Jobs for Students - Where Are They?

jtpalinmajere asks: "The past few years students like myself have found themselves in an ominously precarious situation. This is to say that the availability for jobs in the computer industry that are suited well for fresh meat graduates are dwindling at an alarming rate. Personally, I graduate this coming Spring and have been job searching for the past semester with little if any success at finding a prospective future employer. The placement office at my university hasn't been too helpful for many students in the CS department. The only companies that I have come in contact with that might consider fresh graduates are Microsoft and government agencies such as the FBI. If I can actually compete with the 76% foreign immigrant population of Microsoft then I might see that as a fairly good start, though the odds don't seem to roll in my favor. As far as the government is concerned, I'm simply not old enough for any job that gets paid more than minimum wage and has actual job security. Most of my job searching has been conducted through services like Dice and Monster. 99% of the jobs listed in these services require 2 - X many years of previous experience using Y software with a current Z security clearance level. I've even found one company that wants 10 years experience specifically with .NET -- go figure! I'm not looking for the dream job that everyone hopes to one day attain. I'm looking for a job that will simply get me into the industry with a meager salary large enough to sustain life. How many other students find themselves in my position? What are some opinions, particularly from our non-students, for soon to be graduates like myself?"

Temp temp temp... Oh! and Open Source...

[Big Sean O]

Get a temp job that starts to pay the bills. Let the firm know that you would prefer tech-area jobs. Temp work is the great back door through which the inept Human Resource director is circumvented.

If you like the place, and they like you, you will eventually get an offer for a 'real' job. Meanwhile, you will get to see all the different types of jobs there are: specifically, which places you really don't want to work.

While you're slumming in the mail room, you should contribute to some open source projects at home. Temp jobs almost never make you sign oppressive IP contracts. It will keep your skills up, and you will earn a reputation with your peers. Non-paid work is _always_ impressive on your resume. If a shop says "Hey, why are you doing OSS stuff?" you can say it was to keep your skills sharp while you found a 'real' job.

But don't write off the 'real' world. There's a far bigger, and hidden, market for people who know how to program. I started in environmental consulting, and one of our best consultants was a database guru. I recently automated table generation in a large report. Saved us a week of formatting time. Programmer is not in my job description. These types of jobs generally have a specific problem domain, which gives you a leg up when you want to move to a 'real' tech shop.

Aim For Contract Jobs

[cam_macleod]

I was in the exact same situation -- job hunting for months before graduation, with no results. Admittedly, I was a B- student, so I can see why I wasn't the top of every list, but to not appear on *any* list?

Anyway, my success was in contracting. Talk to IT recruiters about filling small roles and assisting other contractors, that sort of thing. Just to get your name out there, and to get some actual after-school-experience. I was jobless for 3 months after graduation, then I did contract teaching (computer repair, network design, etc) for 4 months, then was hired full-time at the company where I'd been contracting most often.

YMMV of course. Good luck!

You need to bust your ass when in school.

[BoomerSooner]

Try like hell to get on somewhere to get "real world" experience. It makes all the difference when looking for a job.

It also helps to move to an area where jobs are plentiful. For example when I graduated I too couldn't find a job worth anything in Oklahoma. So I moved to Dallas. After working there and getting experience the jobs I wasn't qualified for in my home town area were now begging for experienced developers.

I also did lots of free work (software development related) in my spare time. You can always find non-profit organizations that need help and will give you a real project without the time constraints usually associated with a real job. This is experience and you'd be doing something good for your community (I still volunteer). Just make sure not to flake out b/c non-profit's get a lot of people who want to help but don't want to put forth the effort needed.

Co-op

[Apreche]

I go to a university that requires me to have 4 co-ops before I graduate. A Co-op is a paid internship in which I work for 10 weeks, 40 hours a week in my field of study. Since I am a CS major I must get a job writing code, developing software, etc. or it wont count towards graduation. It is incredibly difficult to find such a job. I plan to spend the break I have right know contacting as many companies as possible so that I will be sure to get a co-op in the spring. I really need the money.

If you would like to hire a computer science major to work for you check my resume [rit.edu].

Re:I guess this is "normal"

[cybermace5]

It's a hard life, being a 2001 electrical engineer grad at this time.

What I really want to know is what makes these companies so completely STUPID that they won't hire fresh graduates? Many kids are kicking out of engineering already, and starting engineering majors are at an all-time low.

Ok, an HR guy may see someone with FIVE or TEN years of experience to be a better choice. But what happens in five years, when I have been working a job barely related to engineering? I won't remember a thing I learned in school. I've been keeping up with my projects, trying to learn additional skills, but it's not easy when trying to hold down a (poorly paying) full time job and pay off student loans. The companies are setting themselves up to have NO competent engineers available in the next three to four years.

