Job assistance at Career Center

In the halls of academia echoes the unknowns of students futures. The concern of most students is simply to graduate. But the age-old terms "work experience" and "thinking about what one wants to be when he or she grows up," are what students should b e planning before the commencement ceremony.

Some students feel the college-education process fails to provide a transition from college to the job.

"I know people that are still working at the grocery store," Brent Henderson, 20, junior in political science said.

"Some students need extra help in finding a job, the degree is not just good enough," Henderson said. One solution to this situation is before graduation a mandatory visit to the career center should be implemented, I know it sounds remedial, but I thin k it will help, Henderson said.

Cal State Long Beach's Career Development Center provides the extra help for those students that need it. "Students are paying for the center, they might as well utilize it," Wade W. Hawley, director of the Career Development Center, said.

The biggest response he hears once a student visits the center is, "I didn't know all these things were available," he said.

All senior status students with 110 units or more and all graduate students at CSULB are invited by the counselors at the Career Development Center to participate in the On-Campus Interview Program.

The center has held this program for more than 28 years bringing employers to the campus to interview students for entry level professional positions.

The center has 14 interview rooms in which the interviews are conducted.

The Career Development Center estimated that through this program approximately 430 students were offered full-time positions with an average salary of $32,700 for technical positions and $24,500 for non-technical positions.

Each May, the center sponsors the Job Faire. This provides employers with an opportunity to recruit students before the end of the academic year. About 70 companies, non-profit organizations, and governmental agencies attend this one-day event to hold interviews. This event attracts over 5,000 students, representing a wide range of majors.

Between 5,000 to 7,000 students with the 110 unit completion receive a letter inviting them to the center for these career planning events, Hawley said.

One new big trend is students are taking longer to decide what to do, Bruce Riesenberg, associate director of the Career and Life Planning Center at UCI, said.

Students are taking longer to decide if they should attend graduate school or get a job, Riesenberg said. After graduation six months later students are still in transition, he said.

The career survey results of the 1993-1994 UCI graduates of Beyond the Bachelor's Degree of which out of 2,500 graduates who had received their baccalaureate degree only 556 responded, a 22.2 percent rate of return.

More than one fourth of the graduates reported finding their jobs through the Career and Life Planning Center (26.5 percent), 20.6 percent by networking, 15 percent by making direct contact with the employer, 13.9 percent by having had previous contact with the employer, 11.4 percent through media ads, and 5.8 percent through employment agencies; other methods were reported successful by 6.7 percent.

"Internships and networking are essentials," Riesenberg said.

The results of "Where Have They Gone?", an employment survey report of 1994 Cal State Fullerton graduates, reports nearly 95 percent respondents have remained in California.

This figure has remained virtually unchanged for the past six years. In February 1995, a total of 59 percent of the respondents reports working in Orange County and 26 percent working in Los Angeles County. These combined figures indicate that 85 perce nt of 1994 respondents work in these two counties; the same figure for 1993 is 87 percent and 1992 it is 85 percent.

With graduates remaining in the local area competition and stress for jobs searching increases.

"I recommend time management for school and job searching," Michele Powell, career counselor of the Career Development and Counseling Center at CSU Fullerton.

As a student gets closer to graduation, an Interest Inventory Test may help students make decisions for their career goals, Powell said. The test goes through an inventory of interest, scores the answers and gives students a profile. Theories of a caree r search are grouped into scales statistically linked together.

The full-service career center is a unique combination of career and personal counseling. The students receive various kinds of counseling from stress management to body image, Powell said.

Powell advises students to tell a potential employer that he or she works, because a possible employer will hesitate to hire someone who hasn't worked before.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor has new projections for the American work force from 1994 to 2005.

The future supply of workers, the labor force, is projected to increase by 16 million during the 1994-2005 period, from 131 million to 147 million. This represents an increase of 12 percent, less than the 16 percent increase over the previous 11-year pe riod, 1982-1993.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the women's labor force will grow more rapidly than the men's; the women's share of the labor force will increase from 46 to 48 percent. The male work force will supply slightly over half of the labor force entran ts over the 1994-2005 period.

The labor force 55 years of age and older will grow faster than the younger labor force as the baby-boom generation (born 1946-1964) continues to age. Compared to the labor force 25 to 34 years of age is projected to decline by almost 4 million, reflect ing the decrease in births in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Included in UCI's Beyond the Bachelor's Degree survey results, graduates in the workforce were not pursuing continued education. The respondents showed 53.8 percent were employed full time. While 20.3 percent were employed part time and 17.9 were not em ployed, and not seeking work and 7.9 percent were unemployed and seeking work.

The survey speculates a possible reflection of the very competitive employment environment faced by the 1994 graduates, the unemployment rate was nearly double the 4 percent rate reported by 1990 graduates.

The director of the Career and Testing Center at Cal State Sacramento, Russ Bruch, recommends a visit to the center as part of the orientation for students to prepare them for possible future employment.

The center sends out a newsletter, has articles in the school newspaper and contacts local business for recruiting students, Bruch said

. "When students call they talk to a person, not a computer menu-driven telephone which makes the center service oriented," Bruch said. CSULB student, Frank L. Chandler, 33, senior in international studies, says he has seen ads in the Daily Forty-Niner and on a Student, Orientation, Administration and Registration tour of the career center on campus.

"But I have not received a letter from the center, and I have completed 110 units," Chandler said. "I visited the career center on campus, and I felt the counselor was a fellow student," he said.

"The students need to take responsibility and interface with the career center," Jack Zeran, career counselor with CSULB's Career Development Center said.

A survey completed by the center in the 1990-1991 academic year of those employers, 65 percent rated CSULB students as "good to excellent" in terms of their qualifications and 56 percent rated them as "good to excellent" in terms of their preparation an d performance during the interview.

Zeran recommends students talk to faculty, visit the center for job searching and resume writing, interviews and networking about six months before graduation.

The questions Zeran hears most from CSULB students are: "Why didn't they tell me sooner?"

"Why didn't I start sooner?"

"I haven't had the time!"

"That's the mistake students make, is taking themselves out of the mainstream," Zeran said. "Students should come to school with their head up, not looking at the ground," he said.

To make an appointment with the Career Development Center, one may call, 310-985-4151.