Over half of graduating seniors feel pessimistic about entering the workforce, due in part to a competitive job market and poor outlook on the economy, according to a recent survey by Handshake.
In this episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader spoke with Christine Cruzvergara to discuss Handshake’s latest survey of college seniors and how they’re feeling about entering the workforce. Later, Cruzvergara shares how higher education institutions can respond to these new challenges by pulling from existing literature regarding preventive health measures.
An edited version of the podcast appears below.
Inside Higher Ed: This is not the most fun episode, because the job market is bad right now. We are preparing a group of students to enter the workforce—or go to grad school—in a few weeks, and it is a tricky situation for them.
Handshake just released a survey, which said that 56 percent of graduating seniors feel at least somewhat pessimistic about starting their careers. How do we launch students into the workforce, given today’s context and circumstance? This is a really tough environment, and students are entering a world that is a little different than the one that they thought they might be getting. What kind of conversations are you all having or considering when we’re supporting students in this time?
Christine Cruzvergara: That is a good place to start. It’s definitely a tough market. As you said, seniors are feeling pessimistic as they think about how to get their foot in the door.
Christine Cruzvergara, chief education officer
I think it’s important to also step back and remember, though, that these go in cycles. This is not that different than the graduates who graduated into the 2008, 2009 recession, right? They also felt like, “Oh my gosh, what I went into school expecting is definitely not what I’m graduating with. And now I need to pivot. Now I need to think differently.”
So every so often we have cycles like this where, unfortunately, some of the graduating class experiences this downturn, and they have to figure out, how am I going to get creative? And I think this class in particular is doing just that. They’re trying to adapt quickly. They’re trying to pivot. They’re trying to be more flexible in the ways that they think about their careers and how they might want to get started. And I think they’re, quite frankly, not being precious about what they consider a dream job or their first job. They’re just being more practical about all of that. And I think that’s really smart.
Q: [Having a dream job] is something that Handshake surveyed students on. And I don’t know if that’s a question that you all have used in prior surveys, but this idea of a dream job has been changing for young people. Can you speak a little bit about that data and sort of the trends that you’re seeing?
A: Personally, I’m not a fan of the term “dream job.” I think for a lot of folks, it feels like too much pressure to have this so-called ideal job that exists out there that you’re always gunning for. The reality is, we did have 57 percent of the Class of 2025 who had a dream job in mind when they entered college, however they personally define dream job. Fewer than half of them have that same goal now. And I think that really speaks honestly to the grit and the resilience of this graduating class.
I like to see it from a glass-half-full perspective, in that these students have said they are exploring other industries, they have changed or added a minor to ensure that they’re even more competitive in the market. They are considering other ways that they can use the skills that they have gathered, and how to think about that in ways that they can still contribute to society. And I think that’s really fantastic, because the reality is, with the advance of technology and how quickly things are changing these days, these students are going to need to invent and reinvent themselves over and over again over the entire course of their career. And they’re essentially getting a crash course in how to do that and how to do that well, right from the get-go.
Q: That’s something we see commonly in today’s workforce. I kind of coined the phrase, “not your granddad’s career,” where you don’t start at the factory and work your way up and then maybe you’re a vice president by the time you retire. We see a lot more lateral changes today. We see more young people who might start in one field and then transition into another.
We talk a lot in higher ed about jobs of the future, and these ideas that there are going to be new industry needs and new professions and new roles for students to take on. The idea of higher education preparing students for that is great. And like you mentioned, this is a new environment for students, if we want to frame it as the silver lining for them to identify, “OK, what are those things that I really do like doing, even if it’s not my dream job, even if it’s not the career that I thought I was going to have on the way out?”
I wonder if you can speak to that dynamic of how higher ed is actually preparing students for this kind of weird uncertainty.
