Carolina Alumni Review - March/April 2009

blueprints

The First Years Out

Tackling a Tough Economy

Young alumni embrace flexibility, networking to stay competitive in the hunt for jobs

COURTESY ANKIT TIBREWALA ’08

SAnkit Tibrewala ’08 was offered his dream job — a position as an investment banking analyst at a ix months before he graduated from Carolina,

Miami company. A few months later, officials at the company stopped taking his calls. By April, as graduation loomed and the economy worsened, his job offer was canceled.

Then, with help from University Career Services and an alumnus, the day seemed to be saved. As he studied for final exams in business administration,

Tibrewala’s cell phone rang.

It was Merrill Lynch, offering him a job as a broker in Winston-Salem. Whew! Tibrewala started work in July, went through extensive company-paid training and settled in.

Then one Monday morning in January, his supervisor called him into his office.

“I saw my boss and my manager sitting there, and from the expressions on their faces, I knew something was probably wrong,” he says. Seven months after Tibrewala was hired, Merrill Lynch was laying him off.

Few have experienced
such a double whammy, but

the economic downturn is affecting the career options of Carolina graduates and the class of ’09 that’s joining their ranks. Across campus, those who help students and alumni find work are increasing their efforts and adapting their advice to new realities.

University Career Services, available to alumni for the first six months after graduation, has added an internship coordinator and taken a more proactive stance.

“We definitely have stepped up our calling to employers,” Associate Director Tim Stiles said. “We’re recognizing that many of their recruiting budgets have been reduced, and we’re trying to get postings from

Ankit Tibrewala ’08 looked on the bright side after one job was canceled before he could start and he got laid off from another. “I got a good seven months of work experience. I see that more as a bonus than anything else.”

them or connect with alumni who work for those companies. We don’t want to leave any stones unturned.”

University Career Services also is teaching what Stiles calls “more guerrilla marketing tactics” — cold-calling techniques, data mining for contacts and ways to deal with the stress of a job search. Individual schools are hosting events to help graduating seniors network with alumni. Linda Conklin, manager of the GAA’s Alumni Career Services, has added workshops for alumni job-seekers and those trying to hang onto the jobs they have.

Not surprisingly, Conklin says, a lot of those seeking job-coaching services are in the financial, real estate and construction industries. “I’m also seeing a lot of stay-at-home moms trying to come back” into the workplace, she said. “They’re at the age when their kids are going off to college and maybe their spouse isn’t doing so well.”

Once, much of her time was devoted to career development. Since the downturn, she said, “it’s very much job-search related” for recent graduates and older alumni alike.

She advises those who are employed and thinking about changing jobs to stay put. And she advocates “really considering Plan B: How can you deconstruct what you are and sell various pieces of it?”

Financial analysts can analyze other things, she points out. Astrophysicists can find other uses for their abilities in math, data collection and research. Newspaper editors can apply writing, editing and project-man-agement skills to areas such as video production. She recommends that alumni ask themselves: “If one industry is disappearing, what is taking its place, and can I find a place in it?”

She also advocates “trying not to get crazy-desper-ate. Even at 8 percent unemployment, 92 percent are still employed.” She points out that the unemployment rate for college graduates was about half that of the overall workforce in December — 3. 7 percent compared with 7. 2 percent, according to MSN Money.

While that 3. 7 percent hovers close to the 1983 record high for college graduates, MSN reports that for decades that group has fared far better than the general labor force when it comes to earnings, savings and finding work after a job loss — in good times and bad.