IF YOU DON'T HAVE A BACHELOR'S DEGREE YOU CAN'T GET A JOB RIGHT NOW
"... employers across the country, only hiring people with a bachelor's degree, even for jobs that do not require college-level skills.
This prerequisite applies to everyone, including the receptionist, paralegals, administrative assistants and file clerks. Even the office "runner" — the in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and the office — went to a four-year school.
College graduates are just more job/career-oriented...going to college means they are making a real commitment ... They're not just looking for a paycheck."
Economists have referred to this phenomenon as "degree inflation," and it has been steadily infiltrating job markets. Across industries and geographic areas, many other jobs that didn't used to require a diploma — positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters — are increasingly requiring one. This up-credentialing is pushing the less educated even further down the food chain, and it helps explain why the unemployment rate for workers with no more than a high school diploma is more than twice that for workers with a bachelor's degree: 8.1 percent versus 3.7 percent.
Some jobs, like those in supply chain management and logistics, have become more technical, and so require more advanced skills today than they did in the past. But more broadly, because so many people are going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be less capable.
Plus, it's a buyer's market for employers.
"When you get 800 resumes for every job ad, you need to weed them out. In 2012, 39 percent of job postings for receptionists, secretaries and administrative assistants in metropolitan areas requested a bachelor's degree, up from 28 percent in 2007.
"When I started recruiting in '06, you didn't need a college degree, but there weren't that many candidates," Ms. Manzagol said.
Even if they are not exactly applying the knowledge they gained in their political science, finance and fashion marketing classes, the young graduates employed say they are grateful for even the rotest of rote office work they have been given.
"It sure beats washing cars," said Landon Crider, 24, a firm's soft-spoken runner. He would know: he spent several years, while at Georgia State and in the months after graduation, scrubbing sedans at Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Before joining the law firm, he was turned down for a promotion to rental agent at Enterprise — a position that also required a bachelor's degree — because the company said he didn't have enough sales experience.
His college-educated colleagues had similarly limited opportunities, working at Ruby Tuesday or behind a retail counter while waiting for a better job to open up.
"I am over $100,000 in student loan debt right now," said Megan Parker, who earns $37,000 as the firm's receptionist. She graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 2011 with a degree in fashion and retail management, and spent months waiting on "bridezillas" at a couture boutique, among other stores, while churning out office-job applications.
"I will probably never see the end of that bill, but I'm not really thinking about it right now," she said. "You know, this is a really great place to work."
The risk with hiring college graduates for jobs they are supremely overqualified for is, of course, that they will leave as soon as they find something better, particularly as the economy improves.
You can be promoted where you work ... within a year of being hired as a file clerk, around November 2011, Ms. Atkinson was promoted twice to positions in marketing and office management. Mr. Crider, the runner, was given additional work last month, helping with billing claims and copying. He said he was taking the opportunity to learn more about the legal industry in school.
The firm's greatest success story is Laura Burnett, who in less than a year went from being a file clerk to being the firm's paralegal for the litigation group. The partners were so impressed with her filing wizardry that they figured she could handle it.
"They gave me a raise, too," said Ms. Burnett, a 2011 graduate of the University of West Georgia.
The typical paralegal position, which has traditionally offered a path to a well-paying job for less educated workers with two year college degrees, requiring no more than an paralegal certificate or an associate degree in paralegal or legal assisting, but the job is still a way better job than working doing filing or "file clerk." Of the three daughters in her family, Ms. Burnett reckons that she has the best job. One sister, a fellow West Georgia graduate, is processing insurance claims; another, who dropped out of college, is one of the many degree-less young people who still cannot find work.
Besides the promotional pipelines getting your foot in the door ANYWHERE, doing ANY kind of work for ANY amount of money, "everyone" working there, being a college graduate creates more office camaraderie. "You know, if we had someone here with just a G.E.D., they might feel slighted by the atmosphere here," he says. "There really is something sort of cohesive or binding about the fact that all of us went to college."
This prerequisite applies to everyone, including the receptionist, paralegals, administrative assistants and file clerks. Even the office "runner" — the in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and the office — went to a four-year school.
