Slashdot Mirror
Jobs for Students - Where Are They?
jtpalinmajere asks: "The past few years students like myself have found themselves in an ominously precarious situation. This is to say that the availability for jobs in the computer industry that are suited well for fresh meat graduates are dwindling at an alarming rate. Personally, I graduate this coming Spring and have been job searching for the past semester with little if any success at finding a prospective future employer. The placement office at my university hasn't been too helpful for many students in the CS department. The only companies that I have come in contact with that might consider fresh graduates are Microsoft and government agencies such as the FBI. If I can actually compete with the 76% foreign immigrant population of Microsoft then I might see that as a fairly good start, though the odds don't seem to roll in my favor. As far as the government is concerned, I'm simply not old enough for any job that gets paid more than minimum wage and has actual job security. Most of my job searching has been conducted through services like Dice and Monster. 99% of the jobs listed in these services require 2 - X many years of previous experience using Y software with a current Z security clearance level. I've even found one company that wants 10 years experience specifically with .NET -- go figure! I'm not looking for the dream job that everyone hopes to one day attain. I'm looking for a job that will simply get me into the industry with a meager salary large enough to sustain life. How many other students find themselves in my position? What are some opinions, particularly from our non-students, for soon to be graduates like myself?"
Did you do any internships while in college or coop? One of the most helpful job resources I found are my "ex-coworkers" and "friends of friends". If they like you and know you can perform good, people will keep an extra eye out for leads and/or possible openings.
Network...
Don't burn bridges...
Wear clean underwear...
?...
Profit
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
That depends. Can you say "Do you want fries with that?"
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The only companies that I have come in contact with that might consider fresh graduates are Microsoft and government agencies such as the FBI. If I can actually compete with the 76% foreign immigrant population of Microsoft then I might see that as a fairly good start, though the odds don't seem to roll in my favor.
I think you will find that the vast majority of non-US citizens at Microsoft, or any other organization that hire H1Bs for that matter, aren't fresh graduates, but were already experienced software developers before the H1B is granted. It would be very difficult under the terms of H1B to hire fresh graduates, as one of the conditions is that the holder must have skills that are not in ready supply in the US.
Therefore, these people are entirely irrelevant; you wouldn't be competing with them for an entry level job anyway.
50% of jobs out there arn't advertised.
Go to the employers directly, send in your resume. It shows initiative if you call a company and ask to speek to HR or the hirer, depending on the size of the company.
I work for a small company (im not out of uni yet) and have heard that small companies are good for jobs, but don't advertise much. I hear this stuff through the "channel". Network some Wetware and hunt down a job.
Being a (nearly-finished) student, I can vouch for the troubles that can be had trying to find a job in the industry at the moment. I was lucky enough to study a course (Multimedia) that has a year of work placement between 2nd and 3rd year. Our uni boasted a "100% placement rate" for these before my year (2001). Obviously things went downhill from there. I was lucky enough to secure a place (it wasn't my first choice) and hang on through the tough times. I kept working through final year and now have a full time job to go. I've also had 2 years experience at the same time (:
All I can suggest is that you seek out any opportunity to work while you study - the workload is heavier, but your chances of being employed at the end are far greater.
Ladies, form queue here -->
Even if an employer wants 2 years of experience, go for it if you feel qualified. I only had about 1 year of experience, all coop. I applied for a job that wanted 3-5 years experience, and I got it. Granted, I am getting paid a little less than the advertised rate, but it's a job.
.NET when looking around last spring. That's nonsense, and most people know it. Why companies do this, I don't know. Don't let it discourage you. If you really feel you are qualified, sell yourself anyway. Talk about why you are good for the job despite not having the desired experience. You have nothing to lose.
I remember seeing 5+ years in Java Enterprise Edition and 2+ years with
As far as the government is concerned, I'm simply not old enough for any job that gets paid more than minimum wage and has actual job security.
That's about right. My grandpa needed to be 18 and just graduated from high school to get a good job that could support a family. My father needed to have a 4 year degree for the same thing. I needed a degree and a few years of experience before I found a decent job.
At this rate our grandchildren are going to have to be retired before they can get a decent job.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
Get a temp job that starts to pay the bills. Let the firm know that you would prefer tech-area jobs. Temp work is the great back door through which the inept Human Resource director is circumvented.
If you like the place, and they like you, you will eventually get an offer for a 'real' job. Meanwhile, you will get to see all the different types of jobs there are: specifically, which places you really don't want to work.
