Do companies not recruit on college campuses these days?

[cabanafrau]

Possibly, I suppose. I know the frustration for my wife is the time, effort and expense put into recruiting, hiring and training goes to waste when after a year or so, they decide it's not for them. And everyone is totally upfront about what the job entails so there shouldn't be any surprise when they get in the middle of an 80-hour week.

No doubt it's frustrating and expensive.

You can also go into something like parenting being told by those who've been through it how exhausting, frustrating, terrifying, rewarding, etc., etc., it is -- and then get in the deep end and find out it's beyond any expectation of all of those things.

I'm merely suggesting that there's more and more talk about how the current generation is taking a different viewpoint/different stand on things like career and lifestyle choices. Watching employer loyalty steadily erode over the past several years and the seismic shift in our economic culture doesn't necessarily indicate that is a viewpoint that's entirely without merit or simply the result of laziness, poor work ethic or lesser character on the part of the current generation.

 

[NotUrsula]

With unemployment at a 50 year low, it makes no sense to me that a College Graduate has to wait months or years for a job. Their "dream" job maybe, but a job, no way.
Yes, my company sends managers to Colleges to recruit, USC most recently, and Professional conferences. Our owners offer a fellowship program where recent College Graduates are given a paid position and places at a location for a year. We even started offering PAID Internships to get people in the door....we've had one person hired, he lasted week. He went to work at Chick Fil A for $5 hour more! I did all my internships for College Credit only.
My wife's company also sends managers out to recruit. They too have a fellowship program through their owner, and they have been offering students jobs 2 and 3 months before they graduate.

We currently have 20 jobs open in my department, we have 88 authorized positions, so a big chunk of our jobs are open. Some open for over 2 years. Job applicants, especially those right out of College, seem to have salary and benefit expectations that exceed what we offer.

Let's see, you're in Southern California with a high COL, you are primarily recruiting at a University that costs an average of $55K per year to attend, and Chick-Fil-A restaurants are topping your starting pay by $5/hour?

Hint: It's not the applicants, it's the company.

It sounds to me like they believe that folks should take a vow of poverty to get their foot in the door of a "glamorous" profession. That's really kind of naive in an era when anyone with a computer and a $35 camera can become a YouTube star if they have on-screen charisma. Most of those candidates probably have massive student debt to pay; they can't afford vows of poverty, even if they wanted to.

I suspect that if your company deigned to interview at LACC and offered paid summer internships to students finishing there and transferring to a local 4-yr institution, you would have all the good-work-ethic applicants you could handle.

 

[cabanafrau]

Let's see, you're in Southern California with a high COL, you are primarily recruiting at a University that costs an average of $55K per year to attend, and Chick-Fil-A restaurants are topping your starting pay by $5/hour?

Hint: It's not the applicants, it's the company.

It sounds to me like they believe that folks should take a vow of poverty to get their foot in the door of a "glamorous" profession. That's really kind of naive in an era when anyone with a computer and a $35 camera can become a YouTube star if they have on-screen charisma. Most of those candidates probably have massive student debt to pay; they can't afford vows of poverty, even if they wanted to.

I suspect that if your company deigned to interview at LACC and offered paid summer internships to students finishing there and transferring to a local 4-yr institution, you would have all the good-work-ethic applicants you could handle.

Not to mention that a company with nearly a quarter of positions open for a very extended period of time would either take steps necessary to fill the positions if they were critical -- unless perhaps they are somehow filling a purpose as they are, perhaps a bid of budget and/or accounting magic?

Has anybody looked at job openings posted by many companies or government agencies within the past few years? Take a look and I think it might be eye opening to see how many positions posted have been there historically for months and years with either no or virtually no interruption. A major hospital system in our area had a slot within their posted listings which showed some posting dates going back 3 to 4 years. Unless they've changed the way they list their job openings I'm guessing I could open it up again and still find postings supposedly sitting vacant for years at a time.

