From Enthusiasm to Restraint – What Parents Need to Know About the College Hiring Shift
- Brainz Magazine
- 3 days ago
- 13 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Sandra Buatti-Ramos defines the future of career strategy and career ecosystem design. As founder of Hyphen Innovation and Post-Traditional Careers, she architects research-driven, AI-powered frameworks that dismantle obsolete talent development models and unlock unstoppable potential for post-traditional professionals and organizations.
Last week, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) released data confirming what many college students and families have been sensing, the college hiring market has entered a new era of strategic restraint. Employers are projecting only a 1.6% increase in hiring for the Class of 2026, a modest uptick that signals stability rather than substantial growth.[1] For parents supporting their college students through the job search process, the message is clear. While opportunity is undoubtedly present, the labor market is not expanding as quickly as students and families may recall from just a few years ago. This more measured outlook on hiring expectations marks the continuation of what appears to be a fundamental shift in how companies approach early-career recruitment. It demands that parents help their students adapt their strategies accordingly.
From boom to strategic stillness: The college hiring shift
To appreciate the significance of current hiring forecasts, it helps to look backward. The college job market experienced a significant surge in 2022, when employer hiring plans indicated that approximately 63% of organizations surveyed rated the market as “very good” or “excellent”.[2] However, that moment of enthusiastic expansion now feels like a distant memory, as conditions have cooled considerably since that peak. For the Class of 2024, hiring plans were ultimately revised downward to a -5.8% decrease by spring 2024 as economic conditions softened.[3] The Class of 2025 initially saw projections of a strong rebound at 7.3% growth.[4] Still, this optimism proved to be premature, as those projections were later revised dramatically downward to just 0.6%.[5] Now, early forecasts for the Class of 2026 show continued minimal growth at that 1.6% figure.[6] This latest trend in hiring projections represents a shift from enthusiastic expansion to strategic stillness among employers. By the 2025-2026 academic year, several employers rate the job market for new graduates as merely “fair”.[6] Companies are recruiting with caution, carefully calibrating their early-career pipelines rather than racing to snap up new talent. In this hiring climate, graduates who can articulate their value in employer-relevant language will position themselves more effectively than those who cannot.
Understanding what the employment numbers mean for your student or grad
When supporting your student with their launch from college to career, it is vital to distinguish between initial job-search challenges and long-term career stability. The most recent data on bachelor’s degree recipients aged 20 to 29 in 2024 showed that 69.6% were employed by October 2024, while the unemployment rate stood at 15.3%.[7] An additional 25.2% of recent bachelor’s degree recipients were enrolled in graduate school.[7] These college graduates pursuing further education were substantially less likely to be employed, with only 46.1% employed, compared to 77.5% among those not enrolled.[7] In other words, many graduates in this age group are intentionally focused on additional education rather than immediate employment, which helps explain the higher-than-expected unemployment rate for this cohort. Further, among a broader group of young college graduates aged 22 to 27, the unemployment rate was 5.3% as of the second quarter of 2025.[8] This data suggests that as graduates gain a bit more experience, their employment prospects improve considerably.
When examining the career outcomes of new graduates and early-career professionals, it is essential to look beyond whether they are employed. Underemployment offers a quieter but more revealing signal because it shows not only who has found work but who has been able to step into roles that honor the depth of their education, effort, and emerging promise. The underemployment rate, which measures college graduates working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree, stands at 41% per the most recent data.[8] For many, the underemployment rate raises serious concerns about graduate employability since securing any job differs significantly from securing a professional role that leverages the investment made by students and their families in higher education.
Is there really a skills gap?
A significant shift in the hiring context reflects an evolution in how employers evaluate candidates, moving away from reliance on credentials alone and toward the more unmistakable evidence of demonstrated competencies, known as “skills-based hiring.” An example of how skills-based hiring impacts college graduate candidate evaluation is evident in recent NACE data indicating that, for the third straight year, the use of GPA as a screening tool has fallen below 40%.[5] Despite employers’ widespread divergence from hiring practices that emphasized traditional criteria, such as a candidate’s GPA, toward one heavily emphasizing demonstrated skills and value delivered, fewer than 40% of graduating seniors report familiarity with the term “skills-based hiring”.[9] With 70% of employers now reporting they utilize a skills-based hiring approach,[9] this disconnect between the language used to describe their new hiring tactics and students’ awareness of this new terminology creates significant risk for misunderstanding that can jeopardize a graduate’s chances of getting hired.
