Amid Good Times, Job Recruiters Face Tough Task

When jobs go begging, potential employees can shop around, and that’s what they did Wednesday at UC Irvine’s annual job exposition.

More than 150 employers vied for the attention of about 3,000 students who turned out for the university’s 19th Career and Summer Job Fair, the campus’ largest to date, organizers said.

Amid a booming economy in which many graduating seniors already have positions lined up, employers resorted to gimmicks ranging from T-shirts to fortune cookies to lure job applicants during the one-day event.

Paul Saulce, a recruiter for Unisys, said he has 50 jobs to fill--20 more than usual at this time of year. Faced with competition from mushrooming technology companies, especially online businesses, the computer hardware and software maker has to recruit more aggressively, he said.

“Ten years ago, when there were fewer jobs, it was a lot easier to recruit. Now responses are way down,” Saulce said. “Kids see people in the Internet start-ups making $1 million in stock options, and they head that way.”

Last year, only a couple of Internet companies came to the fair, said Kathryn Van Ness, director of career services at the university. This year there were a dozen. At the Ledger.com booth, 20-year-old Paul Williamson, a recent UC Irvine graduate, was back on campus as an executive and recruiter.

“I never actually went to a job fair,” he said. “I started talking to venture capitalists when I was 19.”

He began working for the Irvine-based software company while a student two years ago. In his new role, he hopes to hire about five people in the next week.

With so many job prospects, students can relax and focus on their wallets. Near the student center, UC Irvine junior Joseph Chirilov strolled among rows of job booths while chatting on his cell phone. He scored an internship with Microsoft a month ago, he said, and now feels little need to schmooze with recruiters.

During the school year, he has worked part time for Unisys at $14 an hour. This summer, he will work there full time for $3,850 a month.

“I save the money up and buy toys, computer things and stereo equipment. If I’m not rich, I’m going to hate life,” he said jokingly.

Senior Alfred Chang said he accepted a job a month ago with Gap Inc. and will start there in October.

“I’ve worked my way up in the company already through various internships, and what I’ve done has already allowed me to apply internally,” he said. “This is the way the economy works. This is the way things go down.”

In such a job market, recruiters on campus to fill standard summer jobs were not landing many prospects. Pam Howley, a recruiter for 25 years, was seeking counselors for Los Angeles-area summer day camps. Applications are up over last year, she said, but her booth still was not drawing nearly as much traffic as those of technology companies.

A decade ago, she said, “it was a lot easier. For kids in college today, there’s this push for them to get what people consider ‘real’ jobs. It’s very sad.”

Howley said she cannot compete with the salaries or status of technology positions. “Instead,” she said, “we give an enlightening experience.”