Fields of Dreams : Jobs Are Out of Reach for Many College Seniors

ORANGE — After months of hunting for a good entry-level administrative job, after filling out scores of applications and talking to dozens of employers from Orange County and Los Angeles to San Diego and Lake Tahoe, graduating senior Allison Browne is still jobless.

She’s heard the same old story: Thanks but no thanks. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

True, she had also heard the horror stories about the plunging job market, the predictions of doom and gloom for this spring commencement’s crop of job-seeking college graduates.

But like so many other students, Browne--who, along with 329 other seniors at Chapman College’s Orange campus is receiving a bachelor’s degree today--didn’t think things could be that bad.

“Wow, was I wrong! Things are that dismal, maybe even worse than dismal,” said the 24-year-old sociology major from Anaheim, whose search has taken her to hotel-resort and retail front offices as well as county and municipal social-services departments.

“Believe me,” she added, “having a degree doesn’t seem to mean much--not this year.”

Call them the recession class of ’91.

Not only are there too many competitors for too few jobs in many degree-holding fields, large numbers of graduating seniors are also facing another kind of fiscal-crunch reality: accepting lower-status, lower-paying work.

And to underscore the crisis even more, the latest national graduate-hiring surveys offer little, if any, comfort.

Michigan State University’s Employment Research Institute, which surveyed more than 400 companies, has reported that the hiring of graduates will be down 9.8% from 1990. This comes on top of last year’s decline--13.3%, the worst since the early 1980s recession.

Southern California trends seem to follow the national pattern. While graduates are still in strong demand in such fields as chemical and environmental engineering, computer sciences, health care and accounting, they are finding few jobs in aerospace, retail, banking, financial services and heavy manufacturing.

At Cal State Fullerton, where 5,198 seniors will be awarded bachelor’s degrees June 1 and 2, the number of company recruiters visiting the campus slipped 8%. The drop was even bigger, 20%, at larger CSU campuses in San Jose and San Diego.

At UC Irvine--where 2,921 will be graduating June 15--and at Chapman College, the recruiter turnouts also dropped sharply, around 20%.

Such tough times, campus job counselors said, call for tougher but also more flexible and imaginative job-seeking graduates--the case, more than ever, of survival of the fittest.

“It means students have to be more ingenious, have to work harder--and earlier--at finding the right jobs in the right places,” said Alyce Thomas, Chapman’s staff liaison with company recruiters.

Even so, as the sampling of ’91 graduates at Chapman indicates, there are no guarantees--not in this kind of volatile and hard-to-predict job market.

Ask marketing major Danna Cotman, 22, of Tustin, who is hunting for a marketing or similar management job in the fiercely competitive fashion industry.

She seems to have done all the right things: a previous degree in fashion design, a part-time position with an Orange County sportswear firm, an early-bird start in networking with potential employers from Southern California to New York.

And in recent months, she has sent out scores of resumes to key companies in that network, hoping to land a management position in the $20,000 to $26,000 a year bracket--the going rate, she says, for someone with her credentials.

Employers seem impressed by Cotman, who won this year’s dean’s award as outstanding undergraduate in Chapman’s school of business and economics. But, she said, “everyone in the (fashion) industry is hurting. There’s no openings for younger people. All they can offer is to keep your resume on file.”

For Cotman, it means intensifying her search--more resumes to more fashion firms, more phone calls, more office visits.

“There are good jobs for me out there,” she said. “I know it. I have to believe it. But good jobs don’t fall into (graduates’) laps anymore. You have to make it happen!”

Stuart Caldwell, 26, is deserting the job trail, at least for now.

“I really wanted to go to work full time right away, to get more experience in legislative or government posts under my belt,” explained Caldwell, a political science major who is entering graduate school at Chapman this summer--much earlier than he had planned.

He’s already had some work experience in his chosen field. In fall, 1989, he received a national collegiate-sponsored internship to serve one semester in Washington, D.C., as a staff assistant to Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.). His duties included doing research for the House subcommittee on Asian-Pacific affairs, a panel that Solarz chairs.

But last fall, when Caldwell started hunting for a similar post full time after graduation, he ran into budgetary walls. “Everyone is in the same bind,” he said of visits to various legislative district offices and state government agencies. “Every office is being hit by a job freeze.”

So he’s had to revamp his career strategy. He’s one of an increasingly large number of seniors going on to full-time post-graduate studies. At Chapman, 40% of the ’91 seniors are expected to enter graduate school or some kind of professional program this year.

“It’s just not practical to keep battling the job market, at least not the way it is now,” said Caldwell, who had been looking mainly for a congressional-aide post, which usually starts at around $28,000 a year. “It makes no sense to keep spinning your wheels.”

The job market is not one of total bleakness, campus counselors like to emphasize.

Consider Associated Students president Dana Daws, 22. A pre-law/English major and winner of Chapman’s top honor, the Cheverton Trophy, she will work for the same local law firm where she has been a part-time research assistant. She plans to enter law school in another year.

Another is finance intern Ross Attenborough, 24, who will continue in the fiscal management section of the Orange County Administrative Office--a position he found through Chapman’s Cooperative Education Program.

And accounting majors Heather Church, 21, and Greg Palme, 24, who had served internships with other firms, have both been hired by Deloitte & Touche to work in that company’s Costa Mesa office.

Such job-holding graduates consider themselves lucky, especially those whose starting salaries meet the national standards in their fields.

The average starting salary for newly hired graduating seniors is $26,458 a year, according to Michigan State University’s latest nationwide survey. In individual fields, the report said, typical salaries range from $20,000 in retail and $27,000 in accounting to $38,000 in chemical engineering.

Yet other seniors, who feel they are qualified but are currently locked out of their degree-holding professions, are considering--or have accepted--jobs that pay far below the standard in their chosen fields.

“The job’s routine, and I’m not getting much money at all,” explained one Chapman senior, who asked not to be named. “But I have living expenses to meet. I have a student loan to pay off.”

But, campus counselors point out, the number of 1991 graduates actually seeking employment has yet to peak. It seems that many have yet to even launch such searches.

Robert Crane, a Chapman political science major, admits he’s one of them. “A lot of us--me included--have been putting it off. We don’t start our campaigns until after graduation,” explained the 22-year-old, who now works part time in a publications store.

“But that’s not so strange. I mean, you’re up to your ears in studies for four years. Then final exams hit you, and everything else to do with just closing out that degree.”

There may be another overwhelming factor: the specter of the recessionary job market itself. “Everyone is saying it’s the worst in years. Frankly, that’s intimidating. You tend not to rush out and look,” said Crane, whose goal is to eventually land a staff job with a legislative or governmental office.

But there’s one consolation. “Everyone is also saying the recession is going to lift--if not tomorrow, then maybe soon,” he added. “It can’t get any worse--so it has to get better!”