What Now for the Class of 1997?
- Smith seniors are sweating about their job prospects
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- By Winston Smith
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- With the U.S. economy expanding and unemployment down significantly
from four years ago, there are still a lot of Smith College seniors who
are sweating bullets about their job prospects. The anxiety about finding
gainful employment is especially palpable among international students,
who face difficulties in the American job market.
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- American students are not immune to the syndrome, though, as NewsSmith
learned in an informal survey near the beginning of the year. Career Development
Office Director Barbara Reinhold points out that Smith seniors need not
worry too much at this stage of their job searches.
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- "A very small segment of employers are hiring now," she says.
"So trying to get a job now is like trying to know the score in the
third inning of a baseball game. It's just too soon."
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- Among the CDO's arsenal of resources to help students
in their job searches are its counseling services. Here, Kenneth Johnston,
internship coordinator, talks to a student about her options.
- But according to Reinhold, by the time graduation rolls around about
20 percent of seniors will have jobs related to their majors. "And
really terrific jobs come on from the end of May to the beginning of September,"
she says.
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- In fact, according to a recent survey by the National Association of
Colleges and Employers (NACE), in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, employers plan
to hire 17 percent more college graduates this year than they did the year
before.
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- While computer science skills are in demand and command high starting
salaries, there is also a market for liberal arts graduates, says Dawn
Traub, director of employment information at NACE. "One of the skills
employers are looking for is communication skills," she says, "and
liberal arts graduates are very good in their communication skills."
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- The U.S. Department of Labor predicts that 26.4 million white-collar
jobs will be created in service-producing industries in the next nine years.
There will be "tremendous" job growth in health and business
services, telecommunications, retail sales, insurance and software companies,
according to the labor department report.
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- Reinhold notes that within two years of graduation, between 80 and
90 percent of Smith women usually have jobs related, in one way or another,
to their fields of study.
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- But Hrayr Tamzarian, associate dean of international students, says
the window of opportunity closes within two months for those international
students not going immediately to graduate school.
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- He adds, however, that if a student wants to stay here and work, she
can do so for a year, although the job must be related to her major. "This
isn't just to stay here," he says. "This is to give practical
training to the theoretical work they have done in school."
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- Diane Ruengsorn, of Thailand, is "trying to be optimistic"
about finding a job in international relations before graduation. "But
I think it's going to take a little longer after May," she says. "There
is not a lot of turnover in the field so there won't be a lot of openings."
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- Her first course of action after she receives her degree in history
is to stay in the Pioneer Valley filling out applications for graduate
school grants and fellowships. "I'm trying to lay a foundation right
now, but I won't be able to heavily focus on it until graduation comes
around," Ruengsorn says.
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- By this fall, she hopes she will at least be jetting to Berlin, Germany
to teach English. Ideally, she would like to work in a think tank for about
three years before going on to graduate school. But if neither the Berlin
assignment nor a job in her field materializes, she will have to return
home.
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- Every spring, the resource rooms of the CDO are a
hubbub of focused activity as students gear up to land their first post-graduation
jobs.
Tuuli Pesonen, who is majoring in psychology, cringes when she realizes
she may have to work in the housekeeping department at a hospital in Finland,
or at a similar work situation. Janitorial work was what she did two summers
ago, her Smith education notwithstanding.
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- Because she spent all but the first two years of her life in Singapore,
Pesonen says that she doesn't have the language skills to compete on an
equal footing with other college graduates in Finland, the country to which
her parents returned last year. "Finding a job there would be really
difficult, if not impossible," she says. So after graduation she is
hoping to get a research assistantship in the states until she goes off
to graduate school next year.
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- "For international students the job market is tougher," Tamzarian
says. "You have to be the best of the best." And Reinhold notes
that those students with high grade point averages, especially in math,
economics and computer science, stand a better chance of employment with
American firms.
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- It's a stressful time for any senior, no matter how you look at it.
But Donald Reutener, the senior class dean, says that while he doesn't
want to dismiss job anxiety among seniors, at the same time he doesn't
want to overplay it. "It's a big change in their lives, leaving college
and going out into the world looking for a job," he notes. "The
unknown is always frightening. But at the same time, there is a lot of
excitement about leaving Smith and starting a new life."
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- The CDO has a whole arsenal of strategies and resources to help students
land their first post-graduation jobs. The CDO sponsors everything from
workshops on résumé writing and interviewing to informational
sessions with company representatives who visit Smith.
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- Also, "employers found out one of the cheapest ways to recruit
is to hire interns the summer before they graduate," says Reinhold.
"This way employers get a better glimpse of them than in two days
of interviews." According to Kenneth Johnston, the CDO's internship
coordinator, "About 60 percent of students at Smith do at least one
internship in four years, and it's increasing with each class."
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- Other resources available to Smith graduates include AlumNet, a computerized
list of alums willing to discuss their jobs and career fields with others,
and Employer Connection, software available for $10 from the CDO. During
the summer, those graduates who have purchased Employer Connection receive
notification of 100 to 150 job openings every two weeks, Reinhold says.
Smith students and alums can also link up with the CDO's World Wide Web
home page (www.smith. edu/cdo), which has access to career resources and
job listings. Reinhold says the CDO tracks about 5,400 organizations, including
Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits.
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- Nicole Bird '96 spent some time at the CDO this February looking for
a job in the legal profession. She says she wasn't surprised she was still
out of work more than six months after graduation and living at her parents'
home in Vermont while working as a temporary employee. "I didn't really
spend that much time looking for work in my senior year. I just concentrated
on my studies," she says.
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- Bird, who majored in government, says she would like to get a job as
a legal assistant before continuing on to law school. "Now I'm getting
into action," she says. "I just want to do the work I want to
do."
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