While you're slumming in the mail room, you should contribute to some open source projects at home. Temp jobs almost never make you sign oppressive IP contracts. It will keep your skills up, and you will earn a reputation with your peers. Non-paid work is _always_ impressive on your resume. If a shop says "Hey, why are you doing OSS stuff?" you can say it was to keep your skills sharp while you found a 'real' job.
But don't write off the 'real' world. There's a far bigger, and hidden, market for people who know how to program. I started in environmental consulting, and one of our best consultants was a database guru. I recently automated table generation in a large report. Saved us a week of formatting time. Programmer is not in my job description. These types of jobs generally have a specific problem domain, which gives you a leg up when you want to move to a 'real' tech shop.
My father is a blogger.
I was in the exact same situation -- job hunting for months before graduation, with no results. Admittedly, I was a B- student, so I can see why I wasn't the top of every list, but to not appear on *any* list?
Anyway, my success was in contracting. Talk to IT recruiters about filling small roles and assisting other contractors, that sort of thing. Just to get your name out there, and to get some actual after-school-experience. I was jobless for 3 months after graduation, then I did contract teaching (computer repair, network design, etc) for 4 months, then was hired full-time at the company where I'd been contracting most often.
YMMV of course. Good luck!
I know most CS students see it as "below" them, but most universities have a thriving IT department. Even getting a job at the help desk can be a *huge* boost in your career... a couple years of that, and you've suddenly got 2+ years of experience in the field. You don't have to stay, but it's a good place to start.
The real problem is waiting until you get out of college. IT departments in colleges are much more willing to hire students, because they can count more on the person actually sticking around if he's got two or three years of school left.
Try like hell to get on somewhere to get "real world" experience. It makes all the difference when looking for a job.
It also helps to move to an area where jobs are plentiful. For example when I graduated I too couldn't find a job worth anything in Oklahoma. So I moved to Dallas. After working there and getting experience the jobs I wasn't qualified for in my home town area were now begging for experienced developers.
I also did lots of free work (software development related) in my spare time. You can always find non-profit organizations that need help and will give you a real project without the time constraints usually associated with a real job. This is experience and you'd be doing something good for your community (I still volunteer). Just make sure not to flake out b/c non-profit's get a lot of people who want to help but don't want to put forth the effort needed.
For more than 20 years, as a hobby, I've been helping friends re-write their resumes. I've noticed that one factor that affects the hiring of excellent students is that their resumes usually don't communicate clearly.
People are told that resumes should be only one page. That's not true. When you write any advertisement, you should write as much as you have to say. When you finish telling the entire story, stop writing. This advice is from the famous ad man David Ogilvy, who wrote Confessions of an Advertising Man , an excellent book that is, as you would guess, easy to read. Any library should have it.
Here are PDF examples of the before and after: Original student resume, with beginning corrections. Draft of improved resume, with formatting quirkiness caused by Microsoft Word. (My friend the student did the re-writing, using my suggestions as a guide. The improved version is current as of yesterday.)
It took maybe 10 hours to develop the information. I spent the time because I am a friend. It is easy to understand that a prospective employer would not spend 10 hours getting to know every person who sends a resume.
Notice that the original resume looks like the resume of thousands of recent journalism graduates. The improved resume is an advertisement that gives a complete picture of the person being advertised. The original expects the reader to do the work. The improved version gives as much as possible and asks as little as possible from the reader.
Like the friend in the example, many students have a lot of relevant experiences.
The book Executive Jobs Unlimited is old, but includes a lot of information that is relevant to anyone's effort to write a job-getting advertisement. Most libraries have this book.
A lot of the problems in getting a job are caused by the inexperience and ignorance of the employers. Employers are often no better than applicants at communicating. They often ask for qualities expressed by buzzwords. Often what an employer really wants is very different from what is communicated. Imagine the confusion when both the applicant and the prospective employer communicate poorly.
The most difficult kind of writing is writing an advertisement. The most difficult kind of advertisement to write is an advertisement for a person. The most difficult person about whom to write is yourself. Get help if you can. Write biographies of yourself, so that you will have information to use in the job-getting advertisement. Most people have difficulty believing they are as good as they really are, I've found.
If you are interested, it is okay to mirror the resumes, but the mirror must include a link to this original Slashdot comment.
When you submit a resume to HR, talk about your 25 years of experience with .NET and 50 years of Java.
