It is already mid-semester of the Spring term, and many eager seniors have locked in their post-grad plans for life outside of the Evergreen Campus. But for those students still searching, the Maryland Career Consortium (MCC) will be held on campus from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 19 in Reitz Arena.
The event will feature over 150 attending employers, including a wide range of corporations such as Apple, the Baltimore Orioles, the CIA, E&J Gallo Winery, HealthCare for the Homeless, MetLife, Morgan Stanley and the Peace Corps. Competition for recent graduates is notoriously stiff, and students will get a taste of this at the fair, which is open to 13 other local universities including Towson, John Hopkins, Morgan State and UMBC.
Job fairs are a clear networking opportunity, which are of extreme importance for recent graduates trying to compete in a saturated, competitive market. In a 2015 NewsWeek Article director and research professor for Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, Anthony Carnevale, explained the reality many college students already know, “They’re the first generation that needs to have a college degree and experience to compete, before they even enter the workforce.”
Last year’s class of 2015 Greyhounds faced a harder job market to master, with around 2.8 million graduates with bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees entering the workplace. Around 40 percent of the millennials in the U.S. were unemployed in May 2015, even as unemployment rates nationwide hit record lows. Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce also noted that the age that millennials reach the median wage when researched across all education levels increased from 26 to 30 between 1980 to 2012.
Job searching in the millennial era may seem ideal with the advent of online applications and job sites like LinkedIn, which give students the opportunity to apply to a handful or more jobs while sitting at Starbucks with friends. But this informal process often leads to little if no feedback, which can leave job-searching college students feeling disconnected.
“Searching for a job is definitely a challenge, and one that requires tenacity and persistence,” explained senior Jacqueline Kovach, who is majoring in Communications. “I’m trying my hardest to put myself out there and reach out to the right people, because networking is probably the most important part. I’m hopeful that all effort will pay off soon.”
Despite these technological struggles, news is looking up for the class of 2016. A recent study by the National Association for Colleges and Employers (NACE) released that U.S. hiring is set to increase by 11 percent in 2016. Over 200 employer members participated in the survey that was conducted from Aug. 5 to Sept. 13, 2015.
So what industries are the hottest for recent grads? According to a survey conducted by Michigan State’s College Employment Research Institute in October 2015, the industry that will see the biggest hiring boost is “Professional, Business and Scientific Services,” which includes accounting and consulting firms, engineering services companies and software developers. This sector is slated to see up to a 38 percent in college hiring, and hiring among accounting firms specifically is supposed to rise to a 63 percent increase in 2016. The “Finance and Insurance” industry comes in a close second with a projected 28 percent hike in college hires from big companies like Prudential and Geico. The tie for third place is between Information Services such as internet service providers, wireless carriers and satellite companies and the healthcare sector.
While these industries are predicted to have the most growth and opportunity for college students, there is still a long process ahead for millennials trying to earn their dream job in 2016.
Photo courtesy of Paul McCoubie/Flickr
