As graduation nears, students start job, grad school hunt

Students begin making post-grad plans

With about six months until graduation, seniors are at various stages of preparing for their lives after college.

Progress of the job hunt varies by major. "Most accounting majors already have jobs," said Lee Ward, director of the Academic Advising and Career Development Center. "On the other end of the continuum, liberal arts majors haven’t even begun their job search". He added that this is very typical, since many liberal arts majors are applying to graduate school in lieu of searching for a job.

"I am an interior design major so I am in the process of trying to update my portfolio to show potential clients," senior Lisa Acker said. She said that she plans to send out more than 50 resumés to architect firms. "While I am in the midst of job searching, I am also going to be planning my wedding. I am getting married two weeks after graduation, so I am trying to get everything lined up for that," Acker added.

Senior chemistry Amanda Anderson is graduating in May, but she decided to pursue a different career path.

"This past semester, I decided that I didn't want to deal with the hassles of the competitiveness and legality of veterinary medicine, and decided that I wanted to pursue a career in zoology," Anderson said.

Senior Amanda Day plans to work at home for a year and attend graduate school the following year. She said one of the most beneficial steps in her job hunt was to begin looking early. "I did my research during the fall semester and began narrowing down opportunities and am meeting with people over Christmas break," Day said. "I think this is going to ease some of the stress towards the end of next spring semester for me."

Other seniors will travel after graduation before beginning a job search.

"My roommates and I are planning on taking the summer off and working at the beach before we start working," senior Ryan Curran said. "We figure that we’ve got plenty of years to work, so why not enjoy the summer. Right now we are looking at Hawaii and Cabo. If those two don't work out, we’ll probably look at the Outer Banks."

Senior Sam Barnard said, "A route that I may choose is to teach snowboarding in New Zealand for six months or so for this summer. Now is the time to do something crazy, not after you get a job and will miss the money".

Lee Ward said all graduating seniors should have started their job search by this point in time. He added that "at the very least," they should have identified the type of job and the location of potential jobs so they know where to focus their job hunt.

"You need to do the planning work," Ward said, adding that starting a job hunt without resources like a resume or an idea of the type of desired job would be like writing a 20-page paper the night before it was due.