Long before she had her diploma in hand, Jenna DiBiase had her mind made up: She wasn’t leaving campus without a job.
“I just always had that goal that as soon as I graduated college, I wanted to have a job. I really wanted to accomplish that,” said the Mount Laurel resident who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a full-time gig at Macy’s.
Still, the unstable economy and 9 percent unemployment rate did concern DiBiase before she was hired as a manager for the department store chain. “I was a little fearful just because of what the job market is today,” she said.
But despite the tough job market, statistics compiled by Rutgers Career Services indicate DiBiase and her classmates are faring better than their predecessors, said Richard White, director of Rutgers Career Services. Based on initial results of this year’s Quick Senior Survey, which tracks whether graduating seniors are headed to graduate school, installed in new jobs, or searching for employment, 31 percent of the class of 2011 had been hired between April 15 and June 30.
That represents a 5 percent improvement over the previous two classes, of which 26 percent of surveyed graduates found work in the same time frame. It also bests the 25 percent national average recorded this year by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, said White, and isn’t far off from the 35 to 40 percent employment rate Rutgers graduates recorded during the economic boom of the late 1990s.
White credits this boost to the class of 2011’s cautiously optimistic approach to post-graduate life.
“Thinking back to the class of 2009, there was some real fear and anxiety and uncertainty (among the graduates) because as a country, let alone as a university community, we were going through an economic crisis that we had not seen since the Great Depression,” White said. “This senior class brought a much more realistic stance to the table, and that’s a positive adjustment from the two previous years.”
That reality check prompted the class of 2011 to “downsize some of their expectations,” White said, and to heed Career Services’ longstanding advice about being flexible in a job search and networking as much as possible. “Don’t worry about the dream job. Just try to find work,” White said. “Whether it’s a temporary job, part-time job, volunteering – all work has value, and its important t to get out there and show an employer what you can do.”
For Lauren Silver, who graduated in May from Rutgers’ five-year Teacher Preparation Program with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in special education and elementary education, flexibility means not being averse to a job she’s overqualified for. “When I’m applying to schools, I would also put down that I would take a lower position, like an assistant, and that would get my foot in the door,” the 23-year-old East Brunswick resident said.
The handful of interviews she’s been on has not resulted in any offers, yet Silver remains confident she will find work soon. “I know the year before me there was a negative feeling about the lack of jobs in teaching,” said Silver about fellow education majors who started their job hunts in amidst pension and health care reforms and slashed school budgets. “I think it was new. No one knew how to react to it.”
This year she’s seen that dread give way to more sunny outlooks. “I’m hoping a lot of teachers will retire because of the pension changes,” she said, adding that she has been buoyed by an administrator’s assurance that many of those vacancies will be filled by first-timers. “Since I’m a fresh graduate, I haven’t have had time to get my expectations built up, so I won’t be let down.”
White suggests new graduates still searching remain open to opportunities outside their area of study – which worked for DiBiase. “I know what the job market is today. There weren’t really many marketing jobs available,” she said. “I didn’t really have a dream job; I was just looking around to see what I could find.”
Though the position strays from her field of study, DiBiase said she doesn’t feel like she settled. “There’s a lot of room for me to grow,” she said. “I feel management covers a lot of the business basics. Down the line, if I’m still interest in marketing, I can hopefully get a job within Macy’s marketing department.”
DiBiase made her Macy’s connection early in her senior year while attending career fairs on campus. Before the fall semester ended, she’d been hired and given a start date of August 29.
Rutgers host 12 career fairs a year, the most in the nation, White said, because in this age of social media, face-to-face networking has never been more important in cultivating strong contacts and advancing your job search. “Looking for a job in tough times is not much fun,” he said, “but if you can make a human connection on campus – getting out there, increasing the visibility and expanding your professional network – it is so critical.”
