Networking isn’t easy to do, but for those trying to find jobs after graduation, it just might be the one thing that can get you that paycheck you’ve been dreaming about, whether it uses your degree skills or not.
Director of the Cal State Long Beach Career Development Center Manuel Pérez said he’s observed that students who have found jobs through the career center used their passion and social skills to land their job.
“Networking is the number one way students find employment,” Pérez said. “It’s not about going onto a job board, it’s really about connecting with family and friends, and acquaintances … building relationships with them and sharing with them your career interest.”
For a group of CSULB alumni, networking has played a large contributing factor in turning their ideas into reality.
Ron Greene graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business in 2007, specializing in information systems. Greene has started his own business, C2O Pure Coconut Water. His product, coconut water with zero additives, which is unlike most of its competitors, is already being sold in stores like Olive Gourmet and Vitamin City in Long Beach. His cans of coconut water are being sold in stores throughout the western side of the Colorado Rockies.
While opening a business wasn’t necessarily his goal when he obtained a degree in business information systems, Greene, recently married, could not be happier with where he is today. However, he is still forced to pick up hours on the side as a bartender.
His partner, Adam Biggs, an English major who graduated in 2007, also works nights as a bartender. Neither Greene nor Biggs feel the new company has been a waste and continue to push the launch of their product, which is made from coconuts in Thailand and shipped straight to Long Beach.
“I became really passionate about his stuff,” Biggs said in regards to how he got involved with C2O. Greene invited Biggs to join him because he was one of the few people who, it seemed to Greene, supported him.
“Everybody thought I was crazy,” Greene said.
Regardless, support from friends and family is what Greene attributes to what jumpstarted his product.
“We’ve all helped each other out,” Greene said. “Follow your passion. Don’t let the norms of society suck you in.”
A friend of Greene and Biggs, Kyle Powers is a 2004 theatre arts graduate from CSULB. Powers and CSULB alumna Marisa Stinson have started their own catering business, Fork in the Road. Both still work in a restaurant as part-time servers, but also work everyday to promote Fork in the Road Catering. Other than their culinary skills, networking also helped them start their business.
“Those who were involved all started in different directions and now we’re doing something completely different,” Powers said. “You go to school passionate about one thing and then you find other things.”
Powers said he thinks life will soon be solely catering because of the significant strides his company has made so far. Even in the down economy, Powers and Stinson see that there is no way to go but up.
“It was really bad at the time because of the economy to start a business. … No matter how prepared we are for things, they change drastically and it can end up being the best thing that happened to you,” Stinson said.
Since theatre is another passion of his, Powers hopes to eventually meld cooking with theatre and score a gig with the Food Network Channel. He said the real challenge will be bridging the two together.
In a survey from the 2004 Digest of Educational Statistics made by the National Center of Educational Statistics, 89 percent of those who obtained a bachelor’s degree between 1999 and 2000 were full-time employees within one year of graduating. Of those, 52 percent had a full-time job within their field of study.
So much focus is tailored toward getting a degree that it’s easy for students to overlook life after college until it abruptly becomes the here-and-now during their final year. According to Pérez, the average time it takes to find employment has recently increased from 6 to 9 months because of the present state of the economy.
Pérez said part of this is due to the overwhelming number of applications employers are receiving for just one open position. Employers don’t always have that kind of time and on many occasions, Pérez said, employers will post a job advertisement and have to take it down within 24 hours because of the massive response.
“And that’s how networking helps because the employers are having a difficult time evaluating hundreds and sometimes thousands of applicants,” Pérez said.
A degree might not be the most important aspect of college, but rather the experiences and connections made while attending school.
“It wasn’t easy deciding that what I went to school for — acting — wasn’t what I was going to do,” Powers said. “But I utilize pieces of everything I learned in college. It teaches you how to commit, be responsible. It’s not just about your major.”
Another part of students’ troubles in finding employment could be buffered if they started the process sooner, according to Pérez. He said job searches are not easy and everyone has to find what methods work for them.
“Networking takes a lot of work — that’s why the word ‘work’ is in there,” Pérez said.
Go to www.c2o-cocowater.com for more information about C2O Pure Coconut Water.
This article was updated at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009.