Bam. Out of High School, Trade School or College, you’re supposed to make something out of almost nothing. Experience is required for the jobs that give you the experience required for jobs that… it’s an amazing conundrum. It’s also a quaint way of dismissing timid job hunter.
Today, we graduates and other “youngone’s” walk into a job market that’s plagued with albatrosses. Unions are dying, pensions are almost an extinct concept, health benefits are becoming rarer by the decade, white-collar jobs are floating overseas, competition is fierce, undergraduate degrees are become devalued, etc…. It’s daunting to say the least.
Perhaps there is a basis for worry
The last item is probably the scariest for new graduates. 20 years ago, a bachelors degree supposedly meant something. Today, employers consider it a basis for filtering resumes: those without the degree get filed under “trash”. In fact, the current rate for college graduates who are unemployed is around 2.9%, a figure that was steadily declining until late 2001 (source: U.S. Department of Labor).
This statistic pairs up with all the other available labor data that shows things have been bad in the last 5 years. We’ve suffered the “Dot Com” bubble and the worst attack on domestic land our nation has ever seen. Naturally, the job market has suffered accordingly. So, whatever doubts us new graduates have about getting the job we expect are perhaps well justified.
The Political Season
The problem is the blame game. Right now, we have probably the most ideologically slanted presidential administration in office in a long while. Conservatives and Liberals have come out of the woodwork to blame Bush for all the woes our job market faces.
G. W. is probably responsible for many things. Mounting a flimsy case for war to stabilize oil prices? Yes. Turning a cold shoulder to the international community and giving off a bullish, arrogant vibe to the world? Definitely. Restricting his focus to the few defined issues that concern the conservative-minded key members of his administration? Oh yeah.
But a failing job market? He has pull on the issues that hurt or help it, but the president alone cannot directly hurt the job market. He may be able to irresponsibly wing out tax cuts while our social security system is on it’s death bed and an ongoing war drains our national wallet…. but he can’t exactly make jobs.
Neither can some other Presidential candidate. Regardless of what his campaigns promises. Sorry Kerry. maybe you should try “a chicken in every pot” or “a Buick in every garage”. You’re odds are better.
I’m waiting for that sweet managerial job
Aside from all the facts about the job market, you gotta thank computers, God bless `em, for making the situation even more fun by allowing employers to quantify skills and experience. “5 years of experience in Java 2 Applications“, “3 years of WebSphere“, “4 years of ASP and Coldfusion Knowledge“… it’s amazing how in-tune these employers are with the time it takes to develop sufficient knowledge. I don’t know about you, but if I work with something for a year, that’s about the plateau of my learning curve. Another 2, 3 or 10 years isn’t going to make me better at that one task.
It’s also amazing how specific and greedy these employers get in their job ads. Sometimes you’ll see a job ad requiring 8 or 10 different job skills with expert experience, and no salary information. If someone with that degree of knowledge actually existed, they certainly wouldn’t entertain some miscellaneous newspaper or Internet ad that leaves salary to the imagination.
The rest of the market is people like me, measuring ourselves on paper, selling ourselves in whatever achievements we have: scholarships, awards, events, bake sales, lemonades stands, whatever. It’s hard to conjure real-world experience and skills from a list of college classes and offbeat personal websites. “I’ve at least seen what Linux looks like… better put that down under, ‘strongly competent’.” It’s almost like there’s two worlds of reality when it comes to job skills; that which you have, and that which you can prove.
So, until the HR Gods deem my resume tasty, I’ll continue the countdown to graduation, eyes glued to Monster.com and my local paper.
