Survey Finds New Caltech Grads Received Fewer Job Offers In '91

New science graduates who have not yet completed their job searches may get an idea of their employment prospects by taking a look at the offers that were made to graduates of the California Institute of Technology last year. The annual Caltech student employment survey, conducted by the school's career development center, found that the mean salary offers made to June 1991 graduates were higher than those made to the previous year's class. The rise occurred despite the recession and its dampening effect on hiring. Master's graduates, for instance, reported receiving a mean salary offer of $41,990, a 7.1 percent increase over the mean offer made to 1990 graduates. And Ph.D. grads saw their mean job offers jump 8.8 percent, to $54,330. Bachelor's grads garnered slight increases; their mean salary offers rose just 0.4 percent, to $36,450. The results marked the seventh consecutive year that the mean salary offers reported by recent Caltech grads rose. Campus recruiters conducted 2,266 interviews last year, nearing 1989's record level. Yet the number of companies that interviewed on campus--132- - was the smallest in five years, and the number of job offers made to 1991 graduates of the Pasadena, Calif., school fell substantially from the previous year, reflecting the sluggish economy that's forced employers to slow their recruiting efforts. "Even if employers aren't shrinking, they're not expanding, either," says career development center director Sally Asmundson. In the 1991 survey, a total of 498 graduates were queried, including 186 bachelor's degree recipients, 159 master's graduates, and 153 new Ph.D.'s. The number of offers made to Caltech's 1991 bachelor's grads was 67, an 8 percent drop from the year before and a 48.5 percent plunge from the number of offers made to the school's 1989 class. Asmundson notes, however, that the number of bachelor's students in the 1991 class was somewhat smaller than in previous years, which contributed to the reduction in the number of offers. Master's grads received 27 offers, a 31 percent decline from the 1990 figure. And Ph.D. grads received 56 offers, a 42 percent drop from 1990 levels. Contributing to the decline, says Asmundson, was the fact that fewer graduating students sought employment, instead choosing further education in the hopes of waiting out the recession. In particular, students who specialized in aeronautics, computer science, physics, and mechanical engineering had a difficult job hunt, especially those scouring companies based in California. "All companies in Southern California are extremely conservative," Asmundson says. "And several computer makers aren't doing as much hiring as in the past.... Those students are having to work really hard" to find the jobs they want. Take Michael Rozak, who earned a bachelor's degree in 1991. The 22-year-old found a job as a software designer with Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Wash., but he spent his entire senior year searching for work and received only four job offers before signing on with Microsoft. "I didn't get as many offers as I expected," says Rozak. "I noticed that a lot of companies that I applied to were already laying people off. It wasn't encouraging.... Even Microsoft, which hired a lot of people last year, is looking to hire less this year." Hughes Aircraft Co., for instance, isn't hiring as many people because the flow of government contracts has slackened, according to John Wilhite, manager of corporate college relations. Like many other aerospace companies, Los Angeles-based Hughes plans to do more with less. "We're not hiring as many people," says Wilhite. "We tend to let attrition account for the major decline. So we're not out on the campuses as much." Moreover, Wilhite expects the hiring pattern to remain this way for a couple of years. On the other hand, he also expects salary increases to continue matching the 4 percent inflation rate. While Ph.D. pay can often be volatile, Wilhite says, new product areas will require employing more physicists, computer programmers, and engineers. Edward R. Silverman is a freelance writer based in Hoboken, N.J.

Survey Finds New Caltech Grads Received Fewer Job Offers In '91

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