 

[tvguy]

My college required us to have 4 3 month (or 2 6-month) internships that had to be paid to graduate. I don't know if some had a lot of trouble finding these but I know I didn't. I actually did 3 6-month ones just because of how my classes fell. Even when I graduated 10 years ago though some majors were very likely to have a job before graduation (computer science, anything with engineering in the title) and some (general business majors being the first one that comes to mind) were much less likely

My company is another one that is having trouble recruiting though. Its a combination of the area (we have much better luck getting those 5 years+ in, because this area has no nightlife and is far from major cities. Great if you want a safe place to raise kids, but horrible for many others) and just the competition to get certain talent from certain majors.

The Engineering Department of my University had this, but they called it a "co-op". This was in the mid 1970s. Only internships I was aware of, other than in the public sector, that were paid.

 

[tvguy]

Let's see, you're in Southern California with a high COL, you are primarily recruiting at a University that costs an average of $55K per year to attend, and Chick-Fil-A restaurants are topping your starting pay by $5/hour?

Hint: It's not the applicants, it's the company.

It sounds to me like they believe that folks should take a vow of poverty to get their foot in the door of a "glamorous" profession. That's really kind of naive in an era when anyone with a computer and a $35 camera can become a YouTube star if they have on-screen charisma. Most of those candidates probably have massive student debt to pay; they can't afford vows of poverty, even if they wanted to.

I suspect that if your company deigned to interview at LACC and offered paid summer internships to students finishing there and transferring to a local 4-yr institution, you would have all the good-work-ethic applicants you could handle.

Northern California actually. It's not the company, it's the corporate owners.
Not just my place, my wife's employer is union and they had to reopen their contract because minimum wage in California increased to a rate higher than their entry level negotiated contract salary.
It isn't naive in an era of when anyone with a computer and a $35 camera can become a YouTube Star.....THAT is the reason they think they can continue that way because they can get content from those folks for FREE.

 

[tvguy]

But if they can get a higher salary/benefits elsewhere, perhaps it's not that their expectations are unreasonable but rather your offers are too low.

Like I said elsewhere, I agree our offers are too low, but the last 10 years the norm has been to just deal with the difficulty in hiring and keeping employers rather than increasing pay.

 

[bcla]

The Engineering Department of my University had this, but they called it a "co-op". This was in the mid 1970s. Only internships I was aware of, other than in the public sector, that were paid.

When I was working a contract job in the Sac area, there were quite a few employees (including someone I shared a house with) who referred to their employment status as "co-op". However, I'm pretty sure this guy had graduated. Last I heard he accepted a permanent job in the same group.

There's a tough test for unpaid internships, since it would be bad policy to encourage people to work for free and displace otherwise paid employees.

 

[NotUrsula]

Not to mention that a company with nearly a quarter of positions open for a very extended period of time would either take steps necessary to fill the positions if they were critical -- unless perhaps they are somehow filling a purpose as they are, perhaps a bid of budget and/or accounting magic?

Has anybody looked at job openings posted by many companies or government agencies within the past few years? Take a look and I think it might be eye opening to see how many positions posted have been there historically for months and years with either no or virtually no interruption. A major hospital system in our area had a slot within their posted listings which showed some posting dates going back 3 to 4 years. Unless they've changed the way they list their job openings I'm guessing I could open it up again and still find postings supposedly sitting vacant for years at a time.

Government jobs and government contractors often are obliged by civil service rules to hire from within a "list". I know in my profession there is a Federal list, and you have zero chance of getting a federal position unless you are on it. Outside applications to the list have been closed for 7 years now, except for a window of 2 weeks last April when they accepted new applications. In speaking to colleagues who work for those agencies, they tell me that the job descriptions are kept up as openings on job boards so as to eliminate the need to push a whole career ladder's worth of listings onto the boards in one day when the list comes open. Idiotic, if you ask me. In this day and age, there is absolutely no reason why they can't file the applications and attempt to confirm current interest by form email when the list opens.

 

[Suprachica79]

I went to a small pharmacy college in Boston and I don’t remember anything like that happening at the school. At the time, if you were graduating with a PharmD you had your pick of jobs, but for me graduating with a BS in Pharm marketing and management, it took me 2 years, and an internship while pursuing my MBA to get a full time job and even then it was a contract with a max of 2 years. As for time frame, I graduated with my bachelors in May 2010 and my masters in Dec. 2012.

