Recent economic growth across the country has created a promising job market for Syracuse University’s graduating Class of 2019, multiple SU career advisers said.

Employers will hire about 17% more graduates from the Class of 2019 than from the

Class of 2018, according to a job outlook survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. The 2019 hiring estimation is the association’s highest projection since 2007.

The economy grew about 3% in the first quarter of 2019 — a higher percent than economists predicted, said Christopher Perrello, director of Career Services at the School of Information Studies. The beginning of 2019 also saw unprecedented job gains, with January marking the 100th straight month of increases in employment, The Washington Post reported.

Any graduating students without a job after graduation have a fairly good chance of finding one in the next few weeks, Perrello said. In the information technology field, for example, employers are expected to increase their hires by 11% this year because of the recent employment boom.

“What I see is that this is really going to give employers a big confidence boost to do a major hiring push,” Perrello said.

Employment rates have grown slowly since the 2009 job market crash, said Kelly Barnett, director of the Career Development Center at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Gradual growth is more promising than a sudden spike because it indicates a stable upward trend in the job market, she said.

College graduate employment rates dipped last year, but 2019 promises to be a strong hiring year, she said.

Susan Call, assistant director of the School of Architecture’s Career Services, also anticipates that 2019 will be good for college graduates seeking employment. The job market has improved from last year, Call said. On campus, architecture students have participated in job interviews at SU to further increase their chances of finding a job, she added.

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Call said networking is the most important part of successfully landing a job in any field. About 75 to 85% of jobs are obtained through connections in a company, she said, not through applications.

Some jobs are never even posted online and can only be obtained through networking, especially for graduates in the communication industry, Barnett said. Building personal relationships with company employees or recruiters is often a necessary step of being hired, she said.

“It’s by having people knowing who you are and what you want to do that you’re going to increase your chances of finding that job,” Barnett said.

Graduating students can also find thousands of jobs on Handshake, a career recruiting platform used by SU, said Mary Kay Montville, interim director of Career Services at the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Jobs in computer science and electrical engineering are in high demand, but opportunities can be found for many other careers as well, she said.

A student’s soft skills, or personal characteristics, are an increasingly important part of the hiring process, Montville said. Instead of focusing on their technical skills, students should demonstrate their personality and passion for their work during job interviews, she added.

“Your schoolwork and your courses speak for themselves,” Montville said. “But your projects, your out-of-the-box activities and your soft skills are what set you apart.”

Published on May 7, 2019 at 11:06 am

Contact Gillian: gifollet@syr.edu