As Class of 2015 graduates transition from college to the working world, they will be entering a job market that is improving and increasing hiring.

Mike Cahill, director of Syracuse University Career Services, said businesses seeking sustained growth will often turn to younger workers.

“A lot of it for college students is the comfort of level of employers,” he said.

Hiring of college graduates will increase 16 percent from last year, according to a March 9 marketplace.org article. The article also lists information services, finance and insurance and business and scientific services among the leading sectors in growth. Engineering graduates earn the largest starting salary, according to the article, at an average of $63,000 per year.

Cahill said this upward trend has occurred slowly but the last couple of years have seen the most improvement.

“All hiring is based upon not just the current economy, but the expectation employers have that the economy will improve,” he said.

After the recession in the late 2000s, the economy has slowly but steadily improved, said Don Dutkowsky, an economics professor at SU.

Dutkowsky said the U.S. is fortunate on two counts: one being the country dodged a depression and the other being that the economy has been improving each year.

“It is not a fully recovered economy,” Dutkowsky said. He added that it is not at its peak health, but it is better than last year.

He explained that business follows a simple pattern of consumer confidence increasing, which encourages businesses to increase production, which then induces hiring.

“The stronger the economic activity, the more they have to step up their productivity,” Dutkowsky said.

Non-farm employment increased by 126,000 jobs in March and unemployment remained 5.5 percent, the lowest it has been since May 2008, according to an April study by the U.S. Department of Labor.

While employees and workers with experience have an edge on college graduates, graduates can use internships and their GPAs to showcase their skills and abilities, Dutkowsky said.

“GPA stands for mastery of skills in the workplace,” Dutkowsky said. He explained that because graduates often do not have the experience of older workers, employers use academic measurements to assess how “teachable” a potential employee is.

Career Services helps students and graduates coordinate their job searches. Cahill said he does this by emphasizing how to engage in the job search process effectively. Part of that process is finding job postings and preparing cover letters and resumes, he added.

Other ways Cahill said both graduates and current students can better their chances of capturing the job or career they desire is by cultivating relationships and making contact with employers.

Cahill explained that employers are not often looking for someone with the exact major as the open job.

“People hire you for skills, not for your titles,” he said.

Sometimes graduates do not know the full range of opportunities that are actually out there. Looking at the job search process as an exploration is one way of broadening one’s perspective, Cahill said.

“That’s the one thing I always emphasize,” Cahill said. “Everyone is going to get one.”

Published on May 7, 2015 at 8:00 am

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