 

[tvguy]

There's a tough test for unpaid internships, since it would be bad policy to encourage people to work for free and displace otherwise paid employees.

That is why we started paying interns. The corporate lawyers said we could get in trouble if they did any work. My wife's place must have different lawyers. They feel as long as the intern is supervised, they can do anything.

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

My DS is a senior Finance Major at a top 25 university. He used the school career center and Handshake (a job portal used by lots of schools and potential employers) to find both his internship last summer and his job after graduation. By Oct 31 this year, he had 3 offers on the table (including the one from his internship). He’ll be starting in the Fall at a Big 4 firm as a business consultant making $75,000. He is very excited!!! All his friends, except for the ones going to med school, have jobs lined up already as well.

At his school lots of kids in various majors (not just Finance, Accounting, Engineering, Comp Science) get recruited.

My DD goes to another flagship state school. It is not ranked quite as high as DS’s school, but it’s still heavily recruited. She’s a PR major. She may have to work a little harder to land an internship and full time job, so we are really pushing her to take advantage of her campus recruiting.

 

[kamik86]

That is why we started paying interns. The corporate lawyers said we could get in trouble if they did any work. My wife's place must have different lawyers. They feel as long as the intern is supervised, they can do anything.

My understanding is that if an intern is doing any work that directly profits the company (so any work on a contract) they have to be paid. Some companies when I was in school (IBM was one) had internships where all the interns were given a project to do that wasn't a real project. Those types of experience jobs can be unpaid (don't know if IBMs were unpaid or not). AT my company we have the interns on contract items. They do some of the work that other engineers do and also some types of slight busy work. For example I have a co-op working to reformat a document that was written before our procedures change to meet the new procedures. However to do this it will give him hands on experience using our documentation management tool, which will be useful for later work.

I know our interns feel they are paid very very well (and I did when I was an intern making $17 and $19 an hour 11 and 12 years ago. However our company practically considers the interns free labor, they get almost no benefits and it makes their rate for the company incredibly low. In addition the company determines which of the interns are good fits for the company and knows which ones to offer full time jobs to. This also means that they will come in knowing the program and being trained before we have to pay them full engineer wages.

(Also your post about calling them co-ops, my school did call them that but some of the companies called them interns, mine does even when we take people from the school that calls them co-ops)

 

[design_mom]

When I was in school (graduated 1996), it seemed like engineering and business were the only colleges that had on-campus recruiting events. I was a graphic design major. We would occasionally get 'internship' opportunities that came through the department's academic advisor, but they were more like part-time jobs (no college credit.) I got one of those, and it was paid at a decent wage (quite a bit higher than minimum wage). They kept me on part-time after the original internship term ended, then hired me full-time upon graduation, so I had a FT job lined up before graduation. But I don't recall anybody coming to recruit new grads.

 

[tvguy]

My understanding is that if an intern is doing any work that directly profits the company (so any work on a contract) they have to be paid. Some companies when I was in school (IBM was one) had internships where all the interns were given a project to do that wasn't a real project. Those types of experience jobs can be unpaid (don't know if IBMs were unpaid or not). AT my company we have the interns on contract items. They do some of the work that other engineers do and also some types of slight busy work. For example I have a co-op working to reformat a document that was written before our procedures change to meet the new procedures. However to do this it will give him hands on experience using our documentation management tool, which will be useful for later work.

I know our interns feel they are paid very very well (and I did when I was an intern making $17 and $19 an hour 11 and 12 years ago. However our company practically considers the interns free labor, they get almost no benefits and it makes their rate for the company incredibly low. In addition the company determines which of the interns are good fits for the company and knows which ones to offer full time jobs to. This also means that they will come in knowing the program and being trained before we have to pay them full engineer wages.

