You can find part-time on- and off-campus positions, internships and full-time positions specifically for UA students and alumni, according to the Wildcat JobLink website. What this really means is that you can find positions specifically for some UA students and alumni.
A few weeks ago, the UA Spring-Career Days proved the same thing: UA Career Services really only serves a portion of students’ interests. Promised with an opportunity to gain valuable insights about opportunities and obtain leads for post-graduation employment, the fair was unimpressive.
My hopes for the career fair were to find an inkling of any job opportunity that could present itself after graduation in December. With such a large event held in the Student Union Memorial Center, I expected to find more opportunities.
A friend and I were both presented with rows and rows of employers searching for business analysts, engineers or—unfortunately for me-—salespeople. The only jobs I was qualified for were sales jobs and government jobs. The sales I would be making had nothing to do with what I studied for the past four years, and selling insurance is not my life goal.
Overall, the career fair was not a good representation of jobs available to students of all majors, and those not represented are left in the dark about their future plans after graduation.
Wildcat JobLink is an online resource many students use to look for jobs.
While this selection is a bit better than what is represented at the career fair, the outlook is still bleak for many.
A colleague of mine graduating in May with two major areas of study and a great internship was applying to several jobs through JobLink and was given a 100 percent match with a job opening at a pie shop in Phoenix.
Two college degrees and the most suitable option offered by JobLink was at a pie shop.
Students not in engineering or business are generally underserved by Career Services and given no direction through this service to find employment after college.
In the current economy, so many millennials are graduating with no job prospects, forcing them to move back home with their parents. One would presume that the UA would work harder to take a stand against unemployment rates of new graduates.
If no guidance is provided for new graduates in colleges outside of business and sciences, it is far more unlikely these students will successfully begin their careers upon graduating.
The trend of the “dead-beat” millennial will only get worse if those millennials are initially led to believe—falsely—by their university that they have prospective careers in their field of choice.
Career Services needs to be more forward about the qualifications for the jobs listed or work harder to be inclusive of all majors. No student should have to pay to use the service and get nothing from it when they need it.
Follow Nicole Rochon on Twitter.