A: I think this is actually where a lot of our career center partners really come into play. They are at the ready to work with students to help them see, “these are the amazing skills that you’ve gained while you’ve been in college, whether that’s through your courses or through extracurriculars or through your internships. And this is how you can market that. This is how you can reinvent what your identity is or your narrative or where you want to go.”
These are professionals that know what’s happening in the job market. They know from employers what they are looking for, and they stand ready to essentially help a student make those connections and connect the dots about their own experiences.
So often, when I talk to a student, they have all the ingredients to make themselves a really wonderful candidate. What they lack is the understanding of how to put it all together. They don’t know how to talk about it. They don’t know how to translate some of those skills into language that employers want to hear. That’s exactly what our schools can be doing right now to help support students through this challenging and competitive time.
I think the other piece, and I know that many of my partners in higher ed would probably agree with this, students love to shoot off a ton of résumés. You’ve probably heard this, they’re applying to, like, hundreds of jobs, and then they complain that they’re not hearing back. And then they also complain in the very next breath how competitive everything is. We see through our data that that is true. The Class of 2025, as of this past March, has already submitted 21 percent more job applications in Handshake than the previous class. There is more competition.
But the reality is, if you are not tailoring your application, and you’re not spending time networking and actually getting to know people, your application kind of is going into a big black hole, and it’s very hard to get traction. And then it becomes this spiral, because as a student, you start to feel hopeless—“I sent out all these things. I’m not hearing back. Maybe I’m not good enough”—and you start to feel dejected when the reality is you can actually be a little bit more tailored. You can be a little bit more specific, and your institution, your career centers, can help you to actually narrow in on that. I’m not saying to only apply for like five jobs or 10 jobs. You can certainly apply to more than that, but the intentionality around what you apply to is really important.
Q: I saw that trends are up for young people graduating from college, applying for internships or nontraditional roles instead of going straight into the workforce. Graduate school applications are up, law school applications are up several hundred percent [at some institutions] year over year. We’re seeing more students pivoting or thinking of different ways that they can spend their time after graduation than just getting a job. I wonder if you can speak to that idea of students taking maybe a pause or looking at a different direction before entering the workforce, given how tough this job market has been?
A: I think any time you see a downturn like this, you tend to see an increase in grad school, for sure. That’s how the market just generally works. You do tend to see people get a little bit more creative about how they use their time. Do they take a gap year? Do they do volunteer work? Do they try and do X, Y and Z?
I think what’s important in this part of the conversation is a lot of students don’t have the luxury of being able to do that. I think if you do happen to have the safety net or the privilege to be able to take some time to do just an internship, or to do volunteer work, or to take a gap year, by all means, do that. Just make sure that you’re really documenting your learning, you’re documenting the experience and you’re thinking intentionally about how you’re going to narrate that period of time in your life.
I would say it is not surprising to me to hear that some graduating seniors are applying to internships. They want anything that will pay them. And if these are paid internships, it is worth it to go get that experience, because you could almost treat it like a mini on-the-job job interview, right? You can prove yourself. You can build relationships, and hopefully, if there is an opening afterward, they will want to offer it to you, because they now have experienced your work ethic and your work product. And I think that is smart. In the absence of full-time jobs that you are able to get or interested in, you should go to the next-best option, and you should consider those opportunities. But that does, of course, make things a little bit more competitive for some of the folks that are juniors or sophomores that are going out for those same opportunities. And that’s part of the challenge right now.
Q: We’re seeing job sectors, specifically in technology and federal hiring roles, [that] are down year over year, which, anybody who’s been reading the news is probably not surprised by that trend. But we still see that students are interested in tech jobs, and they are still interested in working for the federal government or for their state governments. I wonder if you have any insights into how we can continue to motivate students to have these kinds of jobs that they are working towards but maybe not able to land their first role right this second?
