Out of college, into the grind

It's. Tough. Out. There.

The economic downturn means many companies are laying off workers, and those that aren't cutting their workforce have scaled back hiring. The jobs that open often attract hundreds of applicants.

So what does all that mean for the class of '09?

"It's tough, but one thing that I think the grads need to keep in mind is that unemployment in the country is, what, 7.7 percent right now? But for people with a college degree it's 3.7 percent," said career counselor Christine P. Bolzan of Boxford. "Now, that 3.7 is the highest it has been since 1970, the first year they started tracking unemployment by education level. So it's high, but it's not as daunting as the figure for the whole country."

Bolzan had a successful career in corporate recruiting for J.P. Morgan and other firms. She started Graduate Career Coaching (www.graduatecareercoaching.com) to help soon-to-be and recent graduates navigate the transition from school to work. She charges $2,250 for personalized coaching that typically includes more than half a dozen 90-minute sessions as well as things such as résumé rewriting.

In a typical year, an average college grad might take three months to find a job, but Bolzan said a rough guess now is six to nine months. Some graduates think they should wait out the downturn, wait for the stimulus package to take hold. But Bolzan says: "Don't wait, get going now, get the ball rolling. Waiting is the worst thing you can do right now."

There's one search method career counselors say is the most important for students in this environment.

"What it really boils down to in this job market, more so than in a hot market, is networking," said Michael Markham, enrollment and placement coordinator for Northern Essex Community College. "The students really need to go out from day one and start developing a network of contacts, looking and targeting that next opportunity out there."

Said Bolzan: "It is the only way most people are going to actually get jobs. A lot of people spend their time poring over online job postings, feeling like they are putting in their time, and they're not going to get it. If you find a good posting? Try to find some personal connection in the company . . . try every possible connection."

Bolzan and other counselors are telling students: You've got to get your act together, cast your net wider, and understand that you may have to take a lower salary than you hoped for, or even move.

"I've been in the field for over 25 years, and this is the hardest year, I think. It's hit every industry," said Jean Papalia, director of career services at Tufts University in Medford. "We're working really closely with our students to make sure they know they have to work harder and be more flexible and more creative."

"It's definitely scary," said Tufts senior Julie Gomstyn, "but there's no other options but to keep looking and hope that you can find something."

A few students have found another option. "What I am seeing more of is, more of our best and brightest who are a little bit afraid to approach the job market and instead have decided they're going to go right into grad school," said Patricia Yates, director of career services at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

There are jobs out there if you work for them. Kimberly Leczynski of Dracut returned to UMass-Lowell after a few years working as a bookkeeper after high school. She graduates this spring, but already has found an accounting job with Caturano and Co. of Boston. The college's career services counselors made a big difference, she said.

"They were a big help. I went though about five iterations of my résumé with them," said Leczynski. "One of the firms that was visiting had an information session prior to interviewing on campus, and I wasn't sure how to dress for that, I thought a suit might be a little bit of overkill, where it was at a restaurant. So I contacted career services about that and they were happy to provide me with a little advice there, which worked out well because that was actually the firm I ended up taking the position with."

Mid-career layoffs have sent some older workers back to school for retraining, and NECC's Markham said they may be better prepared than new grads. "When I did this way back in the mid-'90s, when Wang was shutting down and Digital, people were coming in really being shocked at it, depressed over it with the loss of career and self-esteem. This group of workers coming in now are more like, yeah, it's a loss, but it was not unexpected. They saw the writing on the wall. Some actually started to do the retraining before."

Students know it's tough out there. Just ask Todd Webber of Amesbury, who graduated from Saint Joseph's College of Standish, Maine, with a business management degree - in May 2008. But hundreds of applications and nearly a dozen interviews have not resulted in a job.

"I felt as though I needed to change something up in order to get what I wanted from my job search," said Webber. He recently took a workshop with Bolzan to polish his presentation, learning everything from sharpening his pitch to revising his résumé.

Bolzan offered an even tougher story, of a December '07 graduate who found a job and already has been laid off. "She had a hard time getting over that," Bolzan said. "I'm actually connecting her with a volunteer opportunity that could lead to a job, in part to get her up and out of the house."