17-06-2025
Are Recent Grads Getting Hired? How Two Launched Strong Careers
Over the past two months, young people all across the country have been graduating from college. It's a time of huge accomplishment. It's also, for many recent and soon-to-be-graduates, a time of huge uncertainty. While some students have a strong first job set up, others don't yet have their next steps mapped out. Right now, 70% of the 1.4 million first-generation and low-income students who enroll in college each year aren't yet graduating with a strong first job or path to graduate school. That's about a million students who need to find their path forward to launch their careers. It doesn't have to be this way. Throughout my own career, I've gotten to work with thousands of young people who remind me that the path to a strong career always involves hard work and some smart networking, and often holds real challenges–but that finding that strong first job is possible with the right supports. Asare Bampoe-Parry and Josephine D'Angelo are two young people who remind me of this–they're recent graduates stepping into roles they're thrilled about.
It's worth acknowledging the steep climb young people face today–the statistics are sobering when it comes to seniors and recent grads launching their careers. The Strada Institute recently reported that just roughly half of bachelor's degree holders are in a job that requires that degree a year after graduation. The other half are 'underemployed,' likely making less money and using fewer of the skills they worked so hard to earn. And those lower early salaries have a lasting impact on people's earnings over time. Some employers are reluctant to hire Gen Z workers at all; a survey by General Assembly found that more than a quarter of executives wouldn't hire an entry-level employee right now, with many citing a lack of 'soft skills.' Aneesh Raman, the Chief Economic Opportunities Officer at LinkedIn, recently wrote an op-ed about the tough landscape for entry-level workers; he notes that LinkedIn surveys found that Gen Z is more pessimistic about their future than any other age group, and that the majority of 3,000 executives LinkedIn surveyed felt AI will eventually take on some of the tasks that entry-level staff do today.
Importantly, though, those same LinkedIn executives said that entry-level staff bring fresh ideas and new thinking to the workplace. And despite the challenges, I have thousands of reasons to be hopeful–all the young people I get the privilege of working with through my nonprofit, Braven. For over the past decade, Braven has helped college students, who we call Fellows, launch their careers. Together with our partners in higher education, we offer a three year experience that starts with a credit-bearing course and is followed by individualized post course support. The course explicitly teaches the skills and competencies young people need to figure out their next steps after college. Essentially, we ensure they learn the 'unwritten rules' of the job hunt and give them the chance to practice and prepare for their own journey. In collaboration with faculty, the course is facilitated by volunteer professionals, expanding Fellows' networks as they learn. We also partner with employers—they judge our Fellows' final projects, recruit from Braven's alumni, and volunteer to guide Fellows through Braven's course and mentor them in the post course afterwards. The Braven experience really works–up against all those tough statistics, last year's graduating Fellows earned a strong job or graduate school at a rate 18 percentage points higher than their peers nationwide (61% vs 43%).
Asare Bampoe-Parry is one of this year's Fellows. Bampoe-Parry graduated last month from Rutgers University-Newark with a degree in Economics, with a minor in Africana Studies. At Rugers, he started to lean into his passion for art and creativity, and developed big dreams for creating his own fashion line, but he wasn't totally sure of his path. He was pursuing mechanical engineering at first and realized quickly it wasn't what he wanted, but he wasn't sure how to move forward. He also wanted to find a way to keep his dreams of making art and fashion alive. He signed up for Braven's course, hoping it would help him chart his path forward.
In the course, Bampoe-Parry learned key skills, like how to create a strong resume, and how to ace a job interview. He also learned about the importance of pre-career experiences, like internships, leadership opportunities, co-ops, apprenticeships, and work-study jobs. Braven encourages students to take paid internships; they not only make students more competitive candidates for jobs, but they're associated with future earnings. Students who take paid internships tend to make more later on.
Bampoe-Parry took Braven's advice seriously. He had just changed his major to economics, and he secured an internship at an insurance company, Chubb. He was in a project management role and found he loved it.
'There was so much room to learn,' he said. 'I was working with so many departments throughout the company, and that was the beauty of a project manager.'
At the end of the internship, the company asked if Bampoe-Parry would be interested in pursuing a full-time role there, and he knew that he did. He ended up applying and, in the fall, secured his role at Chubb for after graduation.
'Once I received that email….I was able to take a deep breath,' he says. 'I screenshotted it and sent it to my family, just like, finally – something to look forward to after school. I won't just be getting a degree, I have something to go into.'