A: I think what’s really important to help students wrap their heads around is that your first job is not your last job. Your first job is literally just your first job. You can go do a number of different things, and you can gain lots of skills. Quite frankly, what’s really helpful, often, is you can gain perspective in the way another sector or another industry area tackles a similar problem, and with that, that actually becomes an amazing stepping-stone later, when you’re getting your second job or your third job, in which case, by then, the market may have changed again. Now those opportunities may be more plentiful, and so you can take that and apply it in a different way.
I think that it is important to just step back and help them see the long term. It doesn’t mean if you have to pivot from a sector that you wanted to go into, which doesn’t have as many opportunities right now, that you’re never going to be able to do that; it just means that you might take a slightly different route to get there. You’ll get there a little bit later, but now you have greater perspective.
Q: Do you think that’s messaging employers can be giving to students as well? I think sometimes, as a student, your major feels like the most important thing, or your internship feels like the most important thing. But like you mentioned, having multiple sectors of experience is valuable, and it gives you really great perspective. Who else needs to be joining that conversation for students to be able to say, “Oh, OK, that makes sense?”
A: One hundred percent, employers need to be saying this. I think lots of schools, definitely lots of career centers, have been saying it for a while. I feel like sometimes that is the equivalent to like your parents telling you [something], and you’re like, “Yeah, OK, cool, cool, cool. I’m not sure if I’m gonna really listen to that or pay attention to that.” But if you have a cool friend or somebody else tell you the same thing, all of a sudden, “Yeah, I should totally listen. I think that’s such a valuable insight.” So I think employers play that role in this conversation.
I do think media also plays a role in that conversation. I think a lot of articles that are written about college to career, about the workforce, about early talent pipeline, often centers around [the academic] major. And I think that that does perpetuate a belief or a thinking amongst students, amongst their parents, that the major is the end-all, be-all, is so, so important, and if you make a mistake around that decision, you’re never going to be able to get a job. And that’s just false. We need to be better about how we share those narratives and talk about the reality that more than 50 percent of the general workforce does something that is not directly related to their major. They might use skills and knowledge from those majors, but it’s not directly related to those majors.
So I think employers and the media in particular are two entities that I would say should be part of this conversation and can play a very, very important role in shaping people’s thinking.
Q: Those darn journalists.
You mentioned your career center can feel like Mom or Dad, where they’re a trusted source, but maybe they’re not the first one you turn to about market information. Handshake’s most recent survey pointed to that as well, where students said [their career center] was a trusted source of job market information, but they’re more likely to turn to social media, to online job boards or to career fairs and employer events. Do you think this ties back to this idea of making career services more visible, or do we need to make sure that our career services are better equipped with timely, relevant information, like a job board or social media might be?
A: It’s both. I think on one hand, there’s definitely a visibility issue. I think on too many campuses, career services is still seen as a peripheral service, that if you happen to wander into it, cool, they’ll help you, you’re going to be in good shape. But for more than 50 percent of students, they don’t wander in, and so they never end up getting that particular support. Visibility is a really important component, and I think schools and administrators can actually do a lot to really help with that, just in thinking through, how do you embed career services, whether that’s the events, the programs, an appointment, a required internship? How do you embed that into the curriculum or into the student experience, even if it’s not in the curriculum? How do you do that in a way that makes it feel as if this is just part of what it means to go to school here, that part of going to school is learning these things and preparing myself for afterward? So that’s one piece of it, the visibility.
I do think the second component, though, really varies depending on school and depending on the career center. I have some career center partners that we work with who are so on top of the data, they know exactly who the employers are that want to hire their students. They know exactly what skills those employers want. They’re serving as a really tight feedback loop to their academic partners, to their deans, and sharing that information. And then I’ve got other partners who, quite frankly, are one- or two-person shops and don’t have the bandwidth to be able to try and keep up with some of that, and there’s no way they would be able to meet with every single student on their campus.
