When Allan Hancock College student Stephanie Fredriks started looking for a job back in December 2008, she knew the endeavor would be a difficult one.
The recent Righetti High School graduate needed a part-time job to help pay for school and other expenses. With the weight of a down economy on her shoulders, she started applying to companies online and in person.
Now, six months and 30 applications later, Fredriks is still looking. Smoothie places, coffee houses, thrift stores, youth summer camps—Fredriks said she’s tried them all, but to no avail.
Her dream job would be working as a photographer, but at this point, the 18-year-old said, she’ll take whatever she can get.
“I’m willing to work anywhere,” Fredriks told the Sun while attending the annual Teen Job Fair at the Abel Maldonado Community Youth Center in Santa Maria.
“Most places are cutting back because of the economy,” she said. “I think people are scared, so they’re hiring less. They don’t want to hire someone and not have enough money to pay them.”
Uncertain future
Eleanor Snowden, program assistant for Allan Hancock College’s Job Placement and Career Services, said she’s noticed a decrease in job postings on the college’s career website.
“But there are jobs out there,” she said, adding that those jobs just might not be the jobs students are looking for.
Most of the jobs posted through the college are part-time positions in the community and on the college’s campuses, though there are some full-time positions available as well.
The center acts as a conduit between employers and the college’s students, matching qualified potential employees to specific companies. Center staffers also provide resources for the job-hunting process and help students prepare for interviews.
To get a job, Snowden said, “You have to be honest and treat it like a job.”
The students who are proactive and “look every day” for a job are more likely to be successful, she said, adding, “That’s how it is when accomplishing anything, really.”
And even if the position isn’t in a person’s particular career field, it can be used as a “stepping stone job” to gain experience and get the resources he or she needs, Snowden explained.
A similar “stepping stone” philosophy might prove necessary for college graduates entering the workforce.
According to a recent report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, “the economic recession that has gripped most of the world for the past year is now thoroughly reflected in college hiring expectations.
“For recent college graduates, it was a ‘sellers’ market in which they could all but dictate the terms of the competition,” the report says. “Those days are gone.”
Throughout the academic year, the organization sends out surveys to its more than 1,000 companies to update hiring projections for new college graduates. Based on polls conducted in February, the association reported in its Job Outlook 2009 Spring Update that employers are expecting to hire 22 percent fewer college graduates from the class of 2009 than they did from the class of 2008.
Approximately two thirds of employers polled in the survey said the deteriorating state of the economy forced them to reevaluate their college hiring plans. And of those who did change their hiring strategy, nearly all (91 percent) decreased their expected number of college graduates.
“We knew it would be bad, but we didn’t think it’d be that bad,” Andrea Koncz, the association’s employment information manager, recently told the Sun. “The most shocking part is how quickly it happened.”
In a similar survey conducted in August 2008, Koncz said, employers said they expected to hire six percent more graduates than last year. In October, that estimate was readjusted to 1.3 percent—indicating a flat-hiring scenario.
But as the economy continued to falter and banks started going belly up, companies were forced to cut costs.
The last time the country saw such a drastic decline in hiring, Koncz said, was right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The class of 2002 entered the job market faced with a daunting 23 percent reduction in recruiting and job offers.
“It took a couple years for companies to start rebuilding and growing [after Sept. 11],” Koncz said. “And it’s probably going to take even longer this time around.
“People talk about [a hiring rebound happening] in 2010 or 2011, but it’s really hard to tell,” she said, adding that the association expects the spring 2009 job market to look even more sparse.
There’s hope
With such a gloomy job market forecast, it’s easy for students to get overwhelmed.
“When there’s so much bad news, students can be tempted to give up without ever really trying to find a job,” said Jane Johnson, coordinator of career counseling at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.
“It’s been fairly easy over the past five years to get jobs,” Johnson said. “We’re telling students, ‘It used to be easier—now you have to work a lot harder.’”
To help its students find jobs after graduation, the Cal Poly Career Resource Center offers a plethora of tools. The center hosts quarterly job fairs catering to a range of majors and careers. There’s also the school’s online career database, Mustang Jobs.
Available to current students, alumni, and some other individuals, the site lists dates for career fairs and workshops, job and internship postings, and tips for interviewing and résumé building.
