1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed

Yahoo! News / The Associated Press ^ | Hope Yen

[2ndDivisionVet]

The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.

A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.

Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans....

[Black_Shark]

What programming languages are most in demand? As I stated, I know some SAS but otherwise haven’t had the time nor inclination to learn computer programming.

Any suggestions?

[OrangeHoof]

I'm surprised it's not higher. Don't *most* college graduates start out with crap jobs while trying to establish themselves in the corporate world?

Of course, if you pursued a degree in "Womyn's Studies" or "Art History" or some such, you probably weren't going to find a job in your chosen profession anyway.

[Black_Shark]

Liberal Arts requirements are there for you to repair your GPA after a semester of Econometrics, Applied Diff Eq, etc.

Plus you meet some cute girls! ;)

[Celtic Cross]

"Plus you meet some cute girls! ;)"

In liberal arts courses, my brother says stupid girls.

[Black_Shark]

That’s very true but they provide so much entertainment when they start harping about the latest social “injustice”!

[central_va]

Look with your background you can learn this real fast. Do exactly what I say, and you will be making six figures in no time. You will have to this on your own, I learned this at IBM but it really doesn't matter.

You need to download an IDE(Interactive development Environment) Eclipse is a good one. Then buy a beginner java book and do one chapter per week. "Teach Yourself Java" is a good one. You should also become familiar with Object Oriented Design but that can wait. Just remember there is no end to the learning. I am 53 and I am learning the Struts framework now.

[Black_Shark]

I think I’ll do that. It can never hurt to broaden my range of skills.

[Third Person]

1 in 2 college graduates shouldn’t have wasted their time in college... let the great and painful correction begin.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Yup. Employers aren’t looking for people with a degree in Bovine Scatology.

[Milton Miteybad]

You must realize, of course, that the banking industry hands out the title of "Vice-President" like the Nobel Committee hands out Peace Prizes, i.e., to anybody who's been there longer than about 45 days. Practically everybody working in a bank who isn't a teller (to the extent any of those actually remain, anyway) is a vice-president.

In my professional endeavors it is often necessary for me to have to deal with some of these "vice-presidents" at various banks and other financial institutions. Some of them appear to have reached their lofty pinnacle only because none of their superiors could find them long enough to fire them. Some of these people are passingly competent; however, many others appear to be dumpster-divers who have accidentally landed behind a desk and a nameplate at the local bank.

If being a VP at a financial institution is your aspiration, best of luck to you. I'm simply hard-pressed to understand why that might be a goal for a bright, energetic, ambitious individual.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

Hey, college dudes and gals, how’s that Obama “hope & change” working out for you??? You idiots voted for Obama, and you are getting exactly what you so rightfully deserve, fools to the core. Love it!!!

[meadsjn]

Anecdotal examples can be extremely misleading.

A better set of anecdotal samples could be gathered by getting inside (meaning actually working inside, in any position) of one or more of the organizations in which you would like to work.

Then check out the individuals filling those upper-level positions that interest you. Then check out the listed requirements for the positions they have filled. Hint: There may be zero correlation between these two sets of data.

As the article at the top of the thread describes: ANY new college graduate getting ANY employment in their field, at ANY rate of pay, has finally won a 50/50 coin toss (perhaps after several, or several thousands of such coin tosses that came up tails).

[grey_whiskers]

I hope you don't take this wrong, but have you looked for jobs out-of-state? Have you considered selling yourself as a SAS programmer, say, to an insurance company?

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Just curious -- is Eclipse free? -- and is it based on Windows or UNIX?

Cheers!

[Chickensoup]

I want to enter as an entry-level data analyst. I expect a salary in the $40-50,000 range commiserate with my skills. I want the opportunity for advancement if I work hard and prove my worth. I want to be on the management/executive track by the time I’m 30.

How would I accomplish this? Through working my butt off for however many years it takes to prove my worth.

Yet no employer will even consider me for a job because I don’t have 2+ years of experience for a basic entry-level data analysis job.

Instead I get offered “sales” jobs where I can “make my own living and be my own boss”.

Life is hard but this is friggin ridiculous. Why did I go to college and work my BUTT off learning statistics and mathematics when I could have bypassed it all and still be qualified for the same jobs?
_________________________________

Are you joking?

twenty thousand or some no cost internships is where you start.

and you need to work for your grad degree.

I think you are expecting too much and need to take what you can get and get all the experience you can.

[Chickensoup]

For a more concrete anecdotal example: a personal friend of mine is 27 and a VP of fixed income at a major bank. Another friend is currently well on his way to becoming VP by the time he’s 26.

__________________

Do you know anything about bank vps?

They are jokes. No money, just title.

We used to have a joke for them. He is the president of the left side of the bank..... fourth through tenth floors.

They were paid dog food.

Still are.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Move to Silicon Valley. There’s a hiring boom right now. “Big Data” is all the rage and they can’t find enough good people.

[rbg81]

I don’t think he’s the exception. Computer science grads have very little problem finding jobs. Period. We get dozens of calls every month from employers looking for kids to hire. Especially if you have .Net, web programming, or mobile application skills. If you have two years programming experience you need to play that up.

Its also possible that your resume is getting filtered out because you don’t have that BS in CS degree.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I was a work/study, then a career counselor, trainer and a supervisor at two different states unemployment offices for around 15 years and I am unemployed. I have a bachelors degree in business administration and 10 point veteran’s preference.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, Scala. Learn Heroku, Hadoop. Look at whatever SalesForce.com is acquiring and go there. Look at web metrics — how are companies maximizing their web and marketing ROIs? Look at Model Metrics which was acquired by SFDC late last year. Look at Radian6 which was also acquired by SFDC last year.

Get the papers from “Solving big data analytics with an emerging data-centric language” conference held last month here in Santa Clara.

Frankly, it doesn’t sound like you get out enough. I’m 60 and and try to stay on top of this stuff, not so much from a practitioner perspective, but from a need to know when people are blowing smoke up my ass and when they are telling the truth.

Broaden your horizons on what it means to be a “data analyst,” too.