I think the third bucket is actually just the reality of how the new generation consumes information. Let’s just be honest, every generation has consumed information slightly differently than the generation before, and Gen Z is very tied to social media. They’re tied to short tidbits of information, and that is how they like to consume information. Part of it is, don’t fight it, use it, and I think that’s exactly what we try and create on our platform is an opportunity and a way for students to learn from other students, and for students to be able to learn from both career centers and employers, but in, like, the bite-sized way that they are used to consuming in traditional social media.
Q: Embedding career services into the student experience is so critical, and we know there’s so much research out there that says that a student who engages with their career center early and often is more likely to have better outcomes. But there’s also, on the other end, if a student leaves higher education without a job, the career center can still be a resource and can still be there to support them in finding that next step, or maybe their second step. I wonder if you can just speak to the value of career services, not only as a student experience, but as that alumni experience as well.
A: For many, many schools, they will continue to support alumni for life, and if not for life, sometimes for five years, 10 years out. That can be a valuable source to go to when you’re thinking about a pivot, or, as you said, just thinking about your second or third job and what it means to now market yourself with a little bit more experience, or how to make that pivot.
I think our career center partners are really exceptional at trying to make sure that they provide not only advice and information, but that they can help you discern based on your past experiences. “OK, now you know a little more because you’ve had this first job, what you like, what you don’t like, what type of environment you can thrive in or not thrive in. Let’s take that and then let’s make sense of it and look at it against both the job market and the labor market and what’s available, so that you’re making, ideally, hopefully, a better choice in your second job or your third job.”
And then I think it’s also important, but a lot of the things that students do find value in and that they find as a trusted source—you mentioned career fairs and events, for example—the sheer majority of those are provided by the career center, and I don’t think students realize that. I think it’s also drawing that connection because they are being supported by the career center. They just maybe didn’t go into the literal career center, but they went to an event that was hosted by the career center, they went to a program that was hosted by the career center, and they got a lot out of it. And I think that’s OK, too. It’s not about the career center getting credit. It’s about the career center facilitating all the ways that a student can feel ultimately supported, and that’s true for alums as well.
Q: There’s a high likelihood that some students do not land their dream job after graduation because of whatever it might be—the sector is having a hard time hiring, the economy is not great, whatever. Sometimes that leads to people doubting the value of higher education, or thinking that college didn’t prepare that student well enough, or that they didn’t need that degree to get a job after college, or things like that. I want to set you up on a little soapbox here about why it’s still valuable for students to go to college, or how higher education does play a role in preparing students for their future, even if that first six months or that first year might be a really, really difficult environment.
A: I appreciate that. I am a huge believer that higher education is still one of the best ways that a student can change their social mobility. I think for so many students, what is really core and really key is that no one can ever take your knowledge or your education away from you once you have that. Once you’ve learned that, once you’ve consumed that, that’s yours. It’s yours to keep. It’s yours to do with. It’s yours to apply. And I think that’s really powerful, because we don’t know exactly what the future is going to hold. We don’t know exactly what types of jobs are going to exist 10, 15, 20 years from now, and we need to be able to stay adaptable and agile and resilient, and that is actually what schools teach you to do. They don’t just teach you about a content area. They teach you about how to think about the content area. They teach you about how to communicate about that, how to synthesize information, how to hear different perspectives. All of those are traits that are more needed now in our society than ever before.
So even if your first job, or even your second job, is not exactly what you want to do, it’s up to you to take what you’ve learned and to start to figure out, how are you going to apply that in a way that can start to change your career trajectory moving forward? There’s nothing better than an education that’s going to position you for that.
I will just say, lastly, we have a huge population of students, first generation, many of whom don’t come from families or communities that know other people or have connections, and going to a college or university is literally that stepping-stone to starting to meet and expand your network. It’s really hard to do that without sometimes having that experience. I think there’s also real, true value in the ability to build that network through your university or college that also isn’t often talked about or sometimes is only talked about with the most elite institutions. But this is actually still true for a public flagship, for a regional public, you’re still gaining exposure to more people, and to have that affinity that is shared that allows you to jump-start your ability to create that network.
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