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Students who time their graduation date in relation to their degree may have an easier time finding a job.
Patty Counihan, director of the University of Maine Career Center, said the percentage of graduating students finding jobs soon after December graduations is proportionally better than the percentage of May graduates due to a difference in class size.
She added that graduating students should be aware that certain types of employers tend to hire at specific points in the year.
For students with an education degree, a May graduation date is customary, as it is unlikely they would find a job in January. For students with a business or accounting degree, graduating in December is a good idea because most corporate fiscal years begin on Jan. 1, when they may be looking for new employees.
“Employers tend to forget about the academic year. They don’t know when the jobs are going to open up,” said Counihan. “In that way, I think December grads have a leg up.”
The characteristics of employers affect how easy it is for a graduate to find a job. Counihan said the Career Center has created an October career fair for engineers, in addition to its general spring career fair.
“Engineering firms or firms that hire a lot of engineers often plan ahead a lot more than other sectors, so they know what they need,” Counihan said. “For the sectors that LAS would really be interested in, those jobs have a much shorter time frame” between when employers announce the position and when they hope to fill it.
“Life After UMaine,” a survey conducted by the office of institutional studies in February 2010, asked 1,507 former UMaine students who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in Dec. 2007, May 2008 or August 2008 whether they had found employment or had gone back to school.
Of the 1,507 surveyed, 621 graduates responded. Seventy-one percent said they were employed full time, 14.4 percent said they were employed part time, 7.9 percent said they had enrolled in graduate school without finding a job and 6.5 percent said they were unemployed. Twenty-two percent of respondents said they had both found a job and enrolled in graduate school.
The survey of Dec. 2006, May 2007 and August 2007 graduates reported that 78 percent of graduates had been hired for a full-time job, showing that the percentage had dropped by seven percentage points since then.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, national unemployment rose from 4.5 percent of the population in Dec. 2006 to 6.1 percent in Aug. 2008.
“I think Maine was slower to get into the recession but now it’s slower to get out,” Counihan said.
The most recent Regional and State Employment and Unemployment Summary published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 9.6 percent of the national population and 7.4 percent of Maine’s population were unemployed in Oct. 2010.
“It looks pretty bleak if you just do the surface view. Maybe I’m an optimist, but I think things are going to turn around in this state,” Counihan said.
Meghan Robitaille, a sixth-year psychology student, is preparing to graduate this December. Robitaille switched from majoring in nursing last December and is unsure where to start looking for a job.
“With nursing, it was easy, but with psych, I have no idea. I’ll take whatever I can get,” Robitaille said. “From listening to the news, I don’t have a lot of hope.”
She said she would likely look for a substitute teaching job “for the time being, just to start paying off loans. Just to have something to do so I’m not just sitting at home twiddling my thumbs.”
“I’ve just been so focused on graduating and getting out of here,” she said. “I have no idea what I want to do at this point.”
Allison Rusk, a fifth-year student double-majoring in psychology and international affairs, is currently applying for internships to ease her transition after graduation.
“A lot of them are unpaid work and volunteer work, so if I had a full-time job it would be fine, but it’s hard to work two jobs,” Rusk said.
Calvin Do, a fifth-year business management student, is applying for jobs before graduation in hopes of lining something up for January.
“I know I’m all set for school,” Do said. “Right now I’m kind of worrying. I haven’t been getting interviews.”
Do said he plans to work for a few years before going back to school to get his master’s degree in business administration. He wants to work at an airport in a managerial position, but said he is willing to take any job.
“Nowadays, it’s really hard to find a job. Any job is a good job. I’ll take anything,” Do said.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish a report on November’s unemployment levels this month, and a December report will be published in mid-January.
Read the Jan. 20 issue of The Maine Campus for a full analysis of the mid-year job market.
