{"id":124184,"date":"2017-03-01T09:42:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T14:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=124184"},"modified":"2023-06-27T13:08:23","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T17:08:23","slug":"new-graduates-enter-good-job-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2017\/03\/new-graduates-enter-good-job-market\/","title":{"rendered":"New Graduates Enter a Good Job Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

Employment forecasters describe a good job market for new graduates, and that means employers sometimes need to do a little\u00a0work to attract top candidates.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dan Murphy \u201906 recruits UConn students for finance, risk, credit, information technology, and sales at Synchrony Financial, the consumer financial services company based in Stamford.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe competition for top talent at UConn has definitely increased,\u201d says Murphy, who is vice president for mobile development. \u201cFor us, it becomes a matter of explaining how much value we add to career paths, and making sure students can see that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

By several measures, the job market\u00a0appears solid. The annual outlook survey of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reports employers will hire 5.8 percent more new college graduates than in 2016. And CareerBuilder found that 40 percent of employers will add new full-time employees this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

James Lowe, assistant vice provost and executive director of the Center for Career Development<\/a>, says employers look for new hires who not only have technical skills in specific disciplines such as engineering, accounting, or computer science, but who can demonstrate skills in problem solving, oral and written communications, and leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe larger companies, and it\u2019s even migrating down to the smaller companies, are saying we\u2019re looking for those soft skills, because things are changing so rapidly we don\u2019t know what the job is going to be three years from now,\u201d says Lowe. \u201cCritical thinking skills, good communications skills, all of those things are well developed in all of our students because of UConn\u2019s core curriculum.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lisa McGuire, assistant director for corporate partner relations, who connects students and alumni with employers, agrees that a wide range of employers are looking for these skills in new graduates.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey love to talk with liberal arts students because they\u2019re well rounded and can bring a lot to the table,\u201d she says. \u201cSome, for example, are looking for writers for internal writing, so they talk with journalism and English majors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The increased number of employers who participated in career fairs held by UConn\u2019s Center for Career Development earlier this year match the employment forecasts.\u00a0<\/span>Career fairs throughout the year\u00a0drew about 500 employers to Storrs and were attended by about 5,000 students.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alleya Jenkins \u201917 (BUS), an Honors student majoring in business management with a minor in public policy, says using the services of the Center for Career Development helped her identify employers to meet with during the job fair this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m interested in both the private and public sectors,” Jenkins says, “and I had the opportunity to talk with employers from both sectors. It was good knowing I had options that matched my various interests.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jenkins previously did an\u00a0internship with the FBI, an experience she prepared for by pursuing practice interviews through the Center for Career Development.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s really helpful knowing what kinds of questions an employer will ask, or just knowing what an employer is looking for in general,” she says. “It gives you so much more\u00a0confidence when interacting with an employer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Corporate employers are looking to hire graduates for jobs in a variety of fields, including those in engineering, technology, sales, marketing, business management, information technology, financial services, tourism, audiovisual technology, health science, banking, architecture and construction, case management, and social services. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe economy is more robust, our rankings as an institution are increasing, and the Center for Career Development has done a lot to engage employers,\u201d Lowe says. \u201cOur career fair numbers are double what they were four years ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Participating national and international employers who spoke with UConn seniors and graduate students this year included Apple, Boston Scientific, Eli Lilly & Co. Pharmaceuticals, Indeed.com, Pitney Bowes, Robert Half International, Symetra, TEK Systems, and United Technologies.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to hosting job fairs to connect students and employers, the Center for Career Development conducts group presentations for students on preparing for a job search, improving resumes, interviewing skills, networking, and other related career counseling activities throughout the year. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘The number of recruiters at UConn’s career fairs are double what they were four years ago,’ says the director of the Center for Career Development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":125055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,2225,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1918],"class_list":["post-124184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commencement","category-uconn-storrs","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 05:28:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124184"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125174,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124184\/revisions\/125174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/125055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124184"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=124184"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=124184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}