(Also your post about calling them co-ops, my school did call them that but some of the companies called them interns, mine does even when we take people from the school that calls them co-ops)

That is my understanding too....if an intern does anything that profits the company, they must be paid. Like I said, our last intern left after a week because he felt it was too much work for too little pay. We have had paid internships posted on our website in the 18 months since he left, but we have not had any interns since. Not sure if that is by choice, or by lack of qualified applicants. My wife's place still has interns, but they are college credit only, and I suspect those interns may cross the line and do things they should be paid for.
Far cry from the situation my wife and I interned under 1975-1980. No pay, college credit only. And we both interned in Union shops where Union rules applied. The Union contract said we could only do work if there was a Union member standing there supervising us.

 

[NotUrsula]

The internship pay changes are a recent development; the first major US case ruling on it came down in 2012, and there have been several since. The primary court cases where employers have lost have involved media companies, and in almost every one of those cases, the interns were given low-to-no skills work to do that was tangential to the business of the company: they had duties like making photocopies, filing, getting coffee, picking up dry-cleaning, etc. The courts ruled that there was no actual intellectual benefit to a college student doing work like that -- they were NOT learning any specialized skills in return for their labor. They didn't write, they didn't edit, they didn't do interviews -- none of the sort of professional work that they were supposedly there to learn how to do. In addition they had to pay their own living expenses in very high COL cities in order to be there. Essentially, the only benefit to the intern was the bragging right of having worked there. The labor itself accrued only to the benefit of the company and other people who worked there.

The company I work for is a nonprofit, and we still have about 25 unpaid undergrad interns each summer. The competition to win a spot is intense. We house them for free and provide lunches, social events and transportation to them while they are here. It's laboratory work, on specialized equipment that is worth millions of dollars, and they are allowed to take the lead on a project of their own design. That is a HUGE learning experience that almost always leads directly to a paid job in a lab at the university they attend, as the work that they do here is at the same level as that of the postdoctoral researchers, and an undergrad normally isn't trusted with that kind of responsibility. Those of us who run administrative departments here are not allowed to have interns because the kind of work we do often has clerical overtones of some kind, and HR thinks that's too iffy to defend. If we have special projects such as big database conversions, we are allowed to hire students to help on a time-limited basis, but they are NOT classed as interns and they are paid the same as entry-level clerks.

 

[Simba's Mom]

I hear so much about recent college graduates who cannot find jobs for months (years) after their graduation. In the past many (most) students lined up jobs prior to graduation via campus interviews.

Now I am older than dirt - but as a woman 50+ years ago (back when everyone swears women were not allowed to have professional jobs) I had two excellent job offers by March of my senior year. In today's dollars each had a starting salary of about $65,000.

It was nice having a job all lined up long before graduation. Same when I got my MBA. I spent the last quarter traveling for "fly backs" to go to interviews.

Of course all of that is ancient history - so I was wondering if anyone actually interviewed on campus anymore.

I kind of wondered about that too. We had regular college interviews also. But neither of my sons' colleges had them, nor a career day or anything. And I graduated almost 50 years ago also, and I still remember when there were 2 categories of Help Wanted in our local newspaper-Help Wanted Men and Help Wanted Women. Since I was in college to be an engineer, it was really confusing for me-women rarely saw engineering jobs in the Help Wanted Women, so I really depended on the on-campus recruiting.

 

[CarolAnn856]

I hear so much about recent college graduates who cannot find jobs for months (years) after their graduation. In the past many (most) students lined up jobs prior to graduation via campus interviews.

Now I am older than dirt - but as a woman 50+ years ago (back when everyone swears women were not allowed to have professional jobs) I had two excellent job offers by March of my senior year. In today's dollars each had a starting salary of about $65,000.

It was nice having a job all lined up long before graduation. Same when I got my MBA. I spent the last quarter traveling for "fly backs" to go to interviews.

Of course all of that is ancient history - so I was wondering if anyone actually interviewed on campus anymore.

First, your recollection about most students having jobs lined up isn't at all accurate. While that may have been true at the time you graduated, it is something that depends heavily on the economy and certainly was not always the case.

Second, your question seems to have undertones of Those Darn Millennials. Not sure if that was intended or not, but your original and subsequent posts, along with a few and other posts, definitely have that vibe.

