Placement centers aid graduates in job hunt
By Jennifer Lamb Special to the Kansan
Time and apartment leases are running out for KU seniors, and the month of April has many of them almost knocking down doors to campus job placement centers.
Those placement centers, however, may not have good news for the anxious soon-to-be graduates, counselors say.
"There are a lot less employers coming to the campus than there used to be," said Julie Cunningham, director of the Engineering Career Services Center at the School of Engineering. "We've had a lot of fall-out from previous years. That's because of the bad economy."
Douglas Houston, professor of business said that although the job market was in a bind, the Business School Placement Center had a relatively high success rate.
"I tell students to use every way they can to look for and get jobs," he said. "Students must learn to be more aggressive in their outreach."
Not every school has its own placement services, but there are services available to all KU graduates and undergraduates looking for jobs in any career field.
The University Placement Center, located in Room 110 on the lower level of the Burge Union, handles most students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. School of Fine Arts and School of Education. The School of Business and the School of Journalism have their own placement centers and services.
"I think that most of the available jobs are geared more toward engineering and business majors than anything else," said Van Nguyen, Lawrence senior.
Nguyen uses services at the University Placement Center, but the only psychology-related job interview for which she has been called was in Wichita. She turned it down.
"There aren't many (jobs) left for this year," she said. "Most jobs the center does have seem to be in retail or jobs like selling cars."
An outlet that Nguyen suggests that students use is Dial-a-Job, 864-4623. This phone line is run by the department of human resources.
"On that line, there are some clerical jobs and sometimes engineering jobs," she said.
Besides providing information to students about available jobs in their career fields, some centers also organize workshops and seminars in self-assessment and interview techniques.
The Engineering Career Services Center, 4010 Learned Hall, works with about 450 KU students. There is no fee to use its services, but students must put their database information on Resume Expert Plus, a computer program on disk that can be purchased for $20 at bookstores.
Cunningham said, "Our follow-ups on KU graduates find that 95 to 98 percent of people who are employed and not in graduate school or the military are employed in the career field they studied at KU."
The Engineering Career Services Center offers a practice interview day when employers come to campus and run students through practice interviews. It also provides workshops, a job club, a career
library and a jobs book.
"The jobs book is what most of our students use," Cunningham said. "In it, we have all jobs that come to us and are available but are not campus interviews. We keep it in the School of Engineering library and we also have one at the KU Regents Center. Most students ask for an up-to-date listing of all available jobs. The jobs book is as close as we can get to a list like that."
The Business School Placement Center, 125 Summerfield Hall, has about 650-675 students in its computer database.
Students are finding jobs in the placement center's databases more often now than they did in previous years. Through the databases, students can find out what jobs are available, get a contact phone number and make appointments for interviews on their own.
Fred Madaus, director of the Business School Placement Center, said that with the limited number of on-campus interviews this year, the database had become more of a necessity.
"We do more referrals out of the database than we used to," he said. "The number of on-campus referrals we handle is going down in comparison to previous years, probably due to the job market and the decline in the economy."
The Business School Placement Center has been relatively successful in placing business graduates in their fields shortly after graduation, he said.
"In a tight job market, students get frustrated with the availability of jobs," Madaus
said. "This is partially due to the economy. Several of the placement centers in the Big Eight are also having some of the same problems because jobs are tight. We're all in the same boat."
The School of Journalism works with more than 250 KU graduates and many other KU undergraduates in its placement center. The center offers job and internship leads in the journalism field.
"According to this year's records, it looks like we have more people looking for jobs and internships through this office than we had last year and in the past," said Peggy Warren, keyboard operator in charge of the Journalism Placement Center, 102 Stauffer-Flint Hall.
To use the journalism job placement and internship services, students must pay a one-time $35 fee that covers interviews and also helps cover the costs of mailing job lists to recent KU graduates. The fee also covers usage of the Business School Placement Center, which journalism students can use, as well.
"Sometimes students complain about the charge, but it really is beneficial to them in the long run," Warren said. "It helps if they register early, like when they are sophomores."
Job lists are mailed to journalism graduates every two weeks at a one-time $10 charge. This service is provided to graduates for a maximum of six months after graduation. Students are encouraged to notify the center when they are interested in changing jobs or when they receive jobs in the field.
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GRADUATION • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN • May 2, 1994