Job Prospects for O.C. College Grads Improve : Employment: Corporations, only now emerging from the downturn, are back in force to recruit students.

After 12 job interviews in as many days, Jeremiah Taylor has his answers down pat.

Ask the Chapman University senior about his greatest failure, for example. “I don’t look at failure as failure but as a mere steppingstone,” he recites, flashing a smile.

His greatest success? “I’m sick of answering, ‘What’s your biggest success?’ ” Taylor confides. But the 24-year-old concedes that he’s glad for the chance to do so. Such opportunities have been scarce in recent years.

Mirroring a trend at universities nationwide, the number of corporate recruiters visiting Chapman’s campus in Orange is up.

As the economy improves, employers say, they expect to hire more new college graduates this year than last, the first such increase in five years, according to the College Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

That means the so-called Generation X is finally getting a break. A surge in hiring could lift the spirits of younger twentysomethings, part of a generation that entered the labor force during the depths of the recession and found little available to them but “McJobs”--low-paying positions as waiters, clerks or drivers in food and other service industries.

“You’ve got a generation that arrived in the job market at an awkward time, and this is the first glimmer of hope for them,” said Peter Morrison, a demographer for RAND Corp., a think tank in Santa Monica.

Businesses that laid off employees during the downturn are now hiring, but rather than recalling the seasoned workers they let go earlier, many companies are instead expanding their ranks with new grads.

Young workers are desirable because they are typically computer-savvy, comfortable with ethnic and gender diversity, eager to learn--and willing to work for lower wages than the older, more experienced workers they are in effect replacing, said Lynn Reaser, chief economist for First Interstate Bank in Los Angeles.

“Companies are having to fill a few positions in order to participate in some of the opportunities they are beginning to see,” she said.

As a result, businesses are sending out recruiters in force this year to scout the Class of ‘94, now only a month away from graduation.

Nearly 200 companies have booked interview time at UC Irvine, for example, a 20% increase from last year, said Bruce Riesenberg, associate director of the university’s placement center.

Even specialized schools are reporting increases. At California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, smaller companies this year are joining the perennial recruiters, animation giants Walt Disney Co. and Hanna-Barbera, to sign up young artists, said Wilhelmine Schaefer, career and internship director.

Nationwide, employers expect to hire 1.1% more college graduates this year than last, according to an annual survey by the Michigan State research institute. The increase follows year-to-year declines ranging from 2.1% for 1993 to a whopping 13.3% decrease for the Class of ‘90--the year the recession began.

Though recruiting typically rises when a recession ends, this year’s increase is particularly significant because of the severity and length of the downturn and the large number of young people it affected, said L. Patrick Scheetz, director of the research institute.

It also means that, for the first time in this decade, some industries are having to scramble to recruit the best-qualified people.

“We find we have to compete somewhat harder,” said Lisa Phelan, director of recruiting in the Los Angeles office of Andersen Consulting, a nationwide business consulting group. She said she plans to hire at least 110 grads through her Los Angeles office this year, up from 85 in 1993.

On-campus hiring never disappeared entirely, even during the depths of the downturn. And some corporations that eliminated recruiting during past recessions took a different tack this time.

“Many years ago, our company and others made a mistake by cutting the staff tremendously--keeping the senior people and laying off the junior people,” said Allen G. Bormann, corporate director of college relations and recruiting for Rockwell Inc. in Seal Beach. The result, he said, was having to assign highly paid employees to tasks that could have been handled by people with less experience.

For that reason, Rockwell has continued to hire new grads every year, even though its total work force has shrunk by a third since 1986. The aerospace giant expects to make about 175 campus hires this year, Bormann said, about the same number as in 1993.

College career counselors say they expected a recruitment rebound, but not so big or so early in the economic recovery.

“We are surprised it was this soon,” said Walter Brown, associate placement director at UCLA. “Now students will not have to look as long or as hard” to find jobs.

The surge so surprised students and campus counselors that some companies report having recruiting time slots unfilled, especially those interviewing to hire grads in technical fields, Scheetz of Michigan State said.

Indeed, college seniors have yet to perceive an improvement in job prospects.

Even the exuberant Jeremiah Taylor admits to not having great expectations. “I’ve given up on trying to make my first million by the time I’m 30,” he said.

Peggy Kuo, a 21-year-old senior at Cal State Fullerton, expresses her pessimism more bluntly. “It is hard for students without experience to find good-paying jobs,” she said. Though she will be graduating next month with a degree in biology, she said, her work history so far shows only clerical positions.

“Students are forced to take jobs that are not their first choices,” Kuo said, adding that she is more likely to end up selling equipment to laboratories than working in them as a researcher.

“Even delivering pizza pays $9 an hour compared to $5 to work in a lab,” she said. “It just seems like a college degree is not what it used to be.”

That lingering pessimism is not surprising, UCLA’s Brown said.

“Student reactions to the job market always lag,” he said. “When the recession started, students weren’t aware of it until four months after we were. Now that it’s getting better, it is going to take awhile for them to realize it as well.”

Hiring of New College Graduates

Hiring on college campuses is projected to increase in 1993-94, the first such recruitment jump since 1988-89. ‘93-94: +1.1 Sources: College Employment Research Institute

Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times