 

[bcla]

I kind of wondered about that too. We had regular college interviews also. But neither of my sons' colleges had them, nor a career day or anything. And I graduated almost 50 years ago also, and I still remember when there were 2 categories of Help Wanted in our local newspaper-Help Wanted Men and Help Wanted Women. Since I was in college to be an engineer, it was really confusing for me-women rarely saw engineering jobs in the Help Wanted Women, so I really depended on the on-campus recruiting.

When I started looking for a job before getting my masters degree I did what anyone else would do. I looked in the newspaper want ads. There were actually jobs in my field listed in the local newspapers. And the big one in my industry was the San Jose Mercury News.

The problem these days is that it's too easy for applicants to carpet bomb companies and to look up job listings. There can literally be 300-400 applicants from around the country for every position that's available even in a specialized field. It might be more for a more general field such as accounting, although there will be more job listings. Even 25 years ago it wasn't that easy. It took a bit of leg work to find the jobs to apply for. Now it's using search terms and the number of applicants to sort through has ballooned.

Still - it was odd how I got my first job offer. My uncle was an engineer and he had this subscription to some general engineering magazine. They had an article on companies that were hiring and I got a bunch of names out of it. The magazine was for a different engineering field than mine, but a lot of those companies had needs for my industry. I must have mailed out resumes to maybe 10 of those companies, and one contacted me from the East Coast. They flew me out to the Boston area on short notice to interview for two different groups. I got a call the next week that I was selected and could have my choice of jobs. Turned them down though. There was snow on the ground when I was there.

 

[NotUrsula]

When I started looking for a job before getting my masters degree I did what anyone else would do. I looked in the newspaper want ads. There were actually jobs in my field listed in the local newspapers. And the big one in my industry was the San Jose Mercury News.

The problem these days is that it's too easy for applicants to carpet bomb companies and to look up job listings. There can literally be 300-400 applicants from around the country for every position that's available even in a specialized field. It might be more for a more general field such as accounting, although there will be more job listings. Even 25 years ago it wasn't that easy. It took a bit of leg work to find the jobs to apply for. Now it's using search terms and the number of applicants to sort through has ballooned.

Still - it was odd how I got my first job offer. My uncle was an engineer and he had this subscription to some general engineering magazine. They had an article on companies that were hiring and I got a bunch of names out of it. The magazine was for a different engineering field than mine, but a lot of those companies had needs for my industry. I must have mailed out resumes to maybe 10 of those companies, and one contacted me from the East Coast. They flew me out to the Boston area on short notice to interview for two different groups. I got a call the next week that I was selected and could have my choice of jobs. Turned them down though. There was snow on the ground when I was there.

Once you get any kind of specialty qualifications and you are looking for employment in that field, "general" job listing sites are well-nigh useless. What you want to do is join the professional assn for that profession and use their job boards.

General sites do come in handy for one situation, though: collecting unemployment. I got laid off, and was going about the usual job search for my profession, but that wasn't enough for my state unemployment rules, which required me to apply for 10 different jobs per week. Nice trick when there were only 6 openings in my field in my state within the 4 month period I was unemployed. So, I carpet-bombed just to be able to prove that I'd met the requirements. I knew those companies were going to toss my applications, and I was fine with that.

 

[bcla]

Once you get any kind of specialty qualifications and you are looking for employment in that field, "general" job listing sites are well-nigh useless. What you want to do is join the professional assn for that profession and use their job boards.

General sites do come in handy for one situation, though: collecting unemployment. I got laid off, and was going about the usual job search for my profession, but that wasn't enough for my state unemployment rules, which required me to apply for 10 different jobs per week. Nice trick when there were only 6 openings in my field in my state within the 4 month period I was unemployed. So, I carpet-bombed just to be able to prove that I'd met the requirements. I knew those companies were going to toss my applications, and I was fine with that.

Those job boards generally don't have anything that can't be found from corporate websites. I do remember one time I got laid off and an old manager of mine got me an interview for a job at his current employer that wasn't listed publicly. However, in my experience almost everything can be found these days on corporate websites. It's easy for them to just list everything, but then it results in a flood of applications. I have gotten interviews and have gotten employment recently that way.