COLORADO SPRINGS — College graduates will now be entering the pool of job candidates creating some additional competition for a wide array of job openings right now in the Pikes Peak Region and across the state.
News5 spoke with employment experts about how this is expected to impact people looking for work right now and what you can do to land the job you want.
In the Pikes Peak Region alone, employment experts say there are at least 16,000 job postings. It’s a number that has continued to increase during the last six months.
Even with all the opportunities, career experts say applicants need to be ready to contend with all of the people applying for the top jobs.
“The really ambitious goal is to work with Nike and create 3D footwear design,” said Aaron McCoy, a graduate student at the University of Colorado. “Even if you do have a high-paying job you have to deal with the place you go to. Like Portland, the expenses to live there are going to be extreme. Then you have to pay off your loans and whatnot, so that's another stressful factor."
McCoy is one of many college students who will soon be aggressively looking for work. On college campuses in the University of Colorado system career services leaders are getting students prepared for the job market.
“Graduates are entering a really positive job market. Recently, it was reported that employers hiring is up about 31.6 percent, which we can imagine is also a lot better compared to the graduating class of May 2020,” said Associate Director of Career Services at CU Boulder Cori Shaff.
Year after year the Pikes Peak Region is recognized nationally as a top place to live and the 16,000 job openings posted for the area are already generating nationwide interest.
”With obviously a new flood of graduates coming into the job search as well, that adds more competition,” said Pikes Peak Workforce Center Training Facilitator Erin Hutchinson. “With that many open jobs in our region specifically there’s a lot of opportunities out there it’s in how well they leverage themselves for those opportunities.”
The Pikes Peak Workforce Center has its doors back open to the public providing technology, training, and resources to help people stay competitive during their job search. That job search could get a big boost during one of the organization’s biggest job fairs of the year scheduled for Wednesday, May 11.
”IT, Construction, Healthcare, retail, hospitality, those types of things. We will have 125 employers and these employers are not looking to fill a candidate pool. They are looking to hire now,” said Hutchinson.
Coming out of the impacts of the pandemic, the experts say you may want to add one more thing to your resume.
”It’s very important to be able to show on your resume or tell on your resume that you have worked remotely, or hybrid in the past, what technologies you’ve used to do that, as well as your willingness to do that,” said Hutchinson.
Click here for more information on the Pikes Peak Workforce Center job fair scheduled for May 11.
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