Another disconnect arises between employers’ perceptions of college-level candidates’ skills and those held by college students. Recent NACE research reveals a noticeable gap between how employers judge college students’ readiness across key competencies and how students understand their own skill development as they step into the workforce.[10] This divergence becomes clearer when examined alongside specific competency domains. Data from NACE’s 2024 Student Survey and Job Outlook 2025 survey reveal that while employers and graduating students agree on the high importance of communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and professionalism, the alignment fractures elsewhere.[10] For competencies such as leadership and career and self-development, perceptions of importance diverge sharply, with new graduates and employers holding markedly different views.[10]
Though the skill deficit highlighted by employers may appear stark, the data suggest the issue is not a lack of effort or capability among college students. Instead, it reflects a breakdown in translation that leaves students’ existing skills unrecognized or misunderstood. Their commitment to developing real, applied competencies is unmistakable. Among the Class of 2025 seniors who participated in the NACE 2025 Student Survey, 84% engaged in an internship, co-op, or other experiential learning program, demonstrating a clear investment in hands-on skill development.[9] In the age of skills-based hiring, college students must learn to articulate their experiences in the specific language employers now expect. Employers consistently emphasize that the most substantial evidence of skills emerges through a candidate’s communication about their concrete examples, moments when students applied their competencies to address challenges or solve problems.[9]
Parental career support with communicating about one’s skills can become especially powerful. When your student recounts their college and work experiences, please encourage them to move beyond listing activities and instead illuminate the capabilities those experiences cultivated and the value they generated through their work. Their projects, student organization or athletic leadership roles, internships, co-ops, and research experiences are strong signals of employability. Still, that value reaches employers only when translated into the language of achievement and promise of future value.
What the industry insiders are seeing
Michael Tomaszewski, Head of Content at Rezi, a career education and job search optimization platform, offers a perspective from inside the hiring process that illuminates why college students’ articulation and skill translation work matters so urgently. “This job market is far from ideal for new grads, especially in tech and tech-adjacent fields. It’s nothing like the hiring boom of 2016-2018, and I fully understand their frustration with career advice that feels only applicable to the past job search circumstances,” Tomaszewski explains. “However, and I have been on the record saying this multiple times, the job market of today is not quite as horrible as the prevalent online narrative would have you believe. There are jobs out there. Yes, it’s competitive. No, it’s not impossible to land one, even with minimal experience.” The problem, he observes, lies not in the absence of opportunity but in how students are pursuing it. “The problem I’m seeing is young professionals being bombarded with horror stories of their peers struggling to find a job in their field despite months or years of applying to thousands of openings. This leads most people to believe that looking for jobs is purely a numbers game. Add to that the rising popularity of AI-powered auto-application tools that just spam resumes around to apply for any role that feels semi-relevant, and you’ve got a self-fulfilling prophecy.” This approach creates a vicious cycle. “Sending out lazy and generic job applications isn’t going to work,” Tomaszewski notes. “Once you send out a few dozen (or hundreds) of those and hear nothing, you start to believe that success isn’t possible. This is disheartening, of course, but it only leads to even less effort put into your application documents.”
From Tomaszewski’s vantage point, reviewing applications, the quality problem is acute. “We’ve seen that at Rezi. I’ve spoken with my colleagues who are hiring for tech jobs at other companies. The average quality of a job application we’re seeing today is, subjectively, way lower than what we used to see four to six years ago. And the saddest part is, many applicants are obviously very competent candidates. It’s just that their resumes aren’t really articulating that, at least not in the context of the role they’re targeting. Some hiring decision-makers will look past a non-tailored, overly general resume in hopes of uncovering talent. Most won’t.”
Tomaszewski’s assessment reinforces what the NACE data reveals about the skills communication gap. “Among the generation of today’s graduates, there’s little to no understanding of how hiring works, what recruiters pay attention to, how ATS is actually utilized, how to meaningfully network, how to practice job interviews, etc. And it’s absolutely not their fault, it’s just that no one ever taught them those skills and no one gave them the tools to properly articulate how their expertise and knowledge can translate into success on the job.” This insider perspective validates a crucial point for parents, your student’s struggle may not reflect a lack of qualification but rather a lack of value articulation and skill translation. It’s likely that many college students and graduates already possess these competencies. The challenge lies in communicating them in ways that hiring technologies and decision-makers can recognize and value. This kind of articulation is coachable, learnable, and fixable, and it’s a point at which parental coaching can genuinely move the needle.
Beyond the first job: Understanding industry evolution
While essential, addressing the coachable gaps in communicating one’s applied skills and their contextual value represents only part of the strategic work college students and graduates need to improve the strength of their candidacies. Marie Zimenoff, CEO of Career Thought Leaders, a consortium of career professionals, argues that truly effective career preparation requires a broader, more future-focused lens than most students currently employ. “As career pros we have to adopt a new definition of holistic career support,” Zimenoff explains. “The individual’s career motivators and mental health are key. And there is an important piece missing from that definition of holistic care, industry evolution.” This missing piece becomes critical when students begin positioning themselves in the market. “When students start to think about their unique promise of value, they rightly start with introspection to determine their strengths, skills, values, and accomplishments,” Zimenoff notes. “Parents can help students identify themes in their strengths, as they often appear at a young age. They can also help students remember where they’ve used these strengths to create value in all aspects of their experiences, school, volunteer, even at home.” However, introspection represents only part of effective positioning. “What’s often missing is the research to understand how these brand facets add value to the audience,” she observes. “The challenge is