find a job often extends beyond a new graduate’s need to put a roof over their head and food on the table. The average Oklahoma graduate leaves college carrying roughly $20,000 in student loans.
One thing Oklahoma graduates have working for them is a relatively low unemployment rate. While most states wallow in the double-digits, Oklahoma’s sits at roughly 6.5 percent – the third lowest in the nation.
No statistics exist to shed light on how many or how quickly students are finding jobs after graduation. They don’t exist because they’re impossible to compute. But career counselors who see their offices stuffed day in and day out with job-hunting students don’t need statistics to know what kind of a job market their graduates face.
Meagann Earnhardt, a 2010 Oklahoma State University graduate, is seeking a teaching position. She recently made the short list for a position with Lone Star School, but it went to an older candidate with more experience. She’s hoping another position will become available by August, when public school districts finalize enrollment numbers and budgets.
Unlike Brewster, whose marketing degree gave him a great deal of flexibility in his job search, Earnhardt, who majored in early childhood education, has fewer choices with the narrow scope of her degree. Outside of a few small niches, for her it’s teaching or nothing. There are, however, more places to teach than in just public schools. She’s adjusted her search strategy to accommodate that.
“I don’t mind looking at private schools, especially during these times, because I would go wherever I could get a job,” says Earnhardt. “But my ultimate goal is to teach in public schools.”
Schools, she notes, are moving to online application programs. Demand for these jobs is high, and what few positions are posted are filled quickly – almost too quickly to keep up. In this situation, supply and demand doesn’t just dictate the filling of the positions; they dictate whether or not the positions are even seen by potential applicants. As a result, Earnhardt has had the opportunity to send out only eight applications.
Earnhardt watches her fellow graduates struggle, as well.
“I graduated with 17 people in my program, and offhand,” she says, “I only know of four people that have jobs right now.”
That’s an average number for major league batters, but a miserable one for job hunters.
It’s likely that Earnhardt will end up substitute teaching before landing a full time teaching position. Subbing pays considerably less and comes with no benefits. An optimist, though, Earnhardt points out that subbing would leave her evenings open for a part-time job, a money maker dearly needed for her to achieve financial independence.
Like many job hunters, Earnhardt is deeply uncomfortable with the online application process – even though it’s become de rigueur for many employers. The impersonal nature of the submission process frustrates Earnhardt, who feels that she presents herself better in person than on paper. Her frustration is likely to grow as more and more schools – and other employers – move to digital resume readers, the merciless screening tools that make it more difficult than ever for job hunters to get their resumes in front of hirers.
Turning their backs on today’s job market, many recent college graduates are delaying the inevitable job search by seeking asylum in graduate schools.
A TU graduate and art history major, Katherine Felts always planned on attending graduate school. Taking a year off before graduate school, though, has given Felts a taste of the job market.
“I always knew that I needed to go to grad school if I wanted to have a career in art history. I’ve been mentally preparing myself for that, but after I graduated, I really started to feel the pressure,” she says.
“I felt that maybe I really needed to go to grad school because finding a job right now is very difficult, especially if you want to be in your field. I was working four jobs to pay the bills until the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art hired me. It was tough.”
Felts didn’t fall into that job. She earned it after a demanding internship with the museum. In a sense, though, 23-year-old Felts is lucky. She came to the market with a strike against her – a liberal arts degree. Energy is a core business in Oklahoma, and companies in that sector want to see graduates with degrees like engineering, geology or computer science.
Students with liberal arts degrees are finding themselves far outside their fields – often in the service or retail sectors. Many of them are looking at graduate school with an eye towards obtaining a more practical degree. The rub, of course, is that more students applying to graduate school means tougher competition for acceptance.
“As far as going to grad school, I had a couple of advisors at TU that strongly recommended it,” says Felts. “The job market is so bad. In comparison to that, getting into grad school has become even more competitive because more people are going back because of the economy. That lays a whole new level of difficulty on my situation. Admissions are that much more competitive and it’s a little scary.”
Even with relatively good economic conditions, many Oklahoma graduates find it easier to explore out-of-state opportunities. That’s not the result that concerned groups, such as the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, want to see. In an effort to keep graduates in Oklahoma, it created Greater Grads, a program aimed at keeping Oklahoma graduates in the state.
“We need to keep these students here in Oklahoma,” says Joyce Burch, the program’s director. “Our colleges and universities are doing a great job of educating them, and we’ve got about 120,000 of them in the central Oklahoma region. We just need to keep them here after they finish school.”
Greater Grads offers an intensive internship program that provides graduates with more work experience, beefs up their resumes and encourages them to lay down roots in Oklahoma.
Burch is a bit more pessimistic about hiring conditions in the state.