Care to back that up? Lying on an H1B application results in a 10-year ban from travelling to the US, so it's not something that anyone would do lightly. And it's not just a HR department checking up on you, it's the INS. And if a company decides to stretch the truth a little in a pitch about the experience of its employees, that's not necessarily the employee's fault.
Or was that just another whiny "the dang foreigners are takin' all our jobs and women" remark? Remember, the only difference between you and a green card holder is that your parents caught an earlier flight or boat.
I go to a university that requires me to have 4 co-ops before I graduate. A Co-op is a paid internship in which I work for 10 weeks, 40 hours a week in my field of study. Since I am a CS major I must get a job writing code, developing software, etc. or it wont count towards graduation. It is incredibly difficult to find such a job. I plan to spend the break I have right know contacting as many companies as possible so that I will be sure to get a co-op in the spring. I really need the money.
If you would like to hire a computer science major to work for you check my resume.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I hate to tell you this; but it is my observation that you may be looking at temping - A LOT - and holding down an additional part time job just to get situated as a recent graduate. I feel this goes for all fields. Unless you can hold yourself to the minimums (used ride, efficiency apartment, outlet store clothes) until you establish yourself; you may be out of luck.
I think one thing going against you is a lot of adults, regardless of their field, are going back to get their first or even second degree and very likely their Masters' because they are either currently unemployed or very worried about the security of their current job. I know that despite my experience I am ready to start night classes and finish my degree; and I'm far closer to 30 than you are.
That's even with a $28 an hour job - specifically because it is a consultant gig and I won't be making $60 thousand this year or next unless I can roll out of this position and right into the next one... and I'm scared that that won't happen. Yeah, scared. You get a bunch of hard working people afraid they aren't going to make it and they start exercising a lot of options to make themselves viable in a tough market.
On the other hand; there have to be a considerable number of IT jobs that aren't just support or "network engineering/administration" and the like. I know a kid that just finished college with his Comp. Sci. major but he focused on chip design and already has a cushy; if not extremely high paying right off the bat job in a clean room. At least his foot is in the door.
Don't count yourself out yet. Check with your [city/county government] employment service and don't forget your college likely has resources and internship provisions for you. My current contract is in a place I didn't think would be likely to have IT employment opportunities.
Last, forget the "TS SCI/Poly required" jobs, unless you go somewhere that indicates on the announcement they will hire you then clear you or clear you before you are officially hired like the State Department - they still need about 100 IT Management Specialists I think, and thanks to my stupidity a few years ago I won't be one of them right now (nothing criminal; just shouldn't have held a grudge after I left [non-classified] civilian government service). The 'you must have current active clearance' jobs are often most suited for military folks that will very likely never get out of a classified work environment - not that they would want to with some of the salaries they will get paid. Then again, maybe four or eight years in the service (with a college degree I don't think Officer School would be that difficult for you to get into) would do you some good and at least guarantee you a roof and meals; and maybe even help pay off your college bills. There's private consulting, government contracting, then defense contracting - and with this Homeland Security business they want everyone to have some clearance or other - odd that the more people cleared to access information the more likely it is that information will not remain secret, but that is another topic for another day.
Take what you want from this comment and leave the rest; but I wish you the best of luck. Keep your chin up and don't take it too hard that there are probably 4 or 5 thousand former Worldcom, Global Crossing and other IT/telecom employees vying for that same job. Sometimes youth works for you not against you.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Move back in with your parents... hope they still have a job so they can pay your bills... if you have any. The economy sucks right now... I've been having the same trouble you have... except I blew off college... I took two semesters and was like "this is worthless bullshit", so I ended up working.
I recently lost my job because I would not let my employer screw me (not literly, financially)... So now.. I atleast have the chance to have a love life... I only have car payments, cell phone bills, and other expenses that my parents are kind enough to pay for me.
Tip: Don't worry about it... You will find a job, In the mean time, focus on your love life.
Remember, the only difference between you and a green card holder is that your parents caught an earlier flight or boat.
Unless you are Blackfoot, Cherokee, etc. but that is an entirely different can of worms. I just sigh, shrug my shoulders and mutter "white people" a lot.
I think we Americans take far too much for granted; and few of us appreciate what we have or are willing to work hard for it. Those of us that do are likely to ride out dips like this and hopefully be better off personally and professionally in the long run.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
It's a hard life, being a 2001 electrical engineer grad at this time.
What I really want to know is what makes these companies so completely STUPID that they won't hire fresh graduates? Many kids are kicking out of engineering already, and starting engineering majors are at an all-time low.