While Bampoe-Parry launches his career at Chubb, he'll also be pursuing his future in fashion. Braven helps Fellows 'navigate' their careers, or think through their values, interests, skills, and goals around the job search. As Bampoe-Parry put it,
'They made sure to let me know that it is important to secure a strong first job–but don't lose your passion along the way.'
For Bampoe-Parry, that meant applying to graduate school to study the business of fashion. He'll be attending Rutgers-Newark School of Business in the evenings starting this fall. And even though attending graduate school and holding a full-time job requires lots of work, Bamoe-Parry knows he's up to it. Braven helped him see this–the program helps Fellows gain confidence in themselves and in their dreams. The course is led by working or retired professionals, called Leadership Coaches, and Bampoe-Parry knew his Leadership Coach believed in him. His coach had encouraged him to take on challenges, like being a project manager in their final 'Capstone' project, that pushed him to grow outside his comfort zone.
'I'm really thankful for everyone I've met along the way, all the opportunities that I've received and what's come of it,' he says. 'It's like the perfect story in my eyes.'
Josephine D'Angelo graduated from National Louis University (NLU) this month. She's held a number of jobs while in school–like a work study role doing marketing and communications for NLU, working at a physical therapy office, an optometrist's, and an advertising agency. Braven's course is highly encouraged on NLU's campus, and D'Angelo was excited to take it–she knew she wanted to represent these experiences powerfully on her resume.
Luckily, that's one of the many skills that Braven teaches Fellows. D'Angelo's guide for Braven's course, or her 'Leadership Coach,' did a deep-dive for Fellows on all the pieces and parts of a strong resume. It had an impact on D'Angelo.
'Before coming into Braven, I would just have brief information of what I've done in previous positions. But with my Leadership Coach, he told me how important it is to have results on there, because that's what employers are looking for,' she explains.
For D'Angelo, this meant updating her resume to include specifics. The jobs she'd held while in school were important pre-career experiences, just like Bampoe-Parry's internships–she just needed to prove how much she'd learned in them and the impact she had. Instead of simply saying she increased showroom traffic at a car dealership in one prior role, for instance, she provided numbers to back it up.
'What I wrote was that I increased car dealership showroom traffic by 50% weekly…and this turned into 30 plus appointments weekly,' she explains. 'So putting those numbers in, I think that really gave employers an idea of what I actually did in the position.'
D'Angelo says that learning to build her network was another key part of her process. At first, this was hard for her.
'Growing up, I used to be like somebody that was very shy,' she explains. 'But Braven pushed me out of my comfort zone to open up as an individual and network with a lot of professionals as well.'
She ended up requesting informational interviews with three people who worked at Medline, a healthcare company she'd been dreaming of working for for years. She asked them lots of questions about their experiences at Medline and in their own careers, and tried to get a sense of if the job would really be a good fit for her.
'I just really wanted to know if this was for me,' she says.
After those conversations, she felt clear that it was. So D'Angelo used her strong, new resume to apply for the job at Medline. She spoke with a recruiter and interviewed with confidence. She ended up getting the job, and she'll be an Associate Product Manager with Medline starting this summer.
'I think that all my hard work has really paid off over the years,' she explains. 'I think it was the dream role for me.'
Whether or not they go through an experience like Braven, young people can take key steps to help them land a strong first job, even in a tough employment landscape. They can seek strong pre-career experiences, like internships, as Bampoe-Parry did. They can bolster their resumes with specifics and practice interview skills, as D'Angelo did. They can seek out supports–whether it's from an experience like Braven's course and post course supports, a program at their university's career services, or through the advice and mentorship of professors or work-study employers.
There's also a great deal that those of us who know and care about young people can do. We can volunteer our time to be 'mock interviewers' for students preparing to apply to jobs or internships. We can offer to read over a resume and offer concrete advice. We can encourage our employers to host internships or open up our offices for job shadowing. We can help young people build their leadership skills and grow their confidence. We can expand our networks–answering the email of questions from an undergraduate or saying yes to the coffee chat with someone we don't know.
Together, we can be a part of building the bridge from college to career for our nation. The landscape is challenging, but the solution is within reach. That one million students who aren't graduating with a strong job today could be stepping into their careers tomorrow and ensuring our country's competitive advantage remains.
