’SC tools help fuel job hunt

It’s not uncommon for a young adult armed with a college degree and résumé to still be desperately job hunting after graduation.

All too often, the companies that grads are genuinely excited about working for will show interest and sympathy, only to regretfully state that no job openings are available.

Aaron Rovner | Daily Trojan

Dejected, these grads often spend the time between meaningful jobs making copies and coffee in an office with no potential for upward mobility.

College grads on the job hunt might also encounter companies that lower budgets and minimize costs through a motto of “last one hired, first one fired.”

Most people in this situation, however, are those that didn’t take full advantage of the resources afforded them by their college.

With the unemployment rate growing ever higher, stories like these are commonplace; studies by the Economic Policy Institute using statistics from the Bureau of Labor show that the unemployment rate among young adults is about twice the amount of the average rate among older workers, with young adults making up 26.4 percent of all unemployed workers.

And when taking these failures into consideration, students must also realize that they are not only searching for careers that will afford them a lifestyle of well-deserved success after the work put toward a college diploma — they are striving to pay off thousands of dollars of debt garnered by student loans.

With higher tuition prices, student loans are becoming an increasingly necessary part of a higher education. After four years, the average student loan debt runs a tab of almost $30,000, according to finaid.org.

Competing with older, more experienced workers, recent graduates are often forced to take jobs with meager pay and minimal benefits, or else they are thrust into jobs irrelevant to their area of expertise.

It seems as if a lose-lose situation arises — the baby boomers can justify their decision not to retire  with the lower wages and unstable guarantees of pension, but the economy can more effectively be stimulated by young adults with the potential of purchasing houses and cars. With the weight of loans upon our shoulders, these goals seem lofty at best.

There are still those who might mistakenly believe loans can be easily circumvented by declaring bankruptcy.

Attorney Mark Britton, the founder of online legal referral service Avvo.com, told The Wall Street Journal “with a student loan, the only asset is you and your income. If you walk away, the lender has nothing. So the laws make it very hard to walk away.”

But merely discussing the implications of student loans will not help the job situation for college graduates; we can find ways to reverse the situation.

Though the heavy competition in the workplace hinders the career opportunities of young adults across the nation, several things allow us, as USC students, to prevent the same fate story from playing on.

The key is not to wait until graduation to explore our various skillsets but to begin early, during our years in study — our years before facing the burdening task of repaying loans).

We also should not underestimate the power of the Trojan Family.

As USC students, we have so many resources at our fingertips — the Career Planning & Placement Center, academic advisers, career fairs, workshops and more.

We can learn how to write a résumé, conduct a job interview and become more efficient in all of our job-seeking ventures from speakers and professors who have been there and done that.

Only by taking advantage of these resources can we ensure a higher possibility of employment once we graduate, and therefore a chance to repay our loans as soon as possible.

By employment, I mean jobs that are suited to our skill levels that make our degrees worth the massive loan debt.

It is our job to be aware of both the climate of the current job market and of the sources that will help us compete in it, whether that means a summer internship, established connections, an improved résumé or even just freshly learned social skills.

It is our job to meet the right people, make the right first impressions and always be on our feet.

Alice Wen is a freshman majoring in print and digital journalism.