Central Michigan University’s large student body, small surrounding community makes job search a struggle

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Editor’s note: Every Wednesday, CM Life will publish an in-depth piece, examining different issues.

It took Rogers City sophomore Jess Ruppert a month of filling out more than 30 job applications before she found a job.

Student Employment Services Manager Jon Goodwin said the domino effect was started by the economy.

Since the job market off campus is not good right now, that affects the jobs on campus as well, he said. Students who do have jobs on campus are aware of this and hold on to them longer.

“This has created a log jam,” Goodwin said. “The students most affected are those looking for a job for the first time.”

On the “off-campus employers” section of ses.cmich.edu, which is involved with career services, there are around 42 jobs posted in Mount Pleasant and surrounding areas. Goodwin said in 2005 this number would have been around 100.

“We saw this coming,” Goodwin said. “We tried to find the language to make it clear that students would have to be more diligent than in the past to find a job.”

SES now provides job-search strategies and tips on its website and office handouts.

“Students who have read the tips and take them to heart are the ones who have had the most success,” Goodwin said.

Goodwin said it is slightly more helpful to be on the work-study program to be hired on campus because some departments do not have General Student Assistance funding.

“Two-thirds of students that work on campus do not have work studies,” Goodwin said. “It’s generally not much of an obstacle.”

Students searching for jobs over the summer have a better chance. They should start searching around March and April, when SES off-campus postings will increase.

Goodwin is hopeful for the future.

“The better the job market is off campus, the better it will be on campus,” he said.

Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce President Lisa Hadden blamed the economy for the difficulty undergraduate CMU students have finding part-time jobs.

Hadden has been impressed with CMU interns who have worked at the chamber.

“If I had the money, I’d hire these folks full-time because they were good and valuable assets to the business.”

She has heard local business owners say similar things, but it all depends on their available payroll.

“My son is 20 and it has taken him years to find a job,” Hadden said. “He started looking right after high school.”

Ruppert said she is worried that the job market might get even worse with the recent restrictions on student Bridge Cards.

“Now that you have to work 20 hours a week to get food assistance, I think it’s going to be that much harder because there’s even more people that need to work so that they can still be eligible,” she said.

She said her advice for finding a job is “to be persistent and try very hard. Get your name out there.”

Canton junior Al Covington said the secret to finding an on-campus job is patience.

He enjoys his job at the Carlin Alumni House as a phonathon supervisor, where he started in November 2009.

“I never have a day where I dread going into work,” Covington said.

Dafter sophomore Georgia Morley said she was surprised to land a job at Kmart, 2125 S. Mission St.

“I think the only reason Kmart called me was because I had already worked there,” Morley said.

She said she applied to eight other places, and the store was the only one interested.

“There are so many college students all wanting the same jobs and a lot of people have better qualifications than me so I’m really surprised I found one,” Morley said.

University of Michigan student Katie Cummings said it was easy to find employment in Ann Arbor.

“I applied for three jobs in one day last summer, got three interviews and was hired at all three,” U-M student Katie Cummings said. “Anyone who wants to find a job on or off campus can get hired very quickly.”

Michigan State University student Kaity Sinke said she doesn’t think it’s hard to find a job in the East Lansing area.

“All of my friends found jobs within about a week of searching,” Sinke said. “They’re not hard to find.”

CMU students are not the only college students in Michigan who struggle to find jobs. Ferris State University student Marcus Sedmak said it’s even harder to gain employment in Big Rapids.

“I have been applying at places for about four months,” Sedmak said. “I finally got an interview at Big Boy.”