Caps, gowns and a reality check

Allison Linn Senior writer • Profile • E-mail

Until last October, Cristina Bernardi wasn’t too worried about what she might do after she graduated from Boston’s Northeastern University.

After all, she had done two six-month internships with MTV and had been told that interns were often hired after graduation. Then the economy tanked, that potential job dried up and Bernardi’s frantic efforts to apply for other television production jobs resulted in only one interview, for a receptionist position.

Now, Bernardi finds herself living with her parents and working three part-time jobs, including one at the family masonry supply business. It’s not the life the 22-year-old envisioned when she left for college, but it's a reality that many graduating seniors are facing this spring.

“We went from the hottest job market for graduating seniors in 2008 to the most competitive and coldest job market by Jan. 1, 2009,” said Lee Svete, director of Notre Dame’s career center. “It was like you turned off the spigot.”

When the class of 2009 entered college in 2005, the economy was in good shape and there seemed to be little doubt that most students would end their college years with offers to work in the field of their choice.

Four years later, with the economy mired in recession and the unemployment rate at its highest level in decades, many new graduates are finding their job searches are longer and more difficult than they would have imagined. The jobs may come with a lower salary or offer less flexibility than they expected, be farther away from family and friends or even be in a different field than they hoped to go into.

And those are the lucky ones. Some are collecting their diplomas without a job at all.

Job offers, salaries down
The National Association of Colleges and Employers said employers expect to hire 22 percent fewer new graduates from the class of 2009 than they hired from the class of 2008. For those who do snag an employer’s interest, the organization said the average starting salary offer is down 2.2 percent, to $48,515, from the average salary offer in the spring of 2008.

Caroline Payne had her rude awakening earlier in the school year, when the senior at Springfield College in Springfield, Mass., began looking for an unpaid internship and found that many would-be employers weren’t even willing to look at her resume.

“I was like, ‘Ugh, you won’t even let me work for free?’” said Payne, who is earning a degree in health studies and hopes to be a dietitian.

Payne, 22, was eventually able to get an unpaid internship, helping out with a weight-loss program for kids, but she hasn’t had as much luck finding a paying job for when she graduates later this month. Instead, she’s planning to go back to teaching swim classes and working as a lifeguard, a job she’s been doing since she was 16. She’s also moving back in with her parents, something she never expected to do.

“If you had asked me four years ago, I would have said, ‘Nope, as soon as I graduate (I’m going to) go out on my own,'” she said. “But now, there’s no way. It’s not even in the realm of possibilities.”

Career center directors say the swift change has been jarring but also may serve as a valuable wake-up call to a generation that grew up in an era of relative prosperity.

Those who once may have balked at such things as an unpaid internship, a lower-than-expected salary offer or no signing bonus are increasingly happy to just have a job.

“Tides have turned,” Svete said.

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