College graduates are just more job/career-oriented...going to college means they are making a real commitment ... They're not just looking for a paycheck."
Economists have referred to this phenomenon as "degree inflation," and it has been steadily infiltrating job markets. Across industries and geographic areas, many other jobs that didn't used to require a diploma — positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters — are increasingly requiring one. This up-credentialing is pushing the less educated even further down the food chain, and it helps explain why the unemployment rate for workers with no more than a high school diploma is more than twice that for workers with a bachelor's degree: 8.1 percent versus 3.7 percent.
Some jobs, like those in supply chain management and logistics, have become more technical, and so require more advanced skills today than they did in the past. But more broadly, because so many people are going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be less capable.
Plus, it's a buyer's market for employers.
"When you get 800 resumes for every job ad, you need to weed them out. In 2012, 39 percent of job postings for receptionists, secretaries and administrative assistants in metropolitan areas requested a bachelor's degree, up from 28 percent in 2007.
"When I started recruiting in '06, you didn't need a college degree, but there weren't that many candidates," Ms. Manzagol said.
Even if they are not exactly applying the knowledge they gained in their political science, finance and fashion marketing classes, the young graduates employed say they are grateful for even the rotest of rote office work they have been given.
"It sure beats washing cars," said Landon Crider, 24, a firm's soft-spoken runner. He would know: he spent several years, while at Georgia State and in the months after graduation, scrubbing sedans at Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Before joining the law firm, he was turned down for a promotion to rental agent at Enterprise — a position that also required a bachelor's degree — because the company said he didn't have enough sales experience.
His college-educated colleagues had similarly limited opportunities, working at Ruby Tuesday or behind a retail counter while waiting for a better job to open up.
"I am over $100,000 in student loan debt right now," said Megan Parker, who earns $37,000 as the firm's receptionist. She graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 2011 with a degree in fashion and retail management, and spent months waiting on "bridezillas" at a couture boutique, among other stores, while churning out office-job applications.
"I will probably never see the end of that bill, but I'm not really thinking about it right now," she said. "You know, this is a really great place to work."
The risk with hiring college graduates for jobs they are supremely overqualified for is, of course, that they will leave as soon as they find something better, particularly as the economy improves.
You can be promoted where you work ... within a year of being hired as a file clerk, around November 2011, Ms. Atkinson was promoted twice to positions in marketing and office management. Mr. Crider, the runner, was given additional work last month, helping with billing claims and copying. He said he was taking the opportunity to learn more about the legal industry in school.
The firm's greatest success story is Laura Burnett, who in less than a year went from being a file clerk to being the firm's paralegal for the litigation group. The partners were so impressed with her filing wizardry that they figured she could handle it.
"They gave me a raise, too," said Ms. Burnett, a 2011 graduate of the University of West Georgia.
The typical paralegal position, which has traditionally offered a path to a well-paying job for less educated workers with two year college degrees, requiring no more than an paralegal certificate or an associate degree in paralegal or legal assisting, but the job is still a way better job than working doing filing or "file clerk." Of the three daughters in her family, Ms. Burnett reckons that she has the best job. One sister, a fellow West Georgia graduate, is processing insurance claims; another, who dropped out of college, is one of the many degree-less young people who still cannot find work.
Besides the promotional pipelines getting your foot in the door ANYWHERE, doing ANY kind of work for ANY amount of money, "everyone" working there, being a college graduate creates more office camaraderie. "You know, if we had someone here with just a G.E.D., they might feel slighted by the atmosphere here," he says. "There really is something sort of cohesive or binding about the fact that all of us went to college."
Replies
This is getting way out of control. Have a super weekend.
There is absolutely NOTHING I read these day\'s that surprises me.....even if it is as ridiculous as this one.
What is happening with this world of crazy??
i think they are mostly talking about large city areas. they claim that going to high school was a big deal MANY years ago, like a hundred years....and nowadays, college is equally common.
if they want to change it into that, it should then be ILLEGAL to quit high school at age 16, they should change the legal age to quit schooling to 21 and that way EVERYONE would automatically go to a county college after high school.