Come October, many students’ feet are drawn to the Career Planning and Placement Office.

During the past year, the economic picture darkened for those fresh out of collee, as well as American work force veterans. Many major companies have cut people from their payroll and large number of dot-com companies crashed as the initial euphoria didn’t last.

There is good news, despite the downturn, for the college market. Demand for technical graduates may have decreased, but it’s still relatively high. A recent study by the Information Technology Association of America predicts that the American job market will need 90,000 skilled IT workers by 2002.

Jena K. Callary, assistant director of career planning and placement, is optimistic about the placement for graduates this year.

“Northern graduates have many, many opportunities available to them, but they cannot wait as long as last year’s graduates did,” Callary said. “Many new businesses will be created, survive, thrive and offer a large number of opportunities. There is also a heavy competition from graduates of other schools as employers have few jobs to offer.”

Seniors should start their job search now with campus recruiting at the job fair on Oct. 10, Callary said, adding that they can interview over the next several weeks, identify appropriate opportunities and begin to receive job offers before the end of the semester. If students wait until they graduate, they may not get the great first career opportunity they hope for.

“Timing is everything. They have to get in the game new,” Callary said.

“Until about last year, close to 100 percent of our graduate students from our graduate programs are placed in their area of expertise,” said Pramod Vohra, associate dean of the college of engineering and engineering technology. “The graduates of our programs are in great demand and employers seem to like the performance.”

Though most of NIU graduate students work in Illinois, many students last year were offered jobs as far as California by companies like Texas Instruments, Intel and Hewlett Packard, Vohra said.

On-campus interviews continue to be a key tool for pending graduates.

“To date, over 100 companies have scheduled on-campus interview dates,” said campus recruiting coordinator Jody Kirchgessner. “More are inevitably added as the semester progresses.”

Students graduating in December should take advantage of this convenient, free service during their senior year at NIU, Kirchgessner said.

“There is a graduate follow-up survey that goes out once a year and takes several months to process,” Callary said. “We get about a 25 percent return on that survey. That means that we have old data from relatively few students. That information does seem to indicate, however, that within one year, about 85 percent of our graduates have accepted employment and of that group, approximately the same percentage have accepted employment that is related or closely-related to their major. So, 85 percent are employed full-time and 85 percent of those have jobs in their chosen career field.”

Arun Gonguntla, a computer science graduate student, feels that though the economic scenario isn’t good, he can get a job because of the course work he did at NIU.

Kalyan Yerramraju, a computer science graduate student, said, “I am just waiting fro the situation in the job market to improve. Right now I am keeping my fingers crossed.”