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College Grads Can Look Forward to a Bright Future

Posted on: Tuesday, 16 August 2005, 12:00 CDT

Daily BreezeI have a nephew who graduated from high school in June. Despite the entire family's best efforts at convincing him, he is dead-set against going to college, even junior college. He's not listening to the national statistics -- that college graduates earn $941 a week versus a high school graduate's $685 a week.

And in this labor environment, there's even more reason to seek higher education. Big firms have significantly increased their recruiting efforts over the past year, placing candidates from top- tier undergrad and MBA programs on the winning side of supply and demand, according to WetFeet's 2005 Student Recruitment Report.

WetFeet Research & Consulting, an authoritative resource for factual data, emerging trends and strategy on effective talent recruiting, fielded the survey in April/May 2005.

The company highlights three main factors for the surge: the big firms are hiring for more positions; candidates are receiving more and better offers; and the recruiting season is compressing as candidates are making decisions about their offers much earlier in the recruiting cycle, decreasing the traditional spring and fall recruiting seasons.

"We're now in the third year of a recovery cycle for the student job market," says Steve Pollock, president of WetFeet, Inc. and author of the report. "Students at top schools are highly confident about their prospects in the job market and they've raised the bar for employers, who are having to increase their recruiting activity and up their offers to stay competitive."

The companies hiring the most people in WetFeet's survey increased their number of hires substantially this year. The top 15 companies hired an average of 26.8 students, compared with 16.5 just a year ago.

In addition, the average number of offers received by students at top-tier schools increased for the third straight year with undergrads seeing an 18 percent jump in average number of offers received, and MBAs seeing an 11 percent increase. Since a low point in 2001-02, the average number of offers for undergraduates and MBAs has increased more than 60 percent.

In the most recent (2004) survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council, corporate recruiters who hire MBA graduates listed the following as the top characteristics they look for: strong communication and interpersonal skills; proven ability to perform; cultural fit within the company; evidence of adaptability; quantitative knowledge/technical skills acquired in the MBA program; prior work experience related to the industry, job or company; management knowledge/skills acquired through MBA program; history of increased job responsibility; MBA functional area/concentration of study; a history of leading teams.

For more information

* Books: Choosing the Right College 2005: The Whole Truth About America's Top Schools by Jeremy Beer; Fiske Guide to Colleges 2005 by Edward Fiske.

* Web sites: www.mba.com/mba/AssessCareersAndTheMBA, www.ucls.uchicago.edu/academics/hs/guidance/ choosingcollege.pdf#search='reasons%20for%20college.

Dawn Anfuso is a South Bay-based business writer and former managing editor of Workforce magazine. If you have workplace or job- search questions, write to Dawn Anfuso, c/o Daily Breeze, 5215 Torrance, Blvd., Torrance, CA 90503-4077, e-mail Dawn at dawnanfuso@yahoo.com, or fax her at 310-544-7739. Answers are published on Tuesdays. Writers will remain anonymous.

Source: Daily Breeze

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