The job market appears to be improving for outbound college grads: Hiring of bachelor’s degree holders is up 5 percent over last year, and there is new job growth in sectors from hospitals to energy to construction.
Those are just two of the bright spots in the new 2012-13 “Recruiting Trends” report, a Michigan State University publication prepared by The Collegiate Employment Research Institute (CERI) and the MSU Career Services Network. The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh’s Career Services department has developed a relationship with Phil Gardner, Ph.D., principal Investigator & Director of CERI and encourages its New North, Wisconsin and Midwestern employer partners to contribute trends and data to the report.
“Having our Career Services partners share hiring and salary data helps CERI develop a more precise snapshot of the job market so our UW Oshkosh graduates and tens of thousands of other graduates have a much better idea of the environment they are about to enter,” said UW Oshkosh Career Services Director Jaime Page-Stadler. “It’s one more way we can help prepare our students for that important, successful transition from campus to community.”
Some of the other highlights of the 2012-13 Recruiting Trends report include:
- New job growth is in hospitals, energy, construction, and health care industries. Job losses are reported in banking, defense, coal, casinos, and retail.
- The Midwest region is increasing hiring in strong industries like finance, marketing, supply chain, advertising and public relations and communications.
- According to the report: “While the market for graduates with Bachelor’s degrees continues to improve, the market for MBAs is set to contract. Hiring from MBAs remains bifurcated. Slightly more employers are reducing their hiring targets (42 percent) than those planning to increase theirs (39 percent)…”
- The “most requested bachelor’s degrees” by employers who participated in the report’s survey was led by the generic “all majors,” followed by “Accounting,” “All Technical Majors” (degree not specified), “Marketing,” “Finance,” “Computer Science,” “All Business” (degree not specified), “Communication,” “Computer Programming,” “Computer Information Systems,” and “Electrical Engineering.”
- College hiring salaries are not increasing, so reported about 75 percent of organizations that participated in the survey.
- “Golden egg” internships – those that evolve into full-time jobs — are still the number-one strategy for gaining employment. Employers are using programs to hire entry-level employees from interns, with a 57 percent conversion rate nationwide, according to the report.
“There are some positive indications that the job market is getting better for graduates, and that’s a tremendous boost for UW Oshkosh students ready to enter into new careers,” Page-Stadler said. “Recruiting Trends also sheds light on some continuing challenges for students entering the workforce, but are Career Services team is daily helping the UW Oshkosh students and graduates be best prepared to hit the ground running, contribute and enjoy a great quality of life.”
Career Services Spring 2013 Career Fair on the Fox is scheduled for Tuesday, March 5, 2013 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Kolf Sports Center. The biannual career fair draws thousands of students and helps connect them, face-to-face, with companies and organizations looking to hire and recruit interns, offer co-ops, practicums. The career fair also features dozens of networking opportunities, chances to explore technical, undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs and have resumes critiqued.
Here’s a quick glimpse of this fall’s Career Fair on the Fox, held on Sept. 25 in Kolf…
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