The Working World

Do College Campuses Need a Recession-Reality Check?

Worries about the recession are keeping one college senior up at night…but is she alone?

Call me prudent. As a graduating college senior, I make it a point to invest thought in my career plans. Like most colleges, my state university offers the services of a Career Center, holds career fairs, and welcomes company recruiters to communicate with the student body.

Recently, I attended an information session held by a well-known publishing house; a company that I am very familiar with and would love to work for. Having already attended an info session for this publishing house before the media meltdown, I was familiar with their presentation. So familiar, I was having déjà vu while listening to the pitch. Economic developments and the drastic downturn in the print industry were obviously taboo at this meeting. When someone finally brought up the issue, the speaker danced around it as if to suggest that these matters don’t affect our entry-level job search.

So I began to wonder, are we pending grads somehow immune to the recession? I spoke to college juniors and seniors, asking them if they’re staying informed of recession news and worrying about whether or not their desired industry of employment is being affected. Some students entering the medical field seemed to have the unfaltering belief that medical professionals are safe. Health science majors, including pre-med, pre-nursing, and pre-dental, are resting assured that their skills will always be in demand, no matter the national level of unemployment. Many of the students who said they weren’t worried are not avid news consumers. If they were, they’d know that there are big questions about whether their fields are recession-proof.

As a Liberal Arts student, I find myself in the same boat as business students for the first time: morale is low. Most of my Liberal Arts peers are actively following news of the recession and employment statistics. The media and business industries are a far cry from what they’d been when we began our college careers. Most of us are forced to rethink whether or not our skills are as valuable as we thought. The mass consensus seems to be to retreat to graduate school and hide until the recession blows over. Unfortunately, no one has any idea how long that will take, or what our desired industries will look like thereafter.

Given the bleak outlook for many of us, what can we do? If we can’t rely on career counsel professionals, do we just observe and make an educated guess as to the best post-graduate move?  What we really need are recession-related work shops, news updates, and suggested off-ramps on the popular career tracks that, like all industries, are facing layoffs. If this help is being offered on a mass basis, it sure isn’t reaching me. The only suggestions that never cease are to network, network, network! In fact, a recent Boston University Business Management career fair offered only half of its usual company representatives for the sole purpose of networking with desired employers. But how is this networking supposed to solve everything?

I headed for my campus Career Center, a place that I frequent whenever the unemployment rate keeps me up at night. After speaking separately with two knowledgeable career counselors, I started to get the picture. No, employers are not sending as many recruiters to campuses, sometimes because these recruiters are themselves the victims of downsizing. But there are resume-building options for students who are open-minded in regard to the next step in their career. Many recruiters have been openly uncertain of their companies’ fate and have collected resumes in the chance that they’ll need interns and employees in the near future. The uncertainty shared by companies and students has led the career counselors to dispense some simple and logical advice. They advise students to actively research recession news and stay informed of the developments in their desired industry. Keep an open mind when taking your next career step; accept different positions that will help build the skills necessary for your “dream job”. And for those confused and panicked students who plan to retreat to graduate school, consider this: you might be just as confused and panicked coming out as going in.

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Tags: careers, college, Liberal Arts, reality check