College Graduate Underemployment Is Reshaping the Job Search Process

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In late June 2013, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released cold, hard facts and figures on the level of college graduate underemployment in the United States. Their statistics took into account recent graduates, who were working a job beneath their level of training in 2012. In other words, the report looked at all the college degree holding baristas, taxi drivers, and club hostesses around the country. It said that 44 per cent of college graduates were working in jobs that rendered their degrees completely useless.

Placing College Graduate Underemployment in a Broader Context

Scary as that may sound, several analysts pointed that this news is actually good news. How could that possibly be so, you ask? Because it reframes the way America, both at corporate level and out in the streets, conceives of the job search process. It also launches two important questions on this topic:

Have college degrees become irrelevant for employment because they lack any real-life value?, and
Have college graduates lost their rightful place on the job market because of the recession?

The answers are yet to be uncovered, but the more reasonable truth is that the current college degree underemployment statistics need to be placed within a broader context to be fully understood. For one thing, it’s not just college graduates that are suffering at the hands of the economy – everybody is. A closer look at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s statistics reveals that college graduate underemployment has been evolving in close step with the overall levels of unemployment at least since 1990. And this affects both recent college graduates, as well as those who graduated a while back. generation Y might feel underprivileged, but the truth is they don’t have it that much tougher than those who came before them.

How the Tech Boom Contributed to Underemployment among College Graduates

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s getting a college degree was mandatory for those who wanted to jumpstart their career – particularly in the fields of IT and tech. The boom those industries were seeing at the time made it very profitable to go to college, only to end up in a high-paying, challenging position immediately afterward, as well as in an industry that showed a lot of room for growth. And indeed, it did grow. As colleges churned out graduates in those fields with high demand, so the myth was rekindled: if you go to college, you deserve to land a well-paying job stat.

However, as all employment booms in various industries, that one too inevitably waned. In fact, that’s what two Canadian economists tried to explain in a study they released in March 2013. The scientific research conducted by Paul Beaudry and David Green showed that it was high-time for that IT and tech hiring spree to wane off by the mid- to late noughties. Now that it’s rather resolutely over, college graduate underemployment levels have, of course, slouched. However, this situation is not without precedent – it’s actually very similar to what was going on in the 80s.

Some will argue that current levels of college graduate underemployment are also propelled by the fact that many businesses, especially in IT and tech, are outsourcing their work to countries with more affordable talent. Yet this argument, which essentially says “they’re stealing our jobs” seems immaterial from a historic perspective. That very same perspective is the one which says that another industry boom is bound to follow. In all likelihood, it, too, will cause a hiring spree in that field, much like the booms before it did. For current recent graduates, it may be of little comfort – but the truth is they don’t have it as bad as they like to claim they do.

5 Career Advancement Tips for Older Workers

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In today’s job market, the affluence of young, educated professionals has significantly lowered the age threshold for what employers regard as ‘older workers’. According to one Wall Street Journal article, in the public relations field in New York, a professional is considered old once he or she has turned 40. This situation is, indeed, ageist and inequitable, but since it ties in with determining factors that stem from the larger picture of the job field, for the time being it seems impossible to change. As such, we’re listing five career advancement tips for older workers, which might help you perform better on the job, even with the perceived ‘handicap’ of age in your resume.

Understand your younger colleagues

One of the biggest issues behind workplace conflicts among generations stems from the different perspectives that older and younger workers, respectively, bring to the table. The general picture seems to be one of lack of understanding and empathy. But if you are really serious about applying our career advancement tips for older workers, you will know that being empathetic is your key to workplace success. Don’t assume you always know where your younger colleagues are coming from, even though you were once their age. The times have changed – and your experience as a 25 year-old professional might have absolutely no bearing on theirs.

Think young

–or, in other words, “if you can’t beat them, join them!” According to estimates from the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation, people born between 1981 and the first few years of the third millennium will be making up 36 per cent of all employees in the United States. If you want to co-exist peacefully and efficiently on the job, alongside the young ones, you need to try and think like them. This does require some mental and creative efforts, but the long-run pay-off is immense. Start with a simple question: “If I were twenty today, how would I like to be treated on the job?”

Let go of stereotypes

Perhaps the most important of career advancement tips for older workers is to do away with preconceptions. The media has already done a lot to inform your perception of young people. They are lazy, entitled, and on a constant search for instant gratification. They have attention deficits and are not willing to apply themselves. Right? Wrong. You couldn’t be more wrong, if you let such stereotypes affect you. And just by holding on to them, you would be unwittingly letting them influence the way in which you behave toward your younger colleagues. The solution is to simply stop assuming you know anything about them – and actually get the time to know them as individuals.

Try reverse mentorship

Traditionally, mentors are the old, wise, and experienced. Yet recent technologic developments have given rise to an increased need for reverse mentorship. Nowadays, more and more major companies are enlisting the aid of their younger employees, which come in to hold training sessions and seminars in new technologies, with their older counterparts. Think you’ve got nothing to learn from them? Then ask yourself how much you know about social media, mobile devices, and other new technologies. Chances are reverse mentorship will help you hone new important skills, while also providing ample opportunity for socialization with members of the younger generation.

Understand that workplaces change

This is the third millennium, when people are no longer spending all their decades of being active in the workforce in the same office, with the same company, or even within the same career track. This might seem daunting to you, but it’s just the way the world works these days. Similarly, you will find that decentralization and collaborative efforts are becoming increasingly prominent modes of working in an office environment. Gone are the days of the hierarchical ladder and strict protocols. Nowadays, a successful career is much more about being creative and outspoken, collaborating, and coming up with great new ideas.

Training Return on Investment

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Training ROI

Assets is a category most often defined to include tangible things such as capital, land, stocks, bonds, equipment, goods and property. What about intangible assets like knowledge or skills? Those are just as important as tangible assets if not even more so. Intangible assets are much harder to quantify and measure precisely because they are not visible things. They can only be seen indirectly through their effects on tangible assets.

Evaluating the return on investment or ROI for further training or education can be thus fairly difficult. Assigning or imputing money amounts to specific intangible assets is almost impossible. However, the Philips ROI Methodology can help put a dollar sign on the possible return from investing time and energy in additional study.

Philips ROI Methodology

The basic formula is Net Program Benefits/Net Program Costs multiplied by one hundred. The apparent simplicity of this formula is shattered when the actual benefits and costs are calculated. Estimates for them must be prepared according to this methodology. Essentially, participants are asked to assign percentage values as expressions of certainty to their estimates of how much a particular result is worth to them in money terms. Multiplying the dollar estimates by the percentage amounts supposedly yields a reasonably firm foundation for building a quantitative analysis of any prospective benefits.

Accountants are understandably wary of such practices because they are necessarily uncertain. They cannot be accurate enough to be accepted into the corpus of generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP used in the United States. GAAP only recognizes intangibles in so far as they relate to other accepted concepts like intellectual property. This presents a major problem for proponents of this ROI methodology. What is the best way to estimate ROI for education?

One way, which may not be the best, is to use current salary data for different occupations to gauge how much a worker’s salary could be increased by continuing his education. Matching this data against the full cost of additional training can provide a relatively good proxy of a cost/benefit analysis. Potential salary increases over and above the cost likely indicate that more education in the chosen field is an investment that will yield a return.

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