Ok, an HR guy may see someone with FIVE or TEN years of experience to be a better choice. But what happens in five years, when I have been working a job barely related to engineering? I won't remember a thing I learned in school. I've been keeping up with my projects, trying to learn additional skills, but it's not easy when trying to hold down a (poorly paying) full time job and pay off student loans. The companies are setting themselves up to have NO competent engineers available in the next three to four years.
By setting insane required experience levels, they are limiting their candidates to two types: those who will demand higher pay and retire ten years earlier, and those who are ethically twisted enough to blatantly lie on their resumes.
The idiocy evident in many of these corporations, as well as their failure to analyze the talent pool on a long-term basis, is seriously convincing me that contracting may be the only way to keep a safe distance. The only problem with that, is developing a good contracting business is even harder than finding a job. People just don't understand that an engineer doesn't need to have the EXACT experience in what you want them to do. Most engineers have the skill of learning everything necessary to complete a project, and making decisions based on the research of others. It's primarily an application field; you wouldn't question a carpenter's ability to make a desk out of black walnut even if he's only made maple and cherry desks before.
Someday I will find people who have a clue. Or take a few of my money-making inventions and actually do something with them.
...
Dont be daunted by the often illogical 'experience' requirements. Most of the time, these are taken from boilerplate templates and guidelines that HR departments get or cook up themselves. A job posteing seldom has what the original author intended after it gets through HR people! Having been on the other side of this fence before, trying to hire people (and wasting my time interviewing way too many people who were completely unsuitable before I found some folks who were), I have to say that the job description folks post is every bit as sensitive in triggering interest on the part of applicants as their resumes are in triggering interest in employers. On the same subject, most management have, probably from their super-leet business schools, some strange guidelines in their heads of 'rules of thumb' that a guy of some degree of seniority should have foo years aof experience with such and such buzzwords. Your mention of one that asked for 10 yrs experience with m$'s .net stuff is a prime example. My advice: spend a few minutes to figure out what the employer _really_ wants, and send
him a resume anyway. Make sure you point out to him what you can do and make mention of projects youve worked on (if any) that give a hint that you are good at working on projects. Dont just shy away because you dont have a certain number of years experience. Often the actual interviewing or
even screening of resumes is done by people who _do_ know what they're talking about, in any well run organization at least. Good managers know to use their specialists to do their job.
Don't be afraid to take a job that you feel is "beneath you" at graduation if nothing better comes along. Believe me, it looks a lot better on your resume to see that you worked for $8/hr in some minor IT job than to see that you spent a year and a half sitting on your ass because there were no decent jobs out there.
After you graduate, I'd suggest working at least 8 hours a day looking for a job. It's hard work, but so is a job. There are a lot of books and websites with job-hunting tips. The newspaper and job sites are the very beginning. You need to meet people and to let them know you need a job without sounding desparate.
Some ways to meet people: mentor, teach, volunteer, temp, go to local user groups. Remember, you just got a degree in a field that most people are afraid of and have little experience with. If you had an English degree, it would be hard to teach or help people, since everyone took English in school.
And don't focus on just tech companies. Let's say you are interested in science and computers. Maybe you know someone who knows someone who works for a biotech company. Tell them you want some practical experience writing a database program (in Access or something) and ask them if they could use such a program for free. Work there for a few weeks (don't work at home). Now all of a sudden you know a bunch of scientists who think you are a computer genius (because they have no idea that Access is easy). Maybe they'll hire you, or mention you to their colleagues who actually are looking to hire someone.
And finally, think of it this way: if half of the graduates this year can't find a job, it means that you only have to be better than 50% of the people in your school. You're better than 50% of the people there, right?
The placement office at my university hasn't been too helpful for many students in the CS department.
Don't expect them to do much work for you. Actually, don't expect anyone to do work for you. Do it yourself.
As far as the government is concerned, I'm simply not old enough for any job that gets paid more than minimum wage and has actual job security.
That's false. My first job was with the government, and while I wasn't making a killing, I made good enough money to have an [ugly] apartment and a [cheap] new car. And it wasn't with a defense-related department, so there were no security clearances I needed to have or anything.
Most of my job searching has been conducted through services like Dice and Monster.
I think those sites are a good starting point, but you should spend only a small fraction of your time on them. The rest of the time should out of the house, walking the beat as it were.
"The problem is if you have been living the life style of someone who makes $60K..."
Maybe you should stop living beyond your means then?
Sell the house and buy a cheaper one.
