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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, May 15, 2005

Graduates find jobs plentiful

 •  Chart (opens in a new window): Where the jobs are in Hawai'i

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

The 2,470 students graduating today and tomorrow from the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and hundreds of others from local colleges will enter the most welcoming job market in years.

UH graduating senior Adam Cabalo hopes to work one day as an orthopedic surgeon on Maui.

Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Hawai'i's robust economy and low unemployment provide multiple job opportunities for the graduates, with many accepting positions even before they receive their degrees. While not all will get the jobs they want at the salaries they hoped for, counselors and employers say the Class of 2005 has considerably more choices than graduates from just a few years before did.

Jennifer Coconate of Mililani is typical.

She graduates today with a UH communications degree and a minor in theater arts. Her dream job coming out of college was to somehow mesh both of her study interests with her newfound love of Utah, which she gained last year while on a student exchange program.

Coconate, 21, ended up with an internship this summer preparing advertising for a theater company in Salt Lake City.

"It's perfect," Coconate said.

Loretta Shawgo, a 23-year-old UH business administration major, already has a job lined up with Countrywide Home Loans as an account executive.

She started looking in February and got lots of assistance from a business student club that organized a job fair in March, and from the UH business school, which posted and e-mailed job openings to students.

Shawgo applied for a half-dozen positions and followed up with two employers, both of which made her offers.

"The hardest part, honestly, was finding the time to look — in between going to school full-time and working part-time" as a waitress, Shawgo said.

Irene Morrow, a 21-year-old elementary education major, will begin substitute teaching next month at Nana'ikapono Elementary School in Nanakuli, her first choice. Like Shawgo, Morrow didn't have to work too hard to find a job in her field.

Morrow attended a "mass interview" of prospective teachers this year at Moanalua High School that was organized by the state Department of Education.

"It was pretty simple," Morrow said. "You just interviewed with all of these principals. I would say that if you had everything organized — your degree and your certifications — it was all pretty effortless."

Hawai'i college graduates for the first time in years "can be very choosy if they want," said Alison Houghton, director of career services at Chaminade University, which last week graduated 469 students. "In general, the outlook is very optimistic."

Paycheck reality

The outlook for salaries, however, remains pessimistic — especially for graduates who want to stay in Hawai'i. Job counselors expect Hawai'i will continue to trail many other states in average salaries for comparable jobs.

Smart ways to look for work

• Use resources such as the Internet to research jobs in your field of study and get reasonable expectations about salary levels.

• Conduct "informational interviews" through personal and professional connections to gain even more information; network for potential job leads.

• Target employers and learn more about them through trade associations, annual reports, public documents and computer databases.

Sources: Job recruiters, college career counselors

Learn more

You can start your job search at these sites:

www.hiwi.org — Economic and labor market information in the state

www.ehawaiigov.org/dhrd/statejobs/html — Hawai'i State Recruiting Office site

www.honolulu.gov/hr/ — City employment information

www.usajobs.opm.gov/ — Federal jobs site

www.jobweb.com/ — Career development, job search advice

www.bls.gov/oco/ — Labor Department job-outlook information

Morrow will earn $112.53 per day as a substitute teacher. Eventually, she plans to teach full- time, which will pay her $39,000 per year, reflecting the latest negotiated pay increases.

"I know the opportunities on the Mainland are much greater than in Hawai'i," Morrow said. "But I definitely would like to stay here because all of my family's here. This is home."

Morrow and other new graduates are more realistic these days about the kind of pay they can earn in Hawai'i with a college degree, Houghton said.

"We've had students who think they're going to start out at $70,000 or $80,000 per year," Houghton said. "With a B.A., that's not reality."

Some UH students in the past were disappointed they couldn't earn even $30,000 for their first job out of college, said Pat Nishimoto, a career counselor at UH-Manoa's career services office.

"In reality, it's more like $8 an hour or $18,000 per year," Nishimoto said. "The tradeoff is they find an entry-level position in the area they like and they get to stay in Hawai'i."

Still the opportunities available this year for Hawai'i's latest graduates are expanding, and extending to many areas.

"There has been an increase in the number of on-campus recruiters across different sectors, such as government, retail, hospitality, marketing, management, accounting, finance and marine biology," Lianne K. Maeda, director of Hawai'i Pacific University's career services center, said in an e-mail.

"The employment opportunities for our students have been robust, where choices are more abundant than we've seen in recent years. Therefore, there is a greater likelihood that our students will secure employment directly related to their academic degrees," Maeda said.

Around the country, 61.4 percent of employers who participated in a National Association of Colleges and Employers' survey said they expect to hire more new college graduates than last year. Results for Hawai'i are included in the Western region of the country, which expects to see a 13.9 percent increase in new college hires, said Andrea Koncz of the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

No one conducts a similar survey just for Hawai'i alone. But in the next year, the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations forecasts that the Islands will see 1,570 job openings that require advanced schooling, such as a bachelor's degree.

Brain drain slowing

Hawai'i's unemployment rate last month was the lowest in 14 years, 2.8 percent, the best in the country. Despite the positive numbers, Alex McGehee, executive vice president of Enterprise Honolulu, an economic-development agency, worries that Hawai'i's job growth remains focused on the service sector, tourism and the military.

"It's definitely still a big challenge creating opportunities for good-paying jobs and jobs with futures for young people in Hawai'i," McGehee said. "Way too many of our kids are still going elsewhere because those jobs aren't here. If we're going to really make headway, we've got to do it in the industries that pay living wages. We definitely need more engineers, healthcare professionals and more people with solid technical skills because that's the solution to affordable housing and the cost of living situations that people face here."

But Nishimoto doesn't hear much talk of a Hawai'i brain-drain from students looking to start their careers.

"Ten years ago, the common talk was that you have to go away to get your career going, because there's nothing in Hawai'i," Nishimoto said. "More recently it's, 'I can be discerning about finding a professional position in Hawai'i if I use my network, if I'm smarter about it, if I can do a good job searching.' We're hearing more and more of that kind of talk, and I'm happy for them."

Employers flexible

The heated competition for workers has forced employers to become more flexible in who they'll consider hiring.

Vernon Brock, Hawai'i operations manager for AXA Advisors, will gladly take applications for financial advisor positions even from those who didn't major in business. "We'll look at biology backgrounds and theater degrees, absolutely," Brock said. "We're open to all. If someone displays an interest and we think that it's a good fit, we'll bring them on."

Advisors work on straight commissions but can earn around $40,000 per year, Brock said.

Dee Lim, human resource manager for Enterprise Rent-A-Car of Hawai'i, needs candidates for the company's management trainee program, which pays $27,000 to $30,000 per year.

Lim, who graduated from UH with a communications degree in 1996, also will consider people from a range of college majors.

"We have a variety of people with a variety of backgrounds — biology, arts, theater degrees, tourism," she said. "Most of the time people are looking to study something that they're good at and can excel at. But in the real world, is that something that's really a career path for you?"

Last week, Adam Cabalo, 27, struggled to figure out the combination of gown and tassel colors that he needed for yesterday's UH medical school graduation ceremony. But at least Cabalo knows the immediate path of his career.

He's heading off to California to begin his residency at the University of California at San Francisco. Eventually, Cabalo wants to become an orthopedic surgeon and return home to Maui.

"They say that you have to go to the Mainland for job opportunities," Cabalo said. "But I'm coming back."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.