With the decrease in employment, how do graduates find jobs?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6189724

by Apane • 13 years ago

4 5 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've just graduated University of Waterloo (Ontario) and myself and friends are finding it extremely difficult to find good jobs.

So, any advice would be appreciated!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/unemployment-stats/index.html

dllthomas• 13 years ago

What are your skills?

Apane• 13 years ago

I would consider myself a junior rails developer :)

and took the Science and Business course at Waterloo/

jared314• 13 years ago

Without knowing your skills, interests, or background, any advice is going to be very generic.

1. Attend, and present at, local meetup / groups.

2. Find a "buddy" and collaborate on side projects. Keep them open source, and publicly visible, on both your github accounts

3. Contribute to open source projects

4. Blog about your adventures in ( tech or sector specific task )

5. Apply to consulting companies (they are usually hanging around the local meetup groups)

6. Attend sector specific or technology specific conferences

7. Work Pro bono (as long as you can show the result to others)

Most of this has more to do with building a portfolio, and a personal brand, than actually finding a job. But, that part usually pays off like investing.

creature• 13 years ago

Seth Godin has some advice on what you could do: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/graduate-sch...

I think the other thing that can help is to understand that the world has changed. There's now two paths to a sure job: be world-class excellent at one thing, or be pretty good at 2-3 things. The first one almost certainly isn't going to happen; by definition, you're more likely to be in the 99.99% than the 0.01% of graphic designers. But what if you're a better-than-average graphic designer, can speak fluent German, and are pretty good at online marketing? Now you're some company's ideal employee.

EllaMentry• 13 years ago

There are no shortage of jobs for talented people (especially in Canada! Companies are bringing in thousands of immigrants every year because they literally can't employ enough Canadians!). If you have a degree in Maths, Biology, Physics, Computer Science, Chemistry or any other hard science discipline or Engineering (Electrical, Chemical etc.) and can't find a job then you are not looking in the right places.

You shouldn't have a problem in Ontario, but don't be afraid to look further out (Vancouver, Alberta) for those kind of jobs.

I just looked down to see you took a Science and Business course...as someone looking at CV's I literally have no idea what that means...what can you bring to an organization? What can you produce or create?

You say you consider yourself a junior rails developer, what have you built? How do you plan to utilise your course in your future work?

With the decrease in employment, how do graduates find jobs?

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