Terrible job market for recent grads

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you can get away with never having a job before if you are in STEM. If you are in business or law snd never had a job before graduating you are the work équivalent of an adult who has never been on a date.

It doesn't hold true for STEM either. If you've never had a real internship, it's going to be tough at graduation. Most engineering students do have good internships, and get offers and certainly contacts and references as a result. But it's as tough for STEM grads without experience as anyone else. But engineering students with internships sophomore and junior year do tend to do well. It's the experience and proving they're smart and a team player that matters. But that's probably pretty universal across all fields.

Graduating from any university without work or significant internship experience after four years is a giant red flag, especially given all the competition out there. That's a trash bin app no matter the college. Even a job scooping ice scream is a huge step up from the willfully unemployed for four years.

Hiring manager in STEM here. I am pretty indifferent about prior work experience when hiring entry-level people.

We do care about which upper-level in-major electives the applicant took. We do prefer candidates with a 3.0 or higher GPA. We ask job-applicable questions when interviewing and care about those answers. We care a lot about which work tools (e.g., Matlab, AutoCAD, Matlab) and knowledge (e.g., Verilog or VHDL for FPGAs) the applicant brings to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am very sadden that a degree like philosophy, mathematics and physics are becoming rarer. It's unfortunate because a bachelor's degree in mathematics is one of the best degree you can have. The higher level math courses that are heavy on proofs prepare you to think in a way that you will bullet proof any career you embark on. I am successful today because of the bachelor's degree in math that I got 30 years ago. I have had many jobs over the years in a variety of fields and every time I was able to excel during interviews and at my tasks because I know how to think and solve problems.

I think we would steer our kids back to those traditional majors like math, physics and philosophy. But the biggest roadblock to that is corporate America. Their interests is not the country's interests. They want people who can use tools either hire them domestically or import them. Now when the vast majority of college graduates are not thinkers but glorified power users we find ourselves in the situation we are in.

AI will never be smarter than a human. Most people will say I am wrong because they never took courses in philosophy.

What are you talking about? I was a math major and now a risk quant on Wall Street, I have no problem hiring math grads in the junior ranks. Not to mention the horde of physics PHds in quant funds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people posting about how graduates should have fast food and retail experience don’t realize that many of those jobs have gone to full time year round workers including new legal workers (asylum seekers can legally work after a year).

We now live in CA where the minimum fast food wage is $20 an hour. My 16 year old applied to 10 fast food jobs in May and June. He got 2 interviews. When he said he could only work full time in the summer but could not work over 20 hours in the fall when school started he wasn’t hired.

The only jobs his friends got were life guarding and the attractive girls were hired as hostesses in restaurants.

I spend equal time in DC and upstate NY and I see tons of high school and college age kids in retail jobs in both places.

The point is you are not helping your kids by paying all ths bills for their upper middle class lifestyle and then suddenly expecting them to understand to be prepared for work when they graduate from college. A kid who graduated college with no workplace experience of any kind, even if volunteer experience, is behind the curve.

well plenty of foreign students get their masters without work experience (student visa doesn't allow working), and they find jobs just fine.

And most of these have never had any type of job at all before getting a Master's degree?

Nope, a lot of them are rich and spoiled. But they do some sort of research work on campus or join a finance club.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is it possible to graduate college without work experience? I am not familiar with other fields, but in my major electrical engineering they repeatedly emphasized to us that we needed work experience before graduating.

I was an EE who did not have work experience. No problem getting a job when I graduated.

My dad is sn engineer and I think it's a much different thing for engiengineers. EE have skills that are in huge demand in their field with drafting and computer programs and they get a lot of experience with that in school..A lot of majors do not involve that type of practical experience so you have to seek the practical applications outside.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am very sadden that a degree like philosophy, mathematics and physics are becoming rarer. It's unfortunate because a bachelor's degree in mathematics is one of the best degree you can have. The higher level math courses that are heavy on proofs prepare you to think in a way that you will bullet proof any career you embark on. I am successful today because of the bachelor's degree in math that I got 30 years ago. I have had many jobs over the years in a variety of fields and every time I was able to excel during interviews and at my tasks because I know how to think and solve problems.

I think we would steer our kids back to those traditional majors like math, physics and philosophy. But the biggest roadblock to that is corporate America. Their interests is not the country's interests. They want people who can use tools either hire them domestically or import them. Now when the vast majority of college graduates are not thinkers but glorified power users we find ourselves in the situation we are in.

AI will never be smarter than a human. Most people will say I am wrong because they never took courses in philosophy.

What are you talking about? I was a math major and now a risk quant on Wall Street, I have no problem hiring math grads in the junior ranks. Not to mention the horde of physics PHds in quant funds.

PP's point was that less kids are electing to major in math/physics/philosophy. He made as a former math major like you that it helped him navigate the job market and adapt. The data doesn't lie. Traditional degrees like BS in Math, Physics are simply disappearing. There has been a push in this country for kids to choose so called "practical" fields and that's why you can see 3 to 4 different flavours of the same statistics degree in all kind of departments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is it possible to graduate college without work experience? I am not familiar with other fields, but in my major electrical engineering they repeatedly emphasized to us that we needed work experience before graduating.

I was an EE who did not have work experience. No problem getting a job when I graduated.

If you had work experience perhaps you would have gotten a job paying you $1 extra.