“Overall, for any graduate this year it’s more difficult,” she says. “I think that in Oklahoma it’s a little easier for them. Our unemployment rate is much lower than the surrounding areas and places that they typically try to move to. I think that it’s more difficult but they have a better chance here than they do in other places. What I tell students is, ‘It’s not like it was three years ago when companies were fighting for new hires and offering signing bonuses. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good opportunities out there. You just have to go find them. They’re not going to find you.’”
Her advice for job searching graduates is simple: Take the right steps and don’t give up. Graduates can’t throw up their hands and give up looking for jobs in Oklahoma. For some candidates, it may take up to a year to land a job, but prospects aren’t going to be any better anywhere else.
Earnhardt, despite the setbacks in her job search, remains positive.
“I understand this is a tough time, but I’m still staying positive through it. I’m not feeling sorry for myself,” she says. “I understand that these things take work, and I’m ready to fight for it. I’m not just waiting for a job to be laid in front of me.”
The optimism and perseverance of hard-chargers like Earnhardt seems to be every bit as important as the rest of the tools in the job searcher’s toolbox. The jobs are out there but the inevitable rejections will come. The unsaid advice from employed graduates and job searching experts alike is “toughen up.”
“Since I’ve been working, just in the past four weeks, I’ve had two companies call and inquire for me to come in and interview just because they’d seen my resume on www.hiresooner.com. There are positions out there. It really isn’t rocket science,” says Brewster. “(Graduates) have just got to get out there and do the work.”
Back to school
In the country’s current tough economic climate, many college graduates are wondering whether it might be a safer bet to attend graduate school, rather than navigate the chancy waters of today’s job market.
Many University of Tulsa graduates seem to be playing it safe, according to Art Tyndall, assistant director of Career Services at the school.
“Many students we’ve surveyed are opting to go to graduate school rather than search for employment in this economy,” he says. “Our graduate enrollment is doing very well right now.”
But as TU alumni flock to post-graduate studies, John Bury, assistant dean of the Graduate School, offers some words of advice.
“Graduate education is not an alternative to a job; it is a job – sometimes a second job,” he cautions. “It should present a relatively clear pathway to a job, career or professional aspiration as its end goal.”
Both Bury and Tyndall remark that graduates also can consider alternatives to graduate school and employment, such as joining programs like the Peace Corps and Teach for America.
Bette Scott, director of Career Services at the University of Oklahoma, agrees with Bury that students must consider more than the economy when deciding whether or not to apply for graduate studies.
“I advise all my students, ‘If you’re going to graduate school, have a reason. Make sure that what you want to do requires that degree.’”
Scott notes that while some graduates are choosing to continue their educations due to the economy, there are many who are financially impacted by the job market and are unable to pursue studies at this time.
Director of Career Services Pam Ehlers of Oklahoma State University also emphasizes the importance of practicality in graduates’ decisions.
“Sometimes opting for graduate school during a down economy is not a bad idea, providing you have a plan after you graduate,” she advises. – Tara Malone
Do what you love
While majors in engineering, finance, energy and technology often enjoy success after graduation, what about students who choose an education in languages, arts or natural or social sciences? According to experts at Oklahoma universities, these courses of study should not be dismissed.
When asked what majors are often underrated, Bette Scott, director of Career Services at the University of Oklahoma, says it is typical to – erroneously – overlook such majors as English, history, communications and sociology. But a graduate’s employment prospects rely on far more than his or her specific field of study, Scott says.
“A lot of the time, it’s not what students major in that employers care so much about. What they are looking for is someone bright, intelligent and willing to learn – students who think outside the ‘major box,’” she comments.
Art Tyndall, assistant director of Career Services at the University of Tulsa, says that there are plenty of employment opportunities for liberal arts graduates, if they learn where – and how – to look. He cites the ever-growing fields of “green” technology and biomedicine as lucrative options for natural science majors, while graduates in fields such as communication and English often choose careers in journalism or public relations.
“Liberal arts majors have to market themselves differently,” says Tyndall.
However, the versatility of their options can pay off.
In fact, some liberal arts graduates choose their careers in a field entirely unrelated to their majors – a freedom not as easily afforded to students of more specific academic areas.
“You could become the CEO of Hewlett-Packard like Carly Fiorina was, with a degree in philosophy and medieval history, or Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and U.S. Treasury Secretary, who majored in English,” says Tony Hutchison, vice-chancellor for strategic planning and analysis with the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.
In Pam Ehler’s opinion as director of Career Services at the University of Tulsa, there is no such thing as an underrated major. Like Scott, she agrees that it’s not always the degree; rather, Ehler says, “It’s how one prepares for the future job market.”
Ehler recommends students supplement their studies with work experiences such as internships to make them more marketable and prepared for employment.
“The college degree is only one facet of career preparation,” she says. – Tara Malone
