The “weak” job market worries some graduating seniors more than it should, Career Services officials say.

“I think all of the news hype about the job market helps in terms of encouraging students to use career services,” said Beverly Madden, director of Career Planning and Placement Services.

Madden said the job market is constantly fluctuating in terms of geography. There will be periods when the East and West coasts or the Midwest are doing well in terms of job outlooks. At the moment, the Midwest is doing fairly well compared to the coasts, she said.

“The fact remains, Iowa State students get jobs,” Madden said. “A new graduate with a bachelors, masters [or] Ph.D. from one of the leading institutions is not going to go unemployed.”

Kathy Wieland, program coordinator for Career Services for the Colleges of Business and Liberal Arts and Sciences, said she agreed the job market is not what it was a few years ago.

“The job market has changed undoubtedly,” she said. “Although it’s not like it was in ’98-’99 —there are still jobs out there.”

Wieland said students can’t have a passive approach to their job search anymore. “You find it more than it finds you,” she said. “It’s more competitive now.”

Madden said students with a nonspecific major will have the most problems finding a job because they need to learn how to sell their particular set of skills.

Problems arise because some students have limitations on what kinds of jobs the can take. For example, some students have significant others, so they have to stay within a specific geographic area, Madden said.

Wieland said not all students will get jobs straight out of college, but eventually they will find one.

“It’s not a reasonable expectation that you’ll have a job at graduation, give yourself that six months,” she said. “Don’t put yourself under that much pressure.”

Many students get scared when they start looking for jobs because they don’t know where to start.

“They don’t know what to do, so they don’t do anything,” Wieland said.

The best thing to combat that fear while looking for a job is to take an internship, Wieland said.

“[It’s] important to get those kinds of experiences prior to graduation,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll be starting out sampling careers.”