[A Closer Look] Some students have yet to plan their careers

With graduation around the corner, many seniors are still
figuring out exactly what they will do after they step out of their
last class at UCLA.

While some students line up postgraduation plans long before
they receive their diploma, others are still scrambling to finalize
plans with less than a month before the end of their college
careers.

“I’m looking for a job right now, scary as it
seems,” said Julian Sachs-Weintraub, a fourth-year
communication studies student graduating this year.

Sachs-Weintraub does not plan to go directly to graduate school
and said he hopes to enter the workforce with just his
bachelor’s degree.

“I figure I’ve gone through enough school and, for
what I want to do, I don’t think a graduate degree would help
me out much more,” he said as he surveyed graduation
gowns.

And though an undergraduate degree alone will not guarantee a
well-paying job, it does give an applicant an advantage over others
who have not attended an institution like UCLA, said Mark Zandi,
chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, an independent
provider of economic and financial research.

A college degree is “a necessary condition for getting a
good, high-paying job,” he said.

For those students who have not yet secured jobs, their reasons
and plans for finding employment vary.

Alec Harris, a molecular, cellular and developmental biology
student, said he began his job search two days ago by e-mailing a
past lab partner looking for a position as a lab assistant. His
plan for now does not include finding a long-term career or earning
a large paycheck.

“The goal for next year is paying rent while gaining
experience in my field,” he said.

Further experience is also a motivation for Josh Klein, a
graduating computer science and engineering student, who said his
current career plans do not go beyond a summer internship.

Klein signed up for a summer internship with Deloitte &
Touche, a firm that consults businesses on the efficiency of their
programs. Klein said students entering business practices like this
can make as much as $40,000-$50,000 a year, right out of
college.

If he has a good experience working for Deloitte & Touche
this summer, Klein said he may pursue a full-time job with the
company.

But at the same time, he said he also may choose to look
elsewhere if the Deloitte & Touche internship does not draw him
to the field for his career.

Internships can aid students in planning their future, both by
providing a stepping stone to future employment and by giving
students contacts in the area they are considering.

Sachs-Weintraub does not yet have job plans, but plans to find
one through connections he made at an internship at an advertising
firm last summer.

Uncertainty is another factor that has kept some graduating
seniors from picking a career path.

Klein said jobs in the software industry, where he is currently
looking, are unreliable and that he would like to understand the
industry better before committing to it.

“I’m concerned about the direction the industry is
going because it is very unstable and outsources a lot of the lower
level labor to countries like India,” Klein said.

For seniors who want good jobs but have not done their job
connections homework, hope is not yet lost, said Career Center
Director Kathy Sims.

“The good news for this year’s graduating class is
that the job market is great,” Sims said.

For more info, visit the Career Center’s Web site at
www.career.ucla.edu.

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