Jobs are in short sup­ply right now, espe­cially for newly minted col­lege grads. Is it worth going to col­lege if there is lit­tle guar­an­tee of a job? Recently, Busi­ness Week pub­lished an arti­cle enti­tled The Lost Gen­er­a­tion that has gen­er­ated a lot of con­ver­sa­tion around the grim job prospects for recent col­lege grads. And NPR's On Point with Tom Ash­brook ded­i­cated its Mon­day episode to talk­ing with '09 grads about their prob­lems find­ing jobs.

Read­ing and lis­ten­ing to the com­ments on both the Busi­ness Week arti­cle and the NPR episode offers a bizarre blend of com­mis­er­a­tion by fel­low job seek­ers, rec­om­men­da­tions that grads try dif­fer­ent means of employ­ment or work harder to get a job, as well as wider indict­ments of social and eco­nomic sit­u­a­tions. Stu­dents are frus­trated, and right­fully so.

There has never been such a ter­ri­ble short­age of jobs for qual­i­fied appli­cants. Appar­ently, 2009 was the worst year to grad­u­ate from college—no thanks I bet to the flood of eager young pro­fes­sion­als laid off from the cam­paigns after the 2008 elec­tion (I was one). Next year may be worse. But as we con­tinue the tran­si­tion to a kind of knowl­edge econ­omy, the col­lege degree has sup­planted the high school diploma as a require­ment. And even more tra­di­tion­ally reli­able routes, such as con­tin­u­ing on to pro­fes­sional master's pro­grams and law school, are churn­ing out hun­dreds of the overqual­i­fied and unemployed.

A num­ber of com­menters on the above pieces sug­gested that the stu­dents take on part-time ser­vice jobs—restaurants, retail, etc.—rather than hold out for their "dream jobs". In the mean­time, grads might be able to build expe­ri­ence through unpaid intern­ships. How­ever, com­pe­ti­tion is fierce for these intern­ships, even more so now that overqual­i­fied and unem­ployed grads with advanced degrees are seek­ing sim­i­lar oppor­tu­ni­ties to bide their time. To be a bit polem­i­cal, unpaid intern­ships are almost crim­i­nal by not pay­ing min­i­mum wage (or any­thing at all) and, in effect, dis­crim­i­nat­ing against those who can't afford to take them. Sure, some grants are avail­able for these oppor­tu­ni­ties but that varies widely from school to school and field to field.

I was for­tu­nate to go to Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, which has one of the largest co-op pro­grams in the coun­try. Most majors on cam­pus are required to spend mul­ti­ple terms at com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions being paid to work in their field. This gives the stu­dents an edge in the job mar­ket. By mak­ing sure they have job expe­ri­ence before grad­u­a­tion, they can hope­fully avoid the para­dox of try­ing to gain expe­ri­ence from jobs which are increas­ingly requir­ing expe­ri­ence already.

Right now, I'm con­sid­er­ing return­ing to school for my Ph.D. A friend rec­om­mended that I read Get­ting What you Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earn­ing a Master's or Ph.D. I really wish I had read this before I went through my master's degree. There are great tips about pick­ing the right pro­gram and max­i­miz­ing your expe­ri­ence. Fur­ther­more, I wish there was a guide like this ahead of undergrad.

One of the key insights is the impor­tance of net­work­ing. As an under­grad prepar­ing to apply to grad school, you need to be befriend­ing your pro­fes­sors and attend­ing research con­fer­ences to net­work with other pro­fes­sors that could serve as poten­tial advi­sors. Guess what? This is exactly what under­grads should be doing to improve their odds of get­ting the job they want.

With what could be called a “cre­den­tial creep” occur­ring across the job mar­ket, its more impor­tant than ever to get direct refer­rals for jobs in which you are inter­ested. Remem­ber: you may have been the most reli­able, high achiev­ing stu­dent at col­lege but there are plenty of other all-stars apply­ing for the same jobs. You need some­one to rec­om­mend you that knows you well and whose opin­ion is respected by a hir­ing supervisor.

Net­work­ing is your most impor­tant trans­fer­able skill; it gets you in the door to so that you have the oppor­tu­nity to show off your other skills.

Last spring, I sent out a dozen job appli­ca­tions to posi­tions I felt qual­i­fied to fill. About 50% acknowl­edged my appli­ca­tion because I knew some­one con­nected to the orga­ni­za­tion. But this didn't get me an inter­view. EVERY JOB I secured an inter­view for in the past year was the result of a direct refer­ral to the hir­ing super­vi­sor by a local friend already work­ing at the same organization.

My rec­om­men­da­tions for get­ting an edge while still in college:

• Net­work with pro­fes­sors and school admin­is­tra­tors that have con­nec­tions to indus­try and the community;
• Take full advan­tage of the career ser­vices office;
• Apply for a part-time job on cam­pus even if you don't need one because the extra cash and pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence will be use­ful later;
• See if your school offers grants to stu­dents tak­ing unpaid intern­ships and seek out any other exter­nal grants you can apply for;
• Try to get a paid co-op posi­tion while in school that could later be par­layed into a full-time job after graduation;
• Start work­ing on this your fresh­man year.

While you are in col­lege, you have so many cen­tral­ized resources at your dis­posal. Take advan­tage of the abil­ity to slowly build rela­tion­ships with pro­fes­sors and com­pa­nies you are inter­ested in, and make the most of your expe­ri­ence. Thomas Hobbes may help you win a philo­soph­i­cal argu­ment but your polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor, who con­sults with a num­ber of promi­nent non-profits, may help you land a great job.