Job Hunting
Economic slowdown may affect employment search
By David Dunai
Staff Reporter

Seniors graduating in 2002 will have a tougher time finding jobs than graduates have in previous years because of the economic slow down, Carolyn Ulrickson, director of Career Services, said Wednesday.

David Dunai/ Staff Reporter Trevor Hodne, an August 2001 graduate, and Kathryn Ellis, a May 2001 graduate, search for jobs on the Internet at the Career Services office Wednesday. Career Services sponsored Senior Conference 2002 to help with the employment search last weekend.

Ulrickson said this difficulty does not mean that employment opportunities are not available and that Career Services will continue to help students find the job that would suit them the best.

Doug Brown, assistant director of the Graduate Career Service Center at the M.J. Neeley School of Business, said big employers have been impacted by the economic slowdown.
Currently, big companies work on keeping their employees instead of hiring new ones and they focus more on internships as an option for newcomers, Brown said.

“There is a sense of wait-and-see attitude among companies, but there are signs that yield for some optimism that the economy would start to go up,” Brown said.

Ulrickson said financial, investment, banking, energy and industrial companies are the most likely to hire through on-campus recruiting, but generally opportunities are available for everyone.

She said companies hire all majors because they look for employment candidates who have a college degree.

Last weekend, Career Services sponsored the Senior Conference 2002, a two-day series of workshops and lectures with guest speakers and recruitment officers to help students find employment, Ulrickson said.

Bree Bouma, a junior elementary education major, said she learned useful techniques at the conference that will help her find a job when she graduates in December.

Bouma said she learned practical information about job interviews and financial planning after graduation by listening to experiences of TCU graduates.

Ulrickson said companies will start their on-campus interviews during the first week of February. Career Services will organize the TCU Career Week, which will be another opportunity to learn about the methods that are necessary for a successful job search, in the second half of February, she said.

Ulrickson said graduating seniors should use Career Services because students who have used Career Services in the past tended to find jobs with higher salaries than students who didn’t use Career Services.

Tom Justis, human resources specialist at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, said Lockheed Martin will hire 3,000 new employees because the company’s sales increased due to new contracts, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Justis said Lockheed Martin plans to recruit from TCU and will conduct interview sessions three times this semester. The aeronautics company looks for engineering and information systems majors with a 2.0 GPA or higher.

David Dunai
d.r.dunai@student.tcu.edu

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