“One of the toughest hurdles you’ll ever overcome is landing your first job.” Thus Lee Iacocca summed up the trials and tribulations of what most NIU graduates will have to experience sooner or later; leaving this safe cocoon-like world we call school and beginning … the job hunt.

Campus recruiting coordinator Jean Callary said, “There’s a great fear of the unknown involved in making the transition from student to member of the working world.” She said, “Students wonder what they should do in the interim between dropping their cap and gown in the bin and walking into a place of business.

“There’s generally a three-month period in between graduation and finding that first job,” Callary continued. “During that time, the job search is the full-time job. It isn’t a question of finding time to look for a job in between reruns of “Father Knows Best” and “Remote Control”. It’s really a good idea to start looking before you graduate.”

One former student experiencing this limbo is Bertina Moeller, a May graduate with a degree in Human Resource Management. “It’s impossible to get a job,” Moeller stated. “It might be easier if I’d had a different major, but it’s essential that I work in a large company or they won’t have a personnel department.”

“The basic problem with that is that the people who are interviewing you are in personnel and they fear for their own jobs,” Moeller added that a number of the jobs in her field are filled internally.

Like many of the nation’s unemployed, Moeller is attempting to find work through a placement agency. “The agencies find out about the jobs before they’re advertised in the paper. Ninety percent of jobs are not advertised,” she said.

So what does an ex-student do with all that spare time? “I’ve been working at temporary jobs,” Moeller said. “And I go out a lot. There’s nothing better to do.”

Many students, including Moeller, spend those first few months living in their parents’ homes. “I hear a lot of students say they’re going to live at home for a year and buy a car. That’s the first goal,” Callary said. “It’s got to be a very difficult thing to do, though. Once you’ve been on your own for four years, it’s hard to be under their roof again. And, really, Mom’s going to be glad to see your laundry again? It can be hard for everyone involved,” she added.

Callary stated that a lot of NIU students want to live in Chicago once they graduate. Quite a number of them manage to achieve that goal. One new Chicago resident is Amy Garber, an NIU graduate in nursing who now works as a neurolgy/neurosurgery nurse at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Garber landed her job two months prior to her May graduation. “I think I got a job so quickly because of the field I chose,” Garber said. “I’m not a huge risk-taker and I like to have something I can depend on, but I definitely feel like I’m doing something worthwhile.

“When I first graduated, I held onto DeKalb. It was an inevitable transition, and I eased my way into it,” Garber said. “I feel a lot more independent now, and there’s a lot less guilt involved. When I come home at night, my work day is over. I don’t have to worry about the paper that’s due tomorrow.”

Garber, who has her own apartment and recently purchased a new Honda Accord, said “you get sucked into the middle class mainstream when you start working. Your values don’t really change, but a lot tends to get glossed over. When I graduated, I had mixed feelings of fear and relief.”

Social activities don’t seem to change that much in the post-graduation months. Both Moeller and Garber spend their free time going out with friends who live in their areas, and both make the occasional trek to DeKalb to visit those still ensconsed in academia.

Moeller said she misses her social life at school. “Everyone is your own age there,” she said. “Now when you go to a bar, you get bothered by 40-year-olds, and there are little kids running around everywhere.”

Garber said she still does a lot of the same things she did in DeKalb, “but you enjoy it each time a lot more. You can’t take it for granted anymore. Also, you realize how much these people mean to you. You aren’t just thrown in with them.”

Garber added, “You meet real people, not just those who are academically oriented, or worse, quasi-academically oriented. And while there’s a lot less intellectual stimulation, you learn a lot.”

There’s a great fear of the unknown involved in making the transition from student to member of the working world. Students wonder what they should do in the interim between dropping their cap and gown in the bin and walking into a place of business.”

Jean Callary, campus recruiting coordinator