Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Seriously? 50% of college grads do NOT have jobs


By Kaycee Cash

50% of new college graduates do not have jobs…. Seriously? Here I am, pouring my heart and soul into my college education, and now I am threatened by this statistic. You don’t apply to colleges hoping to give them all your money and leave with a piece of paper but no money to your name. You think that you are going to college to get the “whole experience,” which is of course worth it and I encourage it, but me personally? I’m in college now so that I can get that job that I want. That one job that I have been dancing around, declaring majors for. Right now it happens to be a small animal veterinarian. It could change to anything with animals- but that’s just me. I feel like a lot of people go through the same cycle of not knowing exactly what you want to do with your life, and this statistic of not having a job is scary. None of us want to end up like that.

But here I am, not even finished with the third paragraph of the introduction to this book that is supposed to teach me how to get a job. “Do This! Get Hired!” is the title. Forceful, but it gets the point across. Why should I trust what this book says?  Well, to start off, the first chapter is titled “What Qualifies Me to Give You Advice?” Apparently, Mr. Lyden is quite qualified.

One of the things that I have learned about the author is that he evaluates college students for a living. He recruits people like me for businesses, grad school, etc. If I had to guess, he probably knows what he is doing, and I feel a bit more comfortable about the advice that he has to give. Not only does he recruit college students, he teaches them how to get recruited through several classes. Some of these include methods on how to succeed in applying online, interviews, and resume writing. I made my resume with a guide off of google, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t as good as it should be. I hope that the things that he has to say in his book will help. He also teaches others how to recruit, how to read resumes, and did I mention the businesses that he works for are ranked and rated highly? Within the first few pages I’ve already learned a lot about him and a fun fact: always put your GPA in your resume or run the risk of your resume getting thrown out immediately. Nobody has the time to call you and ask about anything you left out.

The most striking thing to me is his story behind writing this book. I know that the proceeds of the book go to saving animals, which is a fantastic thing, but he got the idea by reading somebody else’s help book for college students. That somebody else has a Ph.D, and his book was long and way too descriptive.  Not only that… some of it was wrong, at least from Mr. Lyden’s experience. What’s great about this book so far is that there is nothing fake to it. It’s concise and informative, and already helpful. Not only that, it has a sarcastic tone that keeps the book humorous.  I look forward to the rest of the book, and I think I have a lot left to learn about getting a job. (And I mean A LOT.)

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