New graduates face the tough reality of today’s job market

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EL PASO — Crystal Ortiz walked tall into a new life after she was handed a bachelor’s diploma in education at The University of Texas at El Paso last December, but frustration set in when she began to search for a job. “Finding a job in the field of education is a challenging task,” says Ortiz. “I am planning on going to graduate school this coming fall semester in order to increase my chances of being hired.”

For the past few years, she studied in classrooms, sitting among other students at aged desks, tapping at laptop keys as professors delivered lectures. But now, that chapter of her life has closed as she begins a new more difficult journey. Right now she hunts for a job that can provide a stable income while she waits to begin the career to which she devoted four and a half years of preparation.

Calm career uncertainties by taking that intern leap

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EL PASO, Texas — This past summer, I forced myself to be more involved with extracurricular activities that would build my resume. Naturally, the best and most productive thing I could do during the summer, aside from working, was to get an internship. Personally, the hardest part about finding an internship was finding out who I was. I didn’t want to commit myself wholeheartedly to an organization if my interests changed in my habitually fickle manner – from general communication studies, to creative writing, to digital media production, to multimedia journalism, to wanting to write for a music magazine. It’s hard to be motivated to do something if you’re not even sure if that is what you love most.

Hispanic College Students Need More Internships – the Paying Kind

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EL PASO, Texas — This is not a diatribe against employers who abuse unpaid interns – promise. But an entreaty for the news industry, media companies and others to step up to offer more internships – the kind that pay students to leave home for a few months every summer, learn to navigate a new environment and obtain advanced work skills. The subject is on my mind because of a recent story in the New York Times about employers who bring on interns and ask them to answer routine email, sweep or polish doorknobs instead of letting them do substantial work assignments. The story notes that some states and the federal government are cracking down on employers who “are illegally using” interns for “free labor. While the story doesn’t offer hard data on offending employers or the prevalence of unpaid internships, it does quote a career development officer at a nationally ranked university who “sees definitive evidence that the number of unpaid internships is mushrooming.”

This conclusion doesn’t surprise in light of the recession, depressing job market aggravated in my industry – news media – by the contraction of print and broadcast media newsrooms with the concurrent shift to online news.