Class of 2024: Keys to Landing Your First Job
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Here's your money briefing for Friday, March 22nd. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. College seniors are facing a more competitive job market this year.
When they're trying to get a job as an entry level consultant or in the tech industry, they would be competing against people with a year or two of experience under their belt who might have recently been affected by layoffs or looking for a new position given that instability. So that makes for a more competitive search.
Wall Street Journal reporter Lindsay Ellis spoke to recruiters and career experts about how seniors can improve their chances of securing job offers. She'll join us after the break.
Listen at schwab.com slash washingtonwise.
Some college seniors have already landed their first job after graduation. Wall Street Journal reporter Lindsay Ellis covers young professionals and the workplace, and she joins me. Lindsay, what does the U.S. job market look like for students graduating this spring?
Many companies are hiring more conservatively for new graduates. Some of them held out on hiring in the fall instead of racing to fill positions before Christmas that would start after graduation. You know, they were unsure of their capacity and decided to hold back some. And the most recent survey data shows that companies are expecting to hire about 2% fewer graduating seniors this year. That's from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. That translates to more students being on the job market at this stage of the school year as compared to last year. The research company Veris Insights found that about a quarter of students as of February had taken jobs and stopped looking for jobs after graduation.
Last year, the class of 2023 by February, about a third of them had taken jobs and stopped looking.
How important is the first job out of college to a person's career track?
So it's more important than you might expect. Recent research from the Burning Glass Institute and the nonprofit Strata has found that if you take a job that doesn't require a college degree after graduation, you are highly likely to remain in that kind of role over the next decade. And that might put a student back from an earnings perspective and also when they think about their career trajectory and why they chose to invest in a college degree in the first place.
How has the 2024 job market changed for graduating college seniors?
In what fields this year are graduates likely to face the most competition?
Tech and consulting have seen particular contractions over the last year or so. And many new graduates from college campuses aim to start their careers in those fields. So when they're trying to get a job as an entry-level consultant or a In the tech industry, they would be competing against people with a year or two of experience under their belt who might have recently been affected by layoffs or looking for a new position given that instability. So that makes for a more competitive search. I mean, some companies allocate jobs specifically to employees. college seniors, but for positions that are broadly entry-level, kind of requiring maybe a year or so of experience, new graduates might see particular competition there.
Especially in tech, I've heard reports of jobs getting many thousands of applications, which is very difficult for a job seeker to navigate.
How can students use their experience from summer internships to help them land a full-time position?
That is something that college juniors headed into this summer should definitely be thinking about who might have taken on an internship or be about to do one.
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