The site has proved useful for thousands of graduates. However, as job postings continue to dwindle and companies continue to cut back on recruiting, students are forced to become aggressive at selling themselves as prospective employees.
“We’re trying to get students to look at who’s hiring,” Johnson said.
She explained that she and her staff are encouraging students to pursue jobs with companies instead of waiting for job notices to appear. And when job searching, Johnson added, “you have to have a strong résumé and you have to network.”
Students can build their résumés by getting involved in school clubs, volunteering, or interning. That experience, Johnson said, can also create pathways to careers because it gives students opportunities to network.
But even without lots of work experience, Johnson added, students still have the means to network.
“Students say they don’t have a network or networking skills, but they do—they have their friends, their family, and their relatives,” she said. “You never know where something’s going to come up.
“Some students are reluctant to talk to their families when looking for jobs because they want to do it on their own,” she said. “But most of them are losing that now.”
Persistence is key
Tom Nguyen, a business administration senior at Cal Poly, said he’s “one of the lucky ones” who will be graduating with a job come June.
Hoping to get a head start on the job search, Nguyen started interviewing in November of last year. In January, he was offered a position with Symantec, the developers of Norton Antivirus. He’ll start as a financial analyst with the company at the end of this summer.
And even though he started looking for a job early on, Nguyen said, it was still a challenge to get hired.
“There’s a lot of competition. It’s a really tough job market out there, especially in finance,” he said. “I also have friends whose start dates have been pushed back a year. That’s how bad the market is right now.”
But it’s important to stay positive, Nguyen said, adding: “You can’t use the excuse, ‘There are no jobs out there.’ You have to fight for it and follow up with people.
“You need to study the company you’re interviewing with, and know why you’re a good fit,” he said.
When asked what kind of strategy he had while job searching, Nguyen said he “came to [Cal Poly’s career fair] prepared with a résumé, and aggressively asked for an interview.”
He talked up his membership in the college’s Financial Management Association and the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce.
In the end, Nguyen’s hard work paid off because he said he was one of five people from three different colleges to receive a job offer from Symantec.
Working outside the box
Of course, not everybody knows exactly what kind of career they want to pursue or has the means to pursue it.
When she graduated from Righetti High School in 2006, Orcutt resident Caitlin Marquez wanted to attend the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandizing. But low grades and an expensive tuition kept her from realizing that dream.
Marquez said she didn’t want to go to a traditional college or junior college because she “was kind of done with school.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said. “I was working at Kmart and knew there was something different out there.”
That’s when she saw a notice for the California Conservation Corps.
“I saw that flyer, and I just knew it was what I was supposed to do,” she said.
Corps employees work on environmental projects throughout the state and respond to natural disasters, such as fires and earthquakes. The program is designed specifically for non-college-bound young adults, with the intent of providing them jobs and career guidance after high school.
Marquez said that her mom, however, wasn’t so sure about the Corps and offered Marquez a car if she’d go to college. Eventually, however, Marquez was able to convince her mom that the Corps was the place to be. She signed up and received training for the Corps Backcountry Trails Program in Yosemite. After that, she came back to Santa Maria and worked on maintaining local trails, parks, and lakes.
“I stayed in the CCC for two years, and with the money I saved, I was able to buy a car anyway,” Marquez said.
But when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger threatened to shut down the Santa Maria CCC program in January, Marquez knew it was time to start looking for a job. She applied for, and was offered, a position at Grand Teton National Park.
“But I really wanted Yellowstone or Yosemite,” she said.
So in late March, she called the parks and told representatives she was interested in working for them. A few weeks later, she had job offers from both parks. She accepted a position at Yellowstone National Park and will begin work in the park’s Canyon Village later this month.
“I really like working outdoors. You kind of have to with this job,” Marquez said. “I like working with all the smelly boys and learning how to laugh at stupid jokes.”
Marquez said she’s recommended the California Conservation Corps to two of her friends since she joined back in 2006.
“You have to be cautious about who you recommend it to, because it’s more than just a job, it’s a change of lifestyle,” she said. “But it’s perfect for anyone who wants to get out of town and wants to improve their life circumstances.”
Contact Staff Writer Amy Asman at aasman@ santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 14-21, 2009.
