As you may have heard, job prospects for college seniors graduating this spring are looking grim. Just how grim? According to a recent article in Business Week the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), estimates that employers will hire 22% fewer new graduates from this year's class than they did from last year. And if that's not enough to keep students awake at night, 46% of the employers surveyed said they were uncertain if hiring would recover by the fall. So yeah, pretty grim.

But then, for a student standing on the brink of the post-college abyss the question of "what's next?" has always been chill-inducing. No matter the economic climate. When I graduated back in May 2007 I didn't have an answer (in spite of my best efforts), and it flat out terrified me. So much so that after a month of getting nowhere in Northern California, I decided to move across the country to New York. Without a job. I figured I would sublet an apartment for two months, send in as many applications as possible, explore every contact I had and if nothing panned out… well, I would cross that bridge (a bridge that would inevitably lead to my parents' door in LA) when I came to it. For better or worse, it was a plan.

Today I don't know if I would make that same choice. Or, if anyone would endorse my decision if I did (mind you, I was looking to go into traditional publishing at the time). It's a sad realization. Both for the hypothetical me who never would have come here and challenged herself, and also for those graduates who will enter the "real world" this year and end up making plans that sacrifice passion for the sake of caution. To them, I say what I hope someone would have told me: even though the times demand a certain degree of practicality, there's still room for impulsiveness. Instead of applying to law school because it seems like the safe choice, why not take an internship in the field you would have gone into (two great sites dedicated to helping Y-ers do this: YouIntern and InternIN). Instead of laying low at your parents' house, check out programs abroad for helping with community service or teaching English.

There are a lot of alternative options out there. And who knows? Maybe the skills and experiences you acquire while biding your time will actually come in handy when the job market does rebound. Maybe they'll even take you in a completely different direction than you expected. If nothing else, the recession-induced hiring slowdown gives recent grads who are willing to take a risk the chance to find out.

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Categorized under: Collegians

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