Kim Harnden, a UNC senior with a 3.25 grade point average, is confident of her abilities but concerned about the job market she'll face when she graduates in May.
"I'm worried in the sense that I have a lot of friends that have graduated in the past year who are jobless and still looking for jobs, and they have degrees from UNC and other prestigious schools," said Harnden, a double major in Spanish and international studies from Hershey, Pa.
Her wariness is well-founded, according to career counselors at local universities.
Marie Sumerel, director of academic and career planning at Meredith College, said the job market is the worst she's seen in her career of nearly 30 years.
"It takes a lot of work to uncover the vacancies that do exist," she said.
Tim Stiles, associate director of career services at UNC-Chapel Hill, fears another significant drop in the percentage of graduates landing jobs this year. A poll of students who graduated last May that was taken in November found that 55 percent had found jobs, down from 65 percent for the prior class 12 months earlier.
The tight job market also triggered a countervailing trend. Thirty percent of last year's UNC grads were working on advanced degrees, up from 26 percent in 2008, Stiles said.
No doubt, the relatively small group of college students who finished their studies in December face the toughest market in a generation. Most likely, so will the crop of graduates in May.
Campus counselors say jobs exist, but students will have to work harder to find them, and they'll face greater competition once they do. The bottom line: Protracted job searches are becoming more common.
"The hardest thing for students to understand is that they don't need 27 jobs," said William Wright-Swadel, executive director of the career center at Duke University. "They need one really good job."
Ryan Lanman can attest to that.
Lanman, who received a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in June, started his job search in December 2008 and went more than five months without an interview.
"It was alarming," he said.
Fortunately, he landed a job as a process engineer at Durham LED lighting company Cree in July - several days after his first and only job interview.
His initial reaction?
"Relief that I wasn't crazy, that there wasn't something fundamentally wrong with me," Lanman said.
As always, demand varies widely from one field to another.
The majors and skills expected to enjoy an uptick in demand this year include e-commerce, entrepreneurialism, environmental sciences, information science, information systems (management and computer), interactive computer design, statistics, nursing and social work, according to a national survey of more than 2,500 employers by Michigan State University.
Outside of computer science, however, the market for technical degrees such as engineering is "somber," according to the survey.
Job placement directors at Wake and Durham technical community colleges say they are seeing the strongest demand in fields such as accounting, automotive, culinary, fire and police protection, heating and air conditioning, and the broad spectrum of health technology, from nursing to occupational therapy.
So is now a good time for graduates to seek an advanced degree instead of wrestling with the difficult job market?
Career counselors say going to grad school can be fine if it's essential to a student's career goals. After all, you're not going to be a lawyer without that J.D. degree.
But it doesn't make sense if the primary motivation is putting off your job search until the market improves.
The reason: Another degree can be expensive, and the longer-term prospects for the job market aren't great.
"I definitely think we are going to see what is called a jobless recovery," Stiles said.
Keeping optimistic
Despite the disheartening economy, Tom Russo, coordinator for career services at Durham Tech, said the students he sees remain upbeat.
"I haven't seen any panic yet," he said. "College students are so optimistic."
That would describe Paul Jones, 26, who graduated from N.C. State University last month with a degree in communications and a minor in nonprofit studies.
Jones, who lives in Raleigh, didn't start looking for a job until December because he was working at two internships during his last semester.
"My girlfriend likes to tell me I was so busy with my part-time jobs that I didn't have time to find a full-time job," he said.
Nevertheless, he is upbeat about his chances of getting hired - and soon.
"It may be just an ego thing," he conceded, "but you have to be confident going into it."
Signs point to trouble
Local schools say they don't poll their December graduates to find out how they're faring in the job market because the sample size is too small.
But the indicators aren't good.
"I can tell you that the number of employers coming to do on-campus interviews is significantly down," said Carol Schroeder, director of the career center at N.C. State. Employer recruiting trips are down more than 30 percent at N.C. State.
That's in line with a recent Michigan State University survey that found that employers in the Southeast anticipate cutting back on their hiring of new college graduates by 7 percent this year.
That's worse than a 2 percent reduction in hires expected nationwide, although it certainly reflects the state's 10.8 percent unemployment rate - the 10th worst in the nation.
"Students seeking employment will face fierce competition," concludes the report by the university's Collegiate Employment Research Institute. "There are simply not enough jobs to go around."
