New graduates can look forward to shorter job hunts

The employment outlook for graduating college students is improving.

Carl Van Horn is director of the Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers. He says job prospects are the best in years because of a strengthening economy.

He says graduates with science, technology, engineering and math degrees are likely to be most in demand, but there are also job openings for liberal arts majors.

“They’ll get recruited into companies and they’ll work their way up to learn the specific skills that are needed in a company because what a liberal arts major brings if they’ve done well is a person who can think and be creative and work effectively,” he said.

Van Horn believes most new college grads should be able to find a job within the next few months.

“It may require them to move to another city, another area of the country,” he said. “What’s important is for people not to get discouraged if they don’t have a job on graduation day because over the next few months if they keep working at it diligently, they’ll probably land a good job.”

Van Horn says salaries are starting to improve but believes most graduating students have lower expectations about getting a big starting salary.

“These are folks that entered school in 2011 probably and that was still a very difficult period and they certainly heard stories from upperclassmen and perhaps their brothers and sisters that weren’t doing so well when they graduated.”