Car payments got you down? Sell it, buy a cheaper one. You can get a good used car for $3000 or less. My '93 Dodge Spirit is worth less than $2000 now. It's old, it's high mileage, BUT IT RUNS and that's all that matters.
All this post amounts to is, "WAAH-WAAH! THE MARKET CORRECTED ITSELF AND I CAN'T KEEP UP MY OLD LIFESTYLE!"
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The parent is right on the money, except that I think the stat is much greater than 50% in my area (East Anglia, UK).
There are basically four ways to go about getting a job:
In my experience, these are listed in increasing order of likelihood of success, and the first two options are way behind the other two.
My other advice would be to consider aiming for a small company first, particularly if you're good. You're much more likely to have someone technical read your resume and any covering letter you send, rather than to be filtered out by some buzzword-craving DB. If you write a good resume -- most people really don't, and I've posted advice on this subject around here before -- then so much the better.
You probably won't get a top notch salary at a small company, but you'll get a decent average for someone with your experience over the first year or two at most of them, and you'll get a much more personal experience from those you work for and with, which is good for developing your early career. Again, this is particularly useful if you really are good, either technically or in your attitude, as this is far more likely to be noticed in a smaller, more personal environment.
After a couple of years in the business, you'll have had chance to establish a solid track record with a company, and to see which skills are really useful and not just hype. If you choose to move on from there, you'll be much better placed than you are right now.
Final tip: do consider staying on and getting more qualified while the market is tough. NB: I'm mostly talking about serious qualifications, not random certificates from marketing departments, though the latter rarely hurt. I got a long way based not only on a good maths degree, but also on the one year postgrad diploma in CS I took to go with it. Aside from being a darned useful course, it distinguished me from other random graduates in my early career. If you can get some sort of funding or sponsorship to do such a course, so much the better, obviously. It gives you a way to ride out the current wave of poor IT recruitment, and good experience to boot.
If you're looking to do software development as a serious career, supporting skills in things like maths or management do no harm at all. If you're after sysadmin type work, you could do worse than having some electrical or communications engineering skills as well (and those random marketroid-driven certificates are probably worth something, at least in some cases). Either way, the extra edge does no harm.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I don't like to criticise, but I'd hesitate to recommend your rewritten resume as an example. Since CV writing is quite a personal thing, I'll just list my reservations below with the most serious first, and let anyone else look at both and decide for themselves whether they agree.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
As far as the government is concerned, I'm simply not old enough for any job that gets paid more than minimum wage and has actual job security.
So what? Take whatever job you can get that has you working in your chosen field. Don't worry about pay. Don't worry about job security. Take it, work hard, learn a lot and figure that the education and resume fodder are your real goal and any money you happen to make is just gravy.
That's exactly how the IT world worked when I started my career (89-92 or so, ramping up from co-op to full-time positions). Everyone knew that fresh graduates had to go out and get screwed for a couple of years, making peanuts and doing crap jobs until they'd proven themselves. Why? At least for programmers it's a simple fact of life that there are relatively few who are really good at it, and there's virtually no way to separate the wheat from the chaff. So, real-world job experience on the resume was invaluable.
Then came the Internet bubble and everyone "learned" that newly-minted CS graduates from Podunk U with zero experience were worth $80K per year. That was an aberration, and not one that is likely to happen again, because it makes no logical sense.
The job market for IT people isn't that terribly bad right now; it's just slightly slower than normal. To get a job you have to want it, you have to work for it, and you have to suffer a little to build the credentials you need to get it.
So, stop whining, suck it up and take that low-paying, insecure job and prove that you're worth hiring.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
First off, these are my experiences based on looking for a job in 1993 in Boston (which was right before the tech boom, and at the tail end of the early 90s recession). This should be generally good advice, but I can't speak to its effectiveness outside a major metro area.
I lived and worked in Boston for 7 years professionally, never making more than $40k. In fact, I started out at $27k, and usually worked 70+ hours/week for the first 3 or so years. I lived in my own apartment, and paid all my bills without going into debt. It's not really that hard, you just have to be careful and put off anything not completely necessary (like buying a new car, going on major vacations, good furniture, et al), and consider your first couple of years as an apprenticeship. Learn how businesses are run, and suck up all the experience you can. That will give you much better leverage to move upwards around 2006 or so, to a job with less hours and probably twice the pay you started with in 2003. And employers will be willing to pay it then, as you've proven yourself. 10 years after graduation, I now make well north of $100k, and consider it the payoff for being overworked/underpaid for much of my 20s.
Best of luck.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.