By Chris Falcone

With graduation quickly approaching along with the mounting stress to find a job, a new study shows significant increases in the hiring of recent college graduates into the job market.

According to a recent study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), there are positive hiring projections for new college graduates. In August 2004, employers told NACE they expected to increase the number of new college graduates they hired in the 2004-05 academic year by 13.1 percent compared to the previous year, Andrea Koncz, employment information manager for NACE said.

“We surveyed all different employment sectors and saw increases across the board,” she said.

The companies targeted in the NACE survey were service sectors, government non-profit agencies and manufacturing sectors.

Marvin Reed, director of the Career Center, said this is great news and is so highly celebrated because it is happening against a collapse of the economy and job market, especially in New York City.

Jennifer Procario, a senior senses optimism upon news of the survey.

“As a senior graduating in May, I often worry about life after school, finding a job and entering into the real world,” she said. “So hearing something like this brings a little relief.”

Beginning in early 2001 there were a variety of factors that led to an enormous decline in job opportunities. A plunging economy, faltering stock market, Y2K hysteria and bursting of the internet bubble, coupled with the debilitating events of 9/11 led to a number of layoffs and recession in a greatly minimized college job market.

“Activity plummeted to an extreme low during that year,” said Reed. “But it began way before what happened on 9/11, as early as April of that year.”

This was previously seen in the early 90s when a very depressed job market similarly caused an economic downtime. Around 1995, however, there was a turn around. Reed believes this was the same time when a number of organizations started participating in campus recruiting.

This great crest period carried us into 2000 when employers developed a sort of scarcity mentality and started stockpiling hires. The theory was to court them, bring them in and get them ready, Mark Jeshiva, senior business analyst of the investment banking division for Citigroup, said. While working previously for Goldman Sachs as a business analyst who was involved in the recruiting process, his company was always in search of hires.

“They were shorthanded and wanted to bring in people,” Jeshiva, also an alumnus, said. “They were always looking for college graduates.”

This method, in turn, caused an overabundance of employees and by the time 2001 had ended there were not enough jobs to go around.

It has been difficult for graduates over the past few years. Investment banking in particular went through a lot of cuts, but the market has picked up, especially in finance, Jeshiva said.

With improvements in the economy, companies can now offer more jobs, Koncz said. This was the second year in a row that the NACE survey predicted an increase and she hopes that it will continue.

NACE surveys employer members throughout the year and has been since 1999. For the survey they solicited 1,000 employers with 254 responses. This includes companies of different sizes nationwide, which are surveyed collectively.

“These [survey’s] results are another indication that the job market for new college graduates is gaining momentum,” Marilyn Mackes, executive director for NACE, said. “We see healthy movement toward hirings, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on salaries and hiring projections to confirm that movement.”

There are some concerns, however, regarding this news. Reed said an article in The New York Times found the most important job field in the New York economy to be the security industries. Since 2001, over 70,000 jobs were lost and only 500 have been recovered. More so, the automobile industry is in a downtime while factories are on the rise, signaling not everything is running on the same wavelength.

Reed said recently the major recovery of jobs have come from retail and restaurant businesses, not necessarily in large job areas for young professionals. “Employers are so shaken by the unpredictability of the business scene over the last several years that they have become very cautious about hiring, tending to replace only when needed,” he said.

He is proud, however, of the current recruitment activity as a whole, qualifying it as a restructuring of opportunity, even if it is only temporary. When dealing with the economy one can never be certain. There are times when contradictory signals from the economy are received, indicating the stock market and job market are not necessarily in harmony.

Reed’s job is to try and find that out, if it’s a trend or pattern or if something has gone wrong. Yet, when there is an upswing of the market, he said students tend to feel less dependent on their schools. He stresses it is very important for students to draw upon their alma maters. Many students make terrific use of the Career Center, but he always meets recent grads who underutilize this tool.

Having graduated in December, senior Michelle Lefkowitz definitely epitomizes the latter.

“I actually have never been to the Career Center,” she said. “But it’s not because I don’t want to, it’s more like as a student you have so much to worry about that things concerning after graduation seem so far away.”

Reed said students underestimate the importance of internships as great opportunities to make an impression. It is a way for employers to cultivate students for after graduation and the internship field right now is red-hot creating numerous possibilities. A significant number of interns are offered full time jobs.

“College students graduate some years into major wars, some years into major recessions and some years into periods when jobs are being outsourced to other parts of the world or computers,” he said. “Yet graduates will always find opportunities, but sometimes they have to be pioneers in their approach. They must realize that the job search is a process not an instant fix. And it doesn’t always come packaged the way students want.”