College grads upended by unemployment

These are some great articles about the difficulties faced by young graduates in the job market today. I have included the links and the best out of them.

“The most recent unemployment rate was nearly 6 percent for people 27 years and younger with a bachelor’s degree or higher, or nearly double the rate of just two years ago, according to an analysis by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. And according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, an organization of career counselors, employers say they will hire 22 percent fewer college graduates than last year.”

Recent graduates finding jobs hard to get and hard to keep

“Average salary offer to a 2009 bachelor’s degree graduate: $48,515

Average salary offer to a 2008 bachelor’s degree graduate: $49,624

More than two-thirds of employers said the economic situation forced them to re-evaluate their college hiring plans.

Percent of graduates who applied for a job and had one by graduation:

2009: 19.7 percent
2008: 26 percent
2007: 51 percent

61 percent of 2009 graduates say they see the economy as an impediment to getting a job.”

Job Hunt Even Tough for College Graduates

“Usually it’s three phone calls, three job offers, and off you go,” she said.

The 45-year-old Woodbridge, Va., resident made her three phone calls. Then three more. But she still had no leads. For the first time since she graduated from college in the 1980s, she scoured help- wanted ads. She sent out more than 150 resumes and posted one on Craigslist under the heading, “I desperately need a job.”

College Graduates Tackle Dismal Job Market

Blake Taylor, a senior at Catholic University in Washington DC, expected to be an accountant when she graduates this May. But then her fortunes changed.
She had a job offer that was rescinded because the company says it’s no longer hiring.

“It’s hard; it’s definitely hard,” she said. “When they told me, I definitely felt like I had the air kicked out of me and now, I was just like, ‘Ok, I’m at square one again.’”

Commencing unemployment

Although still better off than their peers without a higher education, young college graduates face challenges unique to their age and situation—it is likely that they have considerable debt from financing school, have had no time to build up savings, and, if looking for their first job, are not eligible for unemployment benefits.

Unemployment Snapshot

Got another rejection letter today from a job. Burns & McDonnell is a large engineering firm I applied to about 3 weeks ago.

Thank you for your interest in Burns & McDonnell.  We received your application for the position of Assistant Chemical Engineer-{REQUISITION_NUMBER.  However, the position was recently filled. We will retain your candidate file in our database and may inform you of job openings that match your profile as opportunities arise.

Please make sure that your profile reflects your interests and you have selected the option to be informed of future positions.  We also invite you to visit the Career Section on our Website regularly and apply to other opportunities that may be of interest to you.

We wish you all of the best in your career.

Sincerely,

Human Resources Department

Burns & McDonnel

Burns & McDonnell Logo

Oh well, I’ll add them to the pile. My rejections letter collection is growing in my gmail account.

Today, I woke up early, took a look at the list of things I needed to do from the post yesterday, and set out to complete as many as possible.

First things first, I wrote the thank-you letters to my two professors for giving me letters of recommendation. Nothing too hard, but I got an almost immediate reply from one of them asking about the other people that had graduated with me that semester and how they were getting along with their careers.

I guess he wants to know if this is happening to all of them. Well, 15 Chemical Engineers graduated when I did. 4 of them went directly to grad school (2 to Stanford, 1 to UT at Austin, the other I don’t know). Out of the other 11, 6 had jobs ready to go right out of graduation. The other 5 were still looking. I have heard back from 3 of the 6 that had jobs, and they have been laid off, or the company stated that they could not honor their work contracts.

The others have not gotten back with me. I’ll update the post when they do.

On to todays activities.

First, I did those thank you letters. Then I made the daily rounds of all of the job market sites I frequent. Got one solid hit, actually from a company that I have wanted to work for for a long time now.

Enercon's Logo

Enercon is an energy and environmental consulting firm here in Atlanta, GA. They work on everything from nuclear reactors to large manufacturing plants, and you get to travel lots during the week. Anyhow, I applied for the Environmental Engineer/Scientist – Entry Level position. What you say? They actually posted an entry level position! I know, I didn’t even think those existed anymore. Also, after doing that application, I made a bunch of answers for interview questions and then did more work on my dad’s website.

Keep the fingers crossed people.

So, good news and great news.

Good news. After two months of really dedicated job searching, my girlfriend of 4 1/2 years, Ashley has broken through the barrier of Graduate Unemployment. Recently she has been interviewing up a storm, and after 3 interviews with a medical supply chain company (MedAssets) she was offered a full time position. The pay was pretty decent and the offer included full benefits. The even cooler news is that one day before she was officially offered the MedAssests position she secured an interview with Coca-Cola. She decided to still go to the interview because it was literally one of her dream companies to work for. You see, she is a Management major, with a focus in international business, and we all know what the most recognizable brand in the world is. Well, right after we got back from Missouri, Coke called back, and offered her the position at Coke.

