Although not on par with a pre-recession economy, the job market for Duke’s Class of 2010 has shown signs of improvement, with more students embarking on less traditional career paths.
This year, 19 percent of 2010 graduates responding to the Career Center’s Senior Exit Survey said they were seeking jobs in May, compared to 22 percent in 2009 and 17 percent in 2008, said Kristen Nicholas, associate director for external relations for the Career Center.
The percentage of students reporting to have accepted a position was 31 percent this year, a 1 percent decline from 2009 and an 8 percent dro
Although not on par with a pre-recession economy, the job market for Duke’s Class of 2010 has shown signs of improvement, with more students embarking on less traditional career paths.
This year, 19 percent of 2010 graduates responding to the Career Center’s Senior Exit Survey said they were seeking jobs in May, compared to 22 percent in 2009 and 17 percent in 2008, said Kristen Nicholas, associate director for external relations for the Career Center.
The percentage of students reporting to have accepted a position was 31 percent this year, a 1 percent decline from 2009 and an 8 percent drop from 2008, Nicholas said.
Employment prospects are improving for college graduates nationwide. Indeed, employers plan to hire about 5 percent more new graduates in 2009-2010 than in 2008-2009, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers Job Outlook 2010 Spring Update. Even though this number is still shy of pre-recession figures—when college hiring ranged from between 13 and 19 percent—it is the largest projected increase in college hiring since October 2008, and comes as a welcome change from Spring 2009 when employers expected to hire approximately 22 percent fewer college graduates than they did in 2008.
College hiring in the financial sector, one of the hardest-hit industries in the downturn, also appears to be stabilizing across the nation as a whole and among Duke graduates specifically. In the NACE report, employers are predicting only a 2.2 percent decrease in hiring in the finance, insurance and real estate industries.
“These things are cyclical,” said Emma Rasiel, director of theFinancial Education Partnership and associate professor of the practice in economics. “The surprise following the recession was how quickly things bounced back. People were expecting a longer cycle than that, not just in hiring but in general. The economy is still fragile, but hiring in consulting and finance did jump up quickly.”
Compared to the class of 2009, Rasiel estimated that as many as double the amount of graduates found jobs in the financial sector this year. According to the Career Center survey, the financial industry accounted for 32 percent of all jobs the Class of 2008 pursued, dipping significantly to 26 percent for the Class of 2009. Data was not yet available for the Class of 2010.
Despite this drop, investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the now merged Bank of America Merrill Lynch have remained among the top five employers for Duke graduates since 2008.
“The good thing is that nobody stopped [hiring],” Nicholas said. “The amount of students [companies] were hiring was less, how they were participating in campus recruitment was different and how they were using their resources was different.”
An alternative path
More and more graduates, however, are defying Duke’s reputation as an investment banking powerhouse and are instead pursuing service-oriented careers after graduation, at least temporarily. For instance, 51 graduates will be working for Teach for America this year, an organization that hires recent college graduates as teachers with the goal of reducing educational inequality, said Victor Wakefield, recruiting coordinator for TFA at Duke and Princeton. This year, 252 students applied to TFA this year, compared to 150 and 158 respectively in the previous two, Wakefield said. Last year, 34 students chose to work for the organization.
Nicholas said Duke’s growing emphasis on community service, along with the Career Center’s efforts to encourage students to consider alternative career paths, likely accounts for the greater interest in post-graduation plans that include service organizations like TFA.
Greater economic uncertainty might also play a role in students seeking other career opportunities, Rasiel added.
For some students though, TFA was their ideal job.
“I had heard that other people were applying to TFA because they were worried about not getting a job in [investment] banking or the financial district, but I had no concern about finding a job,” said Dave Henshall, Trinity ’10. “So [TFA] for me was not a second choice. It was my first choice.”
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