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The Next Generation: Hiring New Graduates
June 1st, 2011
With the economy slowly heading toward an upswing, employers are looking at what hiring needs to be done in order to expand their businesses and get back to their pre-recession production and success. During the recession, companies were axing many of their employees, as well as demoting and doubling up on employees’ job responsibilities. The last thing on the minds of many employers during the recession was hiring fresh-out-of-college graduates. 2011 is proving to take a turn for the opposite. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “Three out of four companies plan to hire recent college graduates, a new survey shows, in the latest sign of an improving job market for the Class of 2011.”
There is still a clear split in the economy between the private and public sectors. The amount of college graduates receiving job offers before graduating has increased since last year. Although this is the case, the public sector is struggling to bounce back, the private sector brings a little more confidence to people, especially college graduates. As Sara Murray of The Wall Street Journal states, “But the job market remains uneven. Most hiring is in the private sector, while openings in the public sector, such as teaching, remain scarce. And the influx of another crop of graduates is making things harder for graduates of recent years…”
Many private companies are looking for college graduates to fill both entry-level and specialized positions. The types of jobs open to recent graduates in this sector are, for the most part, dependent on the background of their education and their previous work experience. For example, “Carnegie Mellon graduate Michelle Burroughs, 21, a computer-science major, fielded offers from six companies, including Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc.,, before accepting a job at Google Inc…most offers received, including salary, bonus, and equity fell between $100,000 and $200,000,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Many people believe that it really matters what a graduate’s background is in, especially if the individual does not have prior work experience related to their field of choice.
Employers, in both the private and public sectors, have lists of what their company sees as valued skills in candidates and employees, especially for those who recently received their diplomas. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, “Employers ranked computer efficiency highest on their list of desired skills with 84% rating it as valuable. Meanwhile, 79% said the same about analytical skills and 75% said demonstrated writing ability was valuable. Just 21% listed drawing ability as a desired skill and a quarter said the same about video and audio production ability.” Often jobs in the arts are more difficult to come by and therefore, are less available to college graduates. For the most part, the business world consists of numerical, written, and technical abilities. This, of course, depends on the company and what services and products they produce. Overall, the trend towards hiring college graduates is increasing this year, which is another sign that the economy is creeping upward and should continue to do so in the years to come. |
