Good News for Grads : Corporate Recruiting Is Up for Class of ’94

After 12 job interviews in as many days, Jeremiah Taylor has his answers down pat.

Ask the Chapman University senior about his greatest failure, for example. “I don’t look at failure as failure but as a mere steppingstone,” he recites, flashing a smile.

His greatest success? “I’m sick of answering, ‘What’s your biggest success?’ ” Taylor confides. But the 24-year-old concedes that he’s glad for the chance to do so. Such opportunities have been scarce in recent years.

Mirroring a trend at universities nationwide, the number of corporate recruiters visiting Chapman’s campus in Orange is up.

As the economy improves, employers say, they expect to hire more college graduates this year than last, the first such increase in five years, according to the College Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

That means the so-called Generation X is finally getting a break. A surge in hiring could lift the spirits of younger twentysomethings, part of a generation that entered the labor force during the depths of the recession and found little available to them but “McJobs”--low-paying positions as waiters, clerks or drivers in food and other service industries.

“You’ve got a generation that arrived in the job market at an awkward time, and this is the first glimmer of hope for them,” said Peter Morrison, a demographer for Rand Corp., a think tank in Santa Monica.

Businesses that laid off employees during the downturn are now hiring but, rather than recalling the seasoned workers they let go earlier, many companies are instead expanding their ranks with new grads.

Young workers are desirable because they are typically computer-savvy, comfortable with ethnic and gender diversity, eager to learn--and willing to work for lower wages than the older, more-experienced workers they are in effect replacing, said Lynn Reaser, chief economist for First Interstate Bank in Los Angeles.

“Companies are having to fill a few positions in order to participate in some of the opportunities they are beginning to see,” she said.

As a result, businesses are sending out recruiters in force to scout the Class of ‘94, now only a month away from graduation.

USC, for example, reported its first pickup in corporate recruiters on campus since 1989. Jerry Houser, director of USC’s career development center, said he expects 325 to 330 employers to conduct campus interviews for May graduates, up from about 300 last year, with much of the increased demand being for computer science, accounting and finance students.

At UC Irvine, nearly 200 companies have booked interview time, a 20% increase. And UCLA has reported an “across-the-board” surge in recruiting.

Even specialized schools are reporting increases. At California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, smaller companies this year are joining the perennial recruiters, animation giants Walt Disney Co. and Hanna-Barbera, to sign up young artists, said Wilhelmine Schaefer, career and internship director.

Nationwide, employers expect to hire 1.1% more college graduates this year than last, according to the annual survey by CERI at Michigan State.

This year’s increase follows annual declines ranging from 2.1% for 1993 to 13.3% for the Class of ‘90--the year the recession began.

The new survey says that chemical and electrical engineers, along with chemistry majors and MBAs, are the most sought after. A separate study by the College Placement Council found that starting salaries have climbed modestly since last year for graduates in some fields, led by a 3.2% increase for accounting majors.

Though recruiting typically rises when a recession ends, this year’s increase is particularly significant because of the severity and length of the downturn and the large number of young people it affected, said L. Patrick Scheetz, CERI director.

It also means that, for the first time in this decade, some industries are having to scramble to recruit the best-qualified people.

“We find we have to compete somewhat harder,” said Lisa Phelan, director of recruiting in the Los Angeles office of Andersen Consulting, a nationwide business consulting group. She said she plans to hire at least 110 graduates through her Los Angeles office this year, up from 85 in 1993.

On-campus hiring never disappeared entirely, even during the depths of the downturn. And some corporations that eliminated recruiting during past recessions took a different tack this time.

“Many years ago, our company and others made a mistake by cutting the staff tremendously--keeping the senior people and laying off the junior people,” said Allen G. Bormann, corporate director of college relations and recruiting for Rockwell International in Seal Beach. The result, he said, was having to assign highly paid employees to tasks that could have been handled by people with less experience.

For that reason, Rockwell has continued to hire new grads every year, even though its total work force has shrunk by a third since 1986. The aerospace giant expects to make about 175 campus hires this year, Bormann said, about the same as in 1993.

College career counselors say they had expected a recruitment rebound, but not so big or so early in the economic recovery.

“We are surprised it was this soon,” said Walter Brown, associate placement director at UCLA. “Now students will not have to look as long or as hard” to find jobs.

The surge has so surprised students and campus counselors that some companies report having recruiting time slots unfilled, especially those interviewing to hire graduates in technical fields, Scheetz of Michigan State said.

But not all college seniors have perceived an improvement in job prospects.

Take Peggy Kuo, a 21-year-old senior at Cal State Fullerton.

“It is hard for students without experience to find good-paying jobs,” she said. Though she will graduate next month with a degree in biology, she said, her work history so far shows only clerical positions.

“Students are forced to take jobs that are not their first choices,” Kuo said, adding that she is more likely to end up selling equipment to laboratories than working in them as a researcher.

“Even delivering pizza pays $9 an hour, compared to $5 to work in a lab,” she said. “It just seems like a college degree is not what it used to be.”

Times staff writer Stuart Silverstein contributed to this report.