A new survey from Michigan State University has some great news for college students who will be graduating with bachelor’s degrees in 2015: hiring for new graduates is expected to jump by 16% next year. Since it was conducted between Aug. 15 and Sept. 23, and the 5,700 employers in the poll were asked about plans for students who will finish school in the spring of 2015, the numbers could go even higher, says Phil Gardner, director of Michigan State’s College Employment Research Institute (CERI), which conducted the survey.
The survey asked employers whether they had firmed up their hiring plans and only a quarter said they had. That means many could further bump up their hiring by the spring. “The increase could go as high as 20%,”he says.
What’s driving the surge? “Hiring demand has been pent up for awhile now,”he says. “The last couple of years have been positive but they were not strong, runaway markets.” Last year the overall hiring increase for new grads was just 7%.
In a breakdown by sector, the survey found explosive growth in the field of so-called information services: Hiring among telecommunications companies, motion pictures, broadcasting and, yes, publishing, will jump by 51% over last year, says Gardner. Since many of the companies in this sector are start-ups, he explains, a small number of hires can yield a large percentage increase, as in a company that grows from six to 12 employees. “A lot of these companies have under 500 employees,” he says. The category also includes big employers like Google and Facebook, which continue to hire hundreds of grads, but in consistent numbers year over year.
The second-fastest-growing category: Finance & Insurance, which will increase hiring by 31%. Gardner says this is a significant turnaround after years of shrinkage and cutbacks, with big banks slashing their mortgage units and cutting back on their investment banking and derivative sections. Now banks are beginning to make up for the cuts.
The third category on CERI’s list is called “Professional, Business & Scientific Services.” This is a very broad area that includes management consulting, accounting, law, engineering services and computer design and services. Clearly some of these subcategories are performing better than others. Law, for instance, only barely inched up last year, according to an American Bar Association study that showed 57% of 2013 law grads finding work, up from 56.2% the previous year. Those numbers are older than Michigan State’s, but I predict there will be little improvement for lawyers this year.
This is a preliminary report. The final version, due out in November, will list 19 sectors as opposed to the six largest sectors revealed today. The largest employer of new college grads? Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which hires 8,000. But that number remains high year-over-year, thus not showing an increase. Oddly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies rental car companies under the heading “real estate,” which isn’t reflected in CERI’s numbers. “I included the big sectors only,” says Gardner.
Here are the industries with the greatest planned increases in college hiring, expressed in CERI’s chart:
Aside from the report that hiring is on the upswing in my industry, publishing, I was surprised by two numbers: the bump in hiring among manufacturers and nonprofits, up 17% and 16% respectively. The one sector with negative growth: Educational Services.
The CERI report includes tips for both job seekers and employers, gleaned from survey questions answered by employers and Gardner’s wisdom. Along with directing CERI, he is the executive director of career services for Michigan State.
After writing countless job search advice stories, I am still taken aback by the sloppiness of many college job seekers. According to the CERI report, “recruiters and employers observe students entering the recruiting season with lackluster résumés and slipshod cover letters. The students who receive interviews appear unfocused and unmotivated.” Students, if you’re reading this: Do take advantage of your career services office and get help polishing your résumé and cover letter before you apply. Typos, inconsistent tenses, unspecific job descriptions and other mistakes will cost you the job. The same goes for cover letters. It’s always best if you can write lively, concise prose but if you can’t manage that, a clean, plainspoken cover letter is better than a clumsy one with bad grammar and misspellings.
More obvious advice that Gardner says students routinely fail to heed: Guys don’t need to wear a suit and tie but they do need to dress tidily. No shorts or sandals. The same advice goes for women. Pants are OK but “don’t show up in pajamas,” he says (he swears this has happened). Speak in complete sentences and avoid slang. “Employers want to see that you’re ready to take a professional position,” he says.
Lastly, students are routinely unrealistic about salary expectations, says Gardner. Before heading into pay negotiations, find out from your career services office what other grads are making in your sector. Universities don’t usually track salaries from specific companies. For that, try a site like Glassdoor and good old fashioned word of mouth.
As for employers, a major problem in a tightening job market is reneging. In other words, a student may accept a job in the fall or winter, but keep searching and when they find a better offer, back out of the first job. Survey respondents also expressed dismay over parents who pressure their kids to find positions at companies that the parents think are more acceptable. Gardner says companies must accept this reality and after making a new hire, devote effort to making them feel wanted before their start date. Stay in touch by email and social media. Create a Facebook group for new hires, for instance, and post company news. Host special events at the company. What about a New York consulting firm who has hired a Michigan State student in the fall for a spring 2015 start date? Should it fly the recruit to the east coast? “If you want to keep them, you probably should,” says Gardner. “It’s an expense of doing business.”
