Post Graduation Careers
Graduation is almost here and students are preparing for life after college. One of the biggest questions they have is, so what now? Well obviously a job, but how do I find a job? Especially when all the jobs out there require 5 or more years of experience from newly graduated students. When searching online there are millions of articles dedicated to help students find a job after graduation with little to no experience. It’s become such a problem that studies have found that little less than half of post grads end up with jobs that require no degree.
I interviewed students ranging from about to graduate, to graduated and a couple of years after graduation and all of them stated that it was scary, confusing, to find a good job when you need a job for experience and you need experience for a job. May Trieu, a University of Houston graduate of Management Information System 2010 said that while she did get a job after graduation, she ended up moving from company to company for a couple of years. She had received an offer to work at Kinder Morgan then moved to Cisco and finally where she works now as an IT analysis at Phillip 66.
But not everyone becomes as lucky as May Trieu to get an offer right after graduation. According to Washington education DO-IT site, it takes nearly 3 to 6 months to find a job post grad., and about 53% of graduates are either unemployed or working at a job that doesn’t require a degree. Even a viral twitter post by a @Country kid, became viral after he discovered that his sister’s college degree was discarded under her car seat. That post followed by thousands of others whose degrees were also thrown around or drawn on by siblings stating that their degree did nothing for them.
When looking at these statistics you have to factor in the job market at the moment as well. Currently, the job market is increasing more and more as time goes by. This is a positive outlook to students as in the future more jobs will be opening up and it will become easier to find a job. According to the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association, there are more than 20 million people employed today than there was in 2010. Debra Neil a Senior Manager at Resumes Center said that in September 2018 there were more than 7 million more job openings in the U.S. and more than 5 million people hired as well. With more jobs being created students won’t have to worry that much in the future.
Even with the problem of having too little experience to get a job in your field, there are millions of sites out there that provide insights on how to get a job after graduation. Like Forbes.com that understands that its difficult to get a job when employers definition of job preparedness is greatly different from job seekers idea of preparedness. In an article called ‘How, Recent Graduates With Little Or No Work Experience Can Position Themselves To Get A Job’ by Forbes Coaches Council made a list of 8 tips to get a job, including building your Indeed social network and working with what you have.
Interviewee May Trieu also advices “Apply for a lot of internships while you are in school, be productive and get a lot of experiences for it to look good in your resume, as well as practice doing interviews so you don’t get nervous when actually attending one.” In conclusion, graduation is scary, life after college is scary, but one thing you can’t do is give up, so keep working hard and putting yourself out there and positive things will follow.
Following what May Trieu said and what many websites say, the future is uncertain but hard work is noticed. So those of you graduating in a couple of days, a couple of months of in a couple years. Keep working hard, try to get every opportunity you can and good things will follow. It is always best to have a positive outlook on life rather than a negative one. Jobs like confident people so as long as you are confident and ready they will hire you.
