College Seniors Entering the Workforce: Here's Who's Hiring
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Here's your Money Briefing for Thursday, April 30th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Not even three months ago, college seniors were looking forward to entering the strongest labor market in decades.
How has the coronavirus changed college seniors’ job market expectations?
Then the coronavirus changed everything.
Potential graduates are now wondering, can I get a job? in a field I'm interested in versus going to work at Amazon versus sitting at home. It used to be, oh, I'll take a year after college if I don't like what the jobs are or if the economy's bad and I can go take an odd job to make money and then travel. There is no travel.
That's Tom Gimbel, the founder and CEO of staffing and recruiting firm LaSalle Network. Coming up, he'll explain why it's important for college seniors to broaden their job search and which industries are actually hiring.
Because of social distancing, many college seniors aren't likely to enjoy the pomp and circumstance of a traditional graduation ceremony this year.
Why did LaSalle Network repeat its college-student survey in March?
What's worse is they're being thrust into a job market that's been devastated by the coronavirus, and that's forced students to drastically rein in their expectations. Tom Gimbel is the founder and CEO of staffing and recruiting network LaSalle Network, which surveyed hundreds of college students about their plans, and he's with us to discuss the results. So, Tom, you initially did the survey over the winter. Then you had to do it all over again.
So in February, we did a survey like we do every year. And so we have an internal campus recruiting department that does work for our clients and for us internally, recruiting college juniors and seniors, both for internships and for graduating seniors. And we're surveying thousands of kids every single year. And we have an inkling of where it's going to go based on the economy, based on what clients are telling us, that what percentage is going to lean towards mission of company versus compensation. What we started to see is when the layoffs started happening in March, when we started to see that how many responses to jobs... postings that we have on college campuses all around the country, they started to shoot up in the end of March.
And that's very rare because you usually, we have to be more proactive on college campuses because a lot of these kids want to have jobs by this time already. All of a sudden, every posting we had shot through the roof, we said, we got to do another survey and we got to see what the results were.
What immediate impacts did rescinded offers and paused internships have on graduates?
And all of a sudden people were finding out that their offers were being rescinded. They were being put on hold. They were, Their internships post-graduation were being denied, and it really led us to do a more in-depth data analysis.
The changing of this entire landscape has tempered expectations, not the least of which is about compensation.
Yeah, it's amazing what a motivator fear is. I don't say that tongue-in-cheek from the standpoint of we were in the 10th year of a bull market and recent college graduates were making more and more and more money and almost to the point of getting a little bit out of control to scare off potential employers. And it really went from being an employee's market to an employer's market if employers are hiring at all.
What's interesting is that expectations about job location have also shifted.
Recent college graduates really talking to their friends from the year and two years before were really had the employer by the back hairs. And now it's really changed where they'll go wherever the job is. They will take whatever the money that is offered and they will they're more open to doing temporary work as a means to get their foot in the door with employers versus really wanting a minimum amount of money, not having flexibility on location, and not willing to take temporary jobs at all. Coronavirus recalibrated everything, and it's really a phenomenon. I mean, I was running my business in 2001, in 2008, 2009, and this is like nothing I've ever seen.
Now, it seems graduating seniors have to be careful not to unnecessarily narrow their job search.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:05–0:16
2
How has the coronavirus changed college seniors’ job market expectations?
0:16–1:05
3
Why did LaSalle Network repeat its college-student survey in March?
1:05–2:28
4
What immediate impacts did rescinded offers and paused internships have on graduates?
2:28–4:09
5
How have compensation and location preferences shifted for new graduates?
4:09–5:26
6
Why should seniors broaden their search from industry to company-specific opportunities?
5:26–6:08
7
Which industries and roles are actually hiring college graduates during the pandemic?
6:08–7:13
8
What practical job-seeking strategies should graduates use to get their foot in the door?
7:13–7:31
Speakers
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