Although it’s hard to believe, University seniors are already sending out résumés and cover letters to employers all over the country in hopes of landing a job before graduation in May. Unfortunately for most of the graduating class, the outlook isn’t too promising. This week’s Employer Expo only seemed to emphasize the fact that finding a job with a liberal arts major is extremely difficult and the job market is overwhelmingly competitive. Seniors on The Bucknellian staff participated in the Employer Expo, but we left discouraged and frustrated by the apparent lack of jobs available. Our liberal arts majors didn’t seem to provide us with any competitive edge in the job market.
At first we were frustrated with the lack of diversity in the employer pool at Tuesday’s expo and our first reaction was to find someone to blame. Why was there a significantly greater amount of engineering and accounting headhunters than any other career path? Yes, we want to blame the University for seemingly favoring a certain type of student over another, but we simply cannot do that because it’s not fair. The Career Development Center (CDC) is not at fault in this situation. Students have to find out when, how and why certain employers hire. While employers are actively seeking college graduates (or soon-to-be graduates) with engineering and accounting majors, the same cannot be said for the rest of us.
We can’t blame the CDC. They really do seem to be doing everything they can to provide us with opportunities to find jobs. There are various expos that take place in cities like New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. that having the CDC makes available to students. In addition, later on in the year, the CDC provides job and internship fairs that are geared more towards the liberal arts majors. However, these fairs are typically recruiting interns and not full-time employees.
It’s frustrating to see our peers land jobs before us liberal arts majors, but we choose our own paths and now we have to stick with them. Some of the career paths we have chosen take a little more effort to get our foot in the door and soon-to-be graduates need to realize that and prepare.
