HIRING FREEZE

REPORTER BLOG

I thought I was blessed when I got assigned the job of covering how USC students are doing finding jobs after graduation.  The story had many great angles to cover I thought.  The career center was putting on a workshop that was supposed to make this story a piece of cake.  However, as I soon learned, not all things are as easy as they seem.  After putting more than fifteen calls into professors at USC, and after putting five calls into the career center, I was getting worried.  Without contacting the career center, I was not going to be allowed to cover to the workshop about "recession proof" jobs.  As it turns out, I never got in touch with the career center, so that angle of my story had to be scraped. 

Being the quick thinking that I am, I decided to turn my story, and add a little twist.  I decided to look into another option for students after they graduate.  Instead of getting a job straight after school, or going to grad school, I found a student what was planning on doing his own thing.  Instead of going the traditional route, the student decided to start his own business which allows him to have freedom, and less stress as the economy recovers. 

After adding that element to my story, I finally found a Marshall professor that was willing to talk about the current job market and what decisions students are faced with.  He provided very valuable information that allowed me to gain almost all the components necessary for my story.  I found one more senior that had attended to job fair to talk about it.  Although I wasn't able to get the career center to speak about recession-proofing the job search, I felt as though the elements I found were sufficient to telling the story to the best of my ability.