College recruitment appears to be picking up
By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent, 11/16/03
After a two-year slump, job prospects for new college graduates are showing signs of picking up.
Corporate recruiters aren't handing out offers and signing bonuses the way they did in the late 1990s. But some companies appear to be adjusting hiring plans in light of the improving economy. The US Department of Labor said last week that employers boosted payrolls by 126,000 jobs in October. Overall, about 300,000 jobs have been created since August.
"Employers seem to be serious" about going after next year's graduates, said Theresa Harrigan, director of the career center at Boston College.
A mid-August survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found cause for cautious optimism. Employers, the survey reported, forecast a 12.7 percent increase in the number of graduates hired in 2003-2004 over the previous academic year.
The service sector topped the list, with a projected 22.2 percent increase in hiring. Northeast employers plan to increase their college hiring plans by 15.3 percent, the greatest change by region.
These increases would be the first since 2000-2001, said Mimi Collins, spokeswoman for the Bethlehem, Pa.-based trade association.
"Some companies are seeing some growth, while others, because of attrition, need to replace" workers, she said.
However, many employers are still wary, Collins said, adding that 27 percent of the respondents to a September survey said they would reassess hiring plans "on a monthly basis."
On campus, recruitment appears to be picking up with accounting, financial services firms, and retailers among the most active, said Harrigan and others. Some 2004 undergraduates like Jack Waterstreet, a finance major at Babson College, already have a job lined up.
Others, such as Laura Charest of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, are being signed up by employers for additional interviews.
Waterstreet will begin working next July as a financial analyst in the Boston office of Harris Williams & Co., an investment bank based in Richmond, Va. The 21-year-old Boston resident said his job search was "brief, helped by a summer internship I had with Bear Stearns in New York. I also had a job offer from them, but decided to stay in Boston."
He feels fortunate, he said, to have landed a job he really likes because "some people I know who graduated last year took jobs they really didn't want."
Charest, a 21-year-old finance major at UMass, has second-round interviews lined up with Raytheon and General Electric, among others.
"I hope to get an offer in late December or early January," said Charest, who lives in Agawam.
And, she added, she's hearing positive things from other classmates. "I think seniors are a lot more confident this year about getting jobs," she said.
The number of companies on campus naturally breeds student confidence, said Donald Brezinski, director of the Miller Center for Career Services at Bentley College. He said that about 1,000 recruiters are on the center's 2003-2004 roster compared to 817 last year.
"The economy is starting to rebound, and companies are starting to reinvest," he said.
Those twin indicators are fueling the hiring of college graduates, said Mark Jones, global head of recruiting for Bain & Co., a management consulting firm based in Boston. Bain, he said, will hire 30 percent more graduates nationally than it did last year.
In the Northeast, there will be a 50 percent increase in the number of college graduates hired by Bain, added Chris Bierly, who is in charge of the company's undergraduate recruiting for the region.
Liberty Mutual, the casualty insurer, will hire about 450 people nationwide from the class of 2004, 25 percent of them for company offices in the Boston area and southern New Hampshire, a region in which it has more than 6,000 employees, said Ann Nowak, manager of college relations.
About 60 percent of the undergraduates hired will become claims adjusters, earning in the "high $30,000s," Nowak said. A lesser number of students with MBA degrees will be hired. Their pay will be based on the position and experience, she said.
Staples, the Framingham-based office supply chain, has its eye on hiring 100 graduates, or 2 to 3 percent more than this year, college relations manager Michael Danubio said.
More than 40 new hires will work in Massachusetts, in disciplines ranging from training to finance, he said.
Bain, Liberty Mutual, and Staples have been hiring college graduates consistently for each of the last few years. EMC Corp., the Hopkinton-based data storage company, has been in a retrenchment mode until recently.
"But we're definitely seeing a resurgence in our college hiring," said Deb Snow, director of human resources and head of university relations. The 2004 college graduate hiring count will be more than 100, most of them for hardware and software engineering jobs in Massachusetts, she said.
The improved jobs outlook is unlikely to translate into big salaries, according a new study by NACE. It found that 51 percent of employers did not anticipate an increase in starting pay. And those that do project an increase of just 3.4 percent.
But salaries and job opportunities for college graduates should multiply in the next year if the economy stays on a healthy course "and companies get busier and busier," said Ira Weiss, dean of Northeastern's College of Business Administration.
Davis Bushnell is a freelance writer and can be reached at davisbushnell@compuserve.com
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