Viking_Yearbook_93

I f three is a charm, then thirty- eight should be really terrific. Yet job prospects for the 38th PSU commencement graduates may not be getting better at all. On June 12,1993, 1,400 of the more than 2,700 eligible graduates walked through a ceremony to receive a certificate allowing them, if the choose, to commence the official rat race. “Actual jobs are few and far between,” explains Frank Ryals, Occupational Information Analysist for the Oregon Employment Agency. “The labor market is a bit slow for lliene w as a 56% decrease in job opportunities for col­ lege grads from 1988-1992, and a 5% increase in 1993. kfelry Week 1993 everybody [college graduates included]. It’s different than ^ boom times when the best [college grads] are sought by the employer.” College allows students to ignore the real world for four| years, Ryal said. Now it’s going to be rocky for most of them. Many of them will continue with the waitressing oi| odd jobs they did to get through school. “I wouldn’t say the market is grim; I would say it’s competitive,” says the Portland employment agency Kennedy Personnel, Inc. Fortune 500 Companies are losing 750,000 new jobs for college grads due to down sizing, yet rates for college grads are comparable to better times because small companies created 80 percent of the 1.9 million new jobs for 1992, reported U S . News & World Report. “Salaries for 1993 non engineering grads will be up 2.8 percent,” says Industry Week in their March 1, 1993 issue. They also help put the level of competition for college grads into perspective by telling us that there were 1.1 million college seniors this year. So how do you compete in this rat race? PSU Career Center Director, Mary Cumpston says the first step is to do some self-exploration. Knowing your skills and the environment in which you flourish will help you direct your search. The second step is to use resources like the Career Center to help relate who you are to the job market. “The job market is different than it used to be,” added Cumpston. “It’s changing separate from the economy. It’s service oriented. More people are doing more things for less money.”