College Seniors: "When Should I Start My Job Search?"

I think I have heard it more this year than ever; students asking me “When should I really start looking for a job if I graduate in [insert month here]?”  I am not sure what is suddenly prompting students to ask this question so much, but I am going to go ahead and assume that we have done a decent job of promoting a career message that prompts a proactive approach, planning, thought, reflection and action.

Perhaps a lot of college seniors out there are wondering when they should turn up the volume on their jobs search, so I thought this might be a good article for them. In the past month, we have hosted a number of career expos and job fairs, and so I have had a chance to talk to a lot of employers about this year’s hiring cycle, hiring preferences, job outlooks and job market anomalies. While there is no one, universal answer to the question, there are a few things to consider. I hope that some of these put the world of job hunting in perspective for the soon-to-graduate:

Networking or not working.

Anyone who knows me well has heard me say it again and again. ‘You are either networking or you are not working.’ If you leave college without a network of people with hiring influence, you will likely be unemployed, and frankly, unemployable until you do meet people with hiring influence. Who hires people? It’s people; not platforms, computers and smart phones. With that in mind, I guess that means that you should have started looking for a job freshman year by starting to deliberately build your network, but lest someone become discouraged, let’s continue. . .

High turnover positions.

Employers who have a lot of high-turnover positions (yes, I am talking mostly about sales) are almost always hiring. So, talking to a financial services or insurance company in the fall, even if your graduation date is not until May, is not out of the question. That is why so many college career fairs happen in September and October and why you see so many of these sorts of great companies at these events. ‘High-turnover’ does not mean that these are somehow less desirable positions, and you do not have to be a marketing major to work in sales; in fact most salespeople, account representatives and business development professionals were not marketing majors. I was once one of them. It’s just that some people get into these roles and then decide they are not willing to put in the effort that it actually takes to be successful in them – also, some take rejection personally and decide that sales is not a field for them. It’s all good!

Very high demand, unique positions.

On our campus, Safety Management is king (or queen in many cases) when it comes to demand. We have hundreds of safety students and it is no problem at all filling a job fair with firms who want to hire them, and hire them very early; that goes for full time and internship positions. These companies hire very early to get what they perceive to be the best-of-the-best. This year our safety expo was the first week in October. It was followed by around 250 interviews during which many students were offered full time jobs and internships after May graduation. Other majors that might be scooped up early in the academic year might include certain types of engineering, mathematics and statistics, actuarial sciences, computer science, data analytics, and on some campuses economics, finance, accounting and, of course, professional programs like PT, PA, nurses, nurse practitioners and OT.

Market size and your competition.

I used my EMSI and Labor Insight labor market analytical tools for this section. Each year there are about 8,000 Public Relations graduates in the U.S. but there are only 6,000 to 7,000 posted positions seeking 0-2 years in entry level PR jobs. Yikes! Environmental science and several other fields are also like this. This means two things: First, you need to do an internship to differentiate yourself (along with having a powerful online portfolio); an internship will also bolster your network, and secondly, you need to be willing to go to where the jobs are. . .the big cities. So, what I am saying is, when a specific market is outpaced by the number of grads, the challenge is on. You really should be looking for a job - likely through your internship - at least a year in advance.

The human services hunt.

Human services positions present a different sort of cycle. Hiring in these roles – social work (social work majors), wrap around (psychology majors), probation, prison positions, investigations, police (criminology majors), counseling (masters of clinical mental health graduate students) are on more of a rolling basis. Sure, there are some cycles therein, but when we are talking about nonprofit, social services organizations, in my experience, they are almost always looking for good people in positions from direct care to the roles that I mentioned above. So really, any time is a good time to start applying. For government roles, of course you are going to use your state hiring portal or USAJobs.gov to apply for these and you are going to be limited to whatever happens to be open at that time.

How long is the hiring cycle?

Knowing how long it takes to actually get hired is a huge help. Again, there is no universal answer to this question but here are some things to think about. If an organization is desperate to fill positions, the cycle will be somewhat shortened – some have a process called an ‘emergency hire’ that helps a hiring manager skip some of the traditional steps in the hiring process. This could shorten the hiring process to anywhere from three to six weeks from the time they post the position. The size of the firm can make a difference as well. Smaller firms are often more nimble in their hiring practices. They might not have a large, corporate human resources department with layers of hiring policies and can often post jobs, review resumes, call interviews and make an offer in under a month. Larger firms might have layers of processes, multiple layers of interviews, the input of equity professionals in forging written job descriptions and reviewing interview questions. For larger firms, it is not unusual for the hiring process to take five to nearly fifteen weeks depending upon the position.

What about education?

Ah, lest we forget. . .education! Well, if you look at most education job fairs, they are in October and either March or April. So that tells you something. At the same time, some school districts are desperately seeking teachers the whole year through. Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Washington State, Alaska, Southern California, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and, the teacher employment capitol of the U.S., Texas – these are the states that are almost always looking for teachers; these are educator shortage areas and they are looking for nearly all imaginable certifications. Apply now. . .apply often.

A job posting does not always mean that there is a job opening.

Did you know that not all job postings represent an actual open position? It’s true. Some large, multi-national firms use human resources and hiring algorithms and predictive analytics to guide their recruitment. Not only do these systems help recruiters decide which colleges they will engage for active hiring (which is why some brand name companies have never, and probably will never show up at your campus job fair), but they also predict the numbers of openings a company is likely to experience in the coming months to years. These algorithms make their decisions based upon past employee attrition, corporate sales and certain market factors. So, it is not unusual for these firms to post jobs, anticipating that they will eventually need to fill a certain number of roles.

In closing.

I don’t know if I helped you, dear reader, or just added more complexity to your search. If a student comes to me desperate for a more specific answer, I often say that December graduates should really heat up their job search in late September, through and into early November. May graduates? Late February, all the way into April is your prime hunting season, but please, do heed all of the prior advice offered in this article.

Well, I cannot close without uttering the best advice of all. Studies are clear that between seven and eight out of every ten jobs that people hold today are attributable to some form of networking. So forget not that you are either networking, or you are not working.

It’s your future. Take charge!

I appreciate you taking the time to read my articles. I write mostly on the topics of career management and leadership.