She has been raking herself over the coals to try to figure out which job to take lately, and she has decided to go with her gut. Even though the Coke job pays less, and she will not have any benefits for the first year, it is what she is passionate in. Funny thing happened, somehow the director of recruitment for Coke knew someone who worked with Ashley in the College of Computing at Tech. He called her up and convinced her she would be crazy not to take the position at Coke.

She has decided to go with the Coke position! I for one am really happy she did (cause you know how much happier we boyfriends are when our girlfriends are happy).

So, as far as job offers go Ashley – 2, Me – 0.

Hopefully, I’ll even the score here pretty soon.

Happily back from my trip up to Missouri for the Fourth of July, I am back and energized from my time off.

This morning at 9:00 am when the Tech Administration office opened I was waiting to pick up my official school transcript to send to the EPA, as per their request. It’s really funny, because I wonder if the EPA has people lie to them all of the time to require official transcripts. Whatever, the thing that really pisses me off about the whole deal is that it was $5 for me to come pick it up from them. Really? Really? It costs $5 for them to click a file and hit print on some semi-good paper with a watermark? I suppose they must be paying their administrative assistants there about $45k/year plus benefits. I would guess they need to get some revenue back, because my $30k/year tuition doesn’t cover things like printing some damn paper!

Rant finished.

So on to jobs and stuff,

1. No new jobs to apply for on Chemploy website (around my area more on this qualification later).
2. Careerbuzz found me just one position to apply for today, and it is in Charlotte, NC. An Environmental Compliance Consultant with Trinity Consultants. Will update with information later.
3. I found out the application review timetable on the two jobs I applied for earlier, EPA Lab Research (July 10) and Air Quality Lab Tech (July 19).
4. Todays company that I wanted to focus on (Atlanta area) is Coke. I think I might apply for an Associate Scientist/Statistician position, it might be moot though, because they say Bachelors +3 years exp.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day as far as opportunities go. I still have a large to-do list to accomplish as below.

1. Write Darryl Reed (Boston Scientific Regional Manager) and ask about Boston Sci. positions for chemical engineers.
2. Call and follow up on past applications (Neetrac Researcher, Cryolife, and Medical Neurogenetics).
3. Send Thank You letters to Dr. Meredith and Dr. Reallf for their letters of recommendation.
4. Prepare canned answers to normal interview questions…like strengths, weaknesses etc. Throw in some off the wall ones.
5. Find another company to focus on that day.

Happy fourth of July to everyone out there. Give remembrance to the reasons that this country is great and good, and also realize the responsibility that each of us americans holds, to do the absolute best with all of the resources that we have here. That’s what I plan to do when I get home and settled in to job searching.

The funny thing is that I can post to the site where I am at right now (friends
Lake house) but can’t do Amy job hunting. That’s because I do my posting off of the wordpress iPhone app. It’s really great. Anyhow, yesterday was a day off as well because of the drive to get here.

Happy holiday!

Today was a good day in my world of job applications. I used my girlfriends account of careerbuzz to look at jobs pointed at techies. I found two great opportunities.

First, I found a listing for a student research contract at the EPA ecosystem lab in Athens, GA. It is studying the transport of fullerene nanoparticles in ecosystems! I figured that would be right up my alley as I am interested in both nano and sustainability. Driving to Athens would put me in the car for 2+ hours a day, but oh well. The application required a bit of work, as it needed two letters of recommendation and an official transcript. I got Dr. Meredith (undergrad research) and Dr. Reallf (senior design) to write my letters and send them in.

Secondly, I applied for an Air Quality Lab Technician spot at Air Quality Systems in Marietta, GA. Was kind of a weird posting, because they wanted someone with a 3.0+ in sciences (biology, chemistry, etc), that could also run power tools and routinely lift up to 100 lbs! Wonder what the job description is like. They are probably testing products for saftey under hazardous conditions like burning and deconstruction. Sounds cool.

Wish me luck!!

I am a recent graduate of one of the best engineering schools in the nation, Georgia Tech. For me and my fellow new grads, things are pretty rough at the moment. When we enrolled in college (2004), things were looking pretty rosy, and as we were hotshot engineers with high IQ’s and even higher expectations, we uncompromisingly looked forward to graduating and starting our careers.

Ehh! Wrong!

Fast forward to 4-5 years, and $80k – $100k later (for those of us out of state students), and things aren’t looking so great. We are in the worst economic depression since 1929, the job market is overcrowded with people who have more experience than us, and around 18% of college undergrads are being hired full-time.

So this blog is dedicated to those like me, newly graduated people seeking entry level jobs and finding nothing!

Here I will track my daily activities looking for jobs, or in some cases, doing odd-jobs to earn money. I welcome anyone to share their experience with me, whether you have succeded in finding employment, or are like me, and still working on it.