The Computer Wore Menace Shoes

Nowadays, instead of being seen as cheap, the blank, rolled-up paper that stands in for a diploma in graduation ceremonies is seen as a powerful metaphor of the days to come afterward.

Perhaps that’s not the message CareerBuilder was trying to convey with its press release – and accompanying “look at us, we’re hip and use social media to promote ourselves,” shabbily written blog post – about the class of 2010′s job market outlook, but it’s supported more by the facts than claims that it’s improving.

First, the bad news. Career Builder’s Annual Job Forecast found that at 44 percent, the overall percentage of employers planning to hire recent college graduates this year has gone up only 1 percent from last year. Just three years ago, that number stood at 79 percent.

But, of those employers hiring recent graduates, 21 percent plan on hiring more of them than last year. So, of the less than half of employers planning on hiring members of the class of 2010, one-fifth of them will hire more of them than they did last year, even if that means last year they hired none and this year will hire one. (Are you feeling optimistic yet?)

That’s fine, but employees like to be paid, too. Not to worry; 16 percent of employers are upping the salary for new hires, something only 11 percent did last year. Five percent increase! Minimum statistical significance-five!

OK, but what does that translate to in annual dollars? Better hope you didn’t pile on too much student loan debt, because chances are you’ll be pulling down less than $40,000. Thirty-three percent of employers surveyed plan to offer less than $30,000, 30 percent plan to offer $30,000 to $40,000, 19 percent will offer $40,000 to $50,000 and another 19 percent will offer more than $50,000.

How are you supposed to get these jobs with the thousands of other 2010 (and 2009, and 2008) grads with the same degree? According to the employers surveyed, there are some areas of experience you should list on your résumé as related work experience.

• Internships, said 62 percent
• Part-time jobs in another area or field, said 50 percent
• Volunteer work, said 40 percent
• Class work, said 31 percent
• Involvement in school organizations, said 23 percent
• Experience managing sorority or fraternity events, said 21 percent
• Sports participation, said 13 percent

Surprise, employers are looking for practical experience and really don’t care what you did in school.

What else can you do to land a job if you’re a little light on experience? CareerBuilder North America President Brent Rasmussen has some tips.

Have you tried showing you have relevant experience? “Even if you don’t have years of professional work experience, be sure to include other related experiences – like community involvement or campus activities – on your resume,” reads the article. You know, those campus activities 30 percent or less of employers give a damn about!

Are you leveraging social media? Are you on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and authoring multiple blogs, and doing it all in a professional manner that markets your skills?

Keep in mind it helps to be flexible, which may mean looking outside your major, considering internships or temporary jobs and thinking about relocation. As someone who has applied for hundreds of various communications-related positions across the United States, I could not agree more.

And finally, use the job posting to tailor your résumé and cover letter to each employer. Sure, it’s time-consuming and will drive you a little nuts when your painstakingly crafted documents are met with a form letter rejection or never responded to, but you can bet it will be worth it when you land that first job that has nothing to do with what you learned during the last four to six years of your life and are making $26,000 a year.

Thanks, CareerBuilder!

College students have a lot on their plates these days – academics, extracurricular activities, jobs, tuition hikes, student loans with double-digit interest rates – but administrators at one university seem to think some students have too much on their dinner plates, too.

Lincoln University, about 50 miles west of Philadelphia, revised its core curriculum in 2005 to institute a health and fitness requirement that must be fulfilled before graduation. That’s all well and good, until you get to the ways students satisfy it: 1) have passed an old physical education class, 2) pass the new “Fitness for Life” class, 3) have passed an approved class at another university or 4) test out by having a BMI less than 30.

There's no word yet if online students can get around the new requirement.

The requirement has students in an uproar now because seniors preparing to graduate are the first class affected by it, and their last chance to meet it will be the spring semester. Lincoln administrators found 16 percent of the senior class has yet to take the course or test out.

Besides stressing out students, the physical fitness requirement is also causing some conflict among school administrators. In faculty meeting minutes from Nov. 3, Dr. Dana Flint notes that the university may be unfairly targeting overweight students and legal counsel should look into it. Dr. James DeBoy countered by saying “morally as a university we have an obligation to notify students that their health might hinder them in their performance as student.”

Moral obligations aside, requiring students to take a course unless they are under a certain BMI is quite possibly a form of discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s stance is that the Americans with Disabilities Act covers certain kinds of obesity. Violating the ADA usually doesn’t fly.

Besides the potential for breaking federal law, there’s a possibility students who are not obese won’t meet the BMI cutoff to test out, among other problems with the scale. The obese-at-30-BMI isn’t an absolute number for who will have health problems and who won’t. Simply being overweight (25-29.9 BMI) is a risk factor for a slew of medical problems. And is Lincoln going to force underweight students to bulk up until they get in the normal range?

Going back to the moral obligation to tell students their poor health hurts their studies, where is the line drawn? All kinds of common behaviors among college students – binge drinking, unprotected sex, drug use, lack of sleep – are detrimental to health and, by DeBoy’s extension, academic performance, but nobody’s changing the curriculum to reflect it. Does the university’s obligation extend to genetic disease? Eventually, will a student be encouraged to change academic course because he or she has cancer?

A semester before graduation probably wasn’t the time to get upset about a curricular change that took place four years ago. But Lincoln students have a right to be upset. Americans may discriminate on weight as much as race now, and the need for healthier lifestyles and the desire for acceptance are opposing goals, it seems.

It is not, however, up to a university – or anyone -to decide who qualifies for a degree and who does not based on any criteria but academic performance.