By setting insane required experience levels, they are limiting their candidates to two types: those who will demand higher pay and retire ten years earlier, and those who are ethically twisted enough to blatantly lie on their resumes.

The idiocy evident in many of these corporations, as well as their failure to analyze the talent pool on a long-term basis, is seriously convincing me that contracting may be the only way to keep a safe distance. The only problem with that, is developing a good contracting business is even harder than finding a job. People just don't understand that an engineer doesn't need to have the EXACT experience in what you want them to do. Most engineers have the skill of learning everything necessary to complete a project, and making decisions based on the research of others. It's primarily an application field; you wouldn't question a carpenter's ability to make a desk out of black walnut even if he's only made maple and cherry desks before.

Someday I will find people who have a clue. Or take a few of my money-making inventions and actually do something with them.

jobs for students

[VAXaholic]

Dont be daunted by the often illogical 'experience' requirements. Most of the time, these are taken from boilerplate templates and guidelines that HR departments get or cook up themselves. A job posteing seldom has what the original author intended after it gets through HR people! Having been on the other side of this fence before, trying to hire people (and wasting my time interviewing way too many people who were completely unsuitable before I found some folks who were), I have to say that the job description folks post is every bit as sensitive in triggering interest on the part of applicants as their resumes are in triggering interest in employers. On the same subject, most management have, probably from their super-leet business schools, some strange guidelines in their heads of 'rules of thumb' that a guy of some degree of seniority should have foo years aof experience with such and such buzzwords. Your mention of one that asked for 10 yrs experience with m$'s .net stuff is a prime example. My advice: spend a few minutes to figure out what the employer _really_ wants, and send
him a resume anyway. Make sure you point out to him what you can do and make mention of projects youve worked on (if any) that give a hint that you are good at working on projects. Dont just shy away because you dont have a certain number of years experience. Often the actual interviewing or
even screening of resumes is done by people who _do_ know what they're talking about, in any well run organization at least. Good managers know to use their specialists to do their job.

My experiences

[ben_degonzague]

Well today is my second day at my new job and I'll tell you my experiences. All throughout school I worked at a local networking company gaining experience and certification. I attended a community college then transfered to a state university. My grades are ok, nothing to write home about. I graduated this spring and my previous employeer didn't have a full time spot for me, tough luck. I spent the months of June through late October in searching for work. I used the local paper, monster, net temps (found some part time work for beer mone) there), various websites from NY State dept. of labor, friends, former co-workers, and local career fairs. I don't know what the poster is talking about government jobs. THe only ones I found at the FBI wanted experience or big certifications like the CCIE from cisco. Not only that but you have to pass physical requirements as well. I applied there as well and the local office had gone through my app, but I wasn't going to hold my breath for 6 month process. New York state itself is so big and slow that application process takes a long time too. My current job I landed after I visited their booth at a government technology fair in albany. I gave them my resume and talked for a little bit. I got a call a month later about a different position and they wanted an interview. What's funny is that I went for 3 months without an interview and then I got 3 interviews in one week!

So, I had 4 years of part time experience (technical and the more important non technical skills) with a college degree and it still took 5 months to land a job. This one is pretty sweet. I work with a few other laid back people and a laid back boss. Plus I have a nice 17" flat screen with a P4 :)

I hope that helps. I felt compelled to write something since I had gone through the exact same thing the poster will go through. It wasn't that bad having the whole summer to mysefl though. Good luck!

Ben

(oh, don't beat yourself up over a "dream job." They don't exist! A dream job is getting paid for vacation. There might be the most ideal job, but you can't be that selective right out of college.)

imho...

Re:Temp temp temp... Oh! and Open Source...

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried for almost a year to break into the field after graduating from college. I worked part-time in a job that wasn't related to my degree and did open source development in my spare time. I mentioned my open source projects in a small section at the end of my resume. I submitted by resume for dozens of jobs on dice but never even received even an interview. Not even so much as a rejection letter-- I never heard a thing.

Then I got the idea of making a bigger deal of my open source work. I put each open source project I had done significant work on down with as much description and detail as each of my actual jobs, including tools used, descriptions of the tasks and roles I was responsible for, etc.

My next batch of resumes scored me two interviews. (out of four resume submissions), one of which landed me my current Programming job. Open source development got me my paid developer job. It turned out the person responsible for going through the resumes and doing the interviews for the position was an avid open source developer in his spare time himself. Out of something like one hundred resumes, I made the short list of interviewies, and that was all I needed.

My job experience may not have looked all that impressive on paper, but face to face, I was able to prove my ability (in something like a six hour interview!)