Throughout the year, the seniors slated to receive their degrees in the spring of 2011 that will not attend graduate or professional school continue to look for jobs in a bad economy. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate is still high at 9.3 percent, and economic experts have predicted that this graduating class will face the toughest job market in the past 20 years.
“It’s been a little slow,” said senior Bram Chisolm, a classics and economics double major. “... slower than I would’ve liked but not necessarily than I would’ve expected. ... If you look at the number of jobs you can get every month in the U.S., it’s not where we would like it to be.”
Germain Boer is a professor of accounting at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management and director of the Owen Entrepreneurship Center.
“Right now, with the market the way it is, you probably will have to take a job that doesn’t pay as well as you would like,” Boer said.
Between 2007 and 2008, there was an eight percent increase in the hiring of college graduates, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Hiring for the class of 2009 dropped 21.6 percent from the 2008 statistics. The same statistic rose 5.3 percent in 2010, yet the effects of The Great Recession of 2008 are still being felt in the college job market. This is reflected in the increased unemployment rate for college graduates 16 to 24 years of age, from 3.1 percent in April 2008 to eight percent in April 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Compounding the problem, the amount of degrees Vanderbilt confers increases every year, jumping by 114 degrees from 2009 to 2010, according to data released by the university. An increased amount of college graduates will be competing for a smaller amount of jobs in the coming year.
Although the statistics do not bode well for graduating seniors, according to Boer, a combination of hard work, perseverance and the right attitude about the less-than-ideal situation can still allow graduates to make the most of the lesser-paying jobs they may have to take.
“You make the job what it is,” Boer said. “If you take a job that’s not what you wanted, but you do it better than anybody else, the company’s probably going to notice and start moving you up. So you can make a job into a good opportunity, even though it’s not what you wanted.”
Work experience in internships or lower-paying jobs can also help graduates move up the ladder to better career options, Boer said.
“You can take any job and turn it into a valuable learning experience, which enhances your value for whatever comes along next,” Boer said.
“(Prior work experience) has been pretty helpful,” Chisholm said. “When the interviewer asks me, for example, ‘Give me an example of when you’ve dealt with a problem,’ ... I have the stories all backed up.”
According to Boer, Vanderbilt graduating seniors have a competitive advantage over students graduating from other universities.
“What having a degree from Vanderbilt does for you is it lets you connect with other Vandy grads,” Boer said. “That gives you an advantage. ... If you just go to somebody who’s never heard of Vanderbilt, it doesn’t make any difference.”
Chisholm said he doesn’t put too much weight on the name attached to his agree.
“I think (a Vanderbilt degree) gives you a leg up, but that’s about it; it’s not going to be a game changer,” Chisholm said. “... It’s definitely not something to be complacent about.”
Many seniors choose to hold off on jumping into the dismal job search environment by going to graduate school, a strategy that led to the amount of graduate school applications in the U.S. to increase 8.3 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to a 2010 study by the Council of Graduate Schools. Previously, there had been an increase of less than one percent for each year from 2003 to 2008.
According to Boer, this choice is a gamble.
“Folks who take off two years to go to graduate school, that means you delay entry into the market for two years,” Boer said. “You’re just betting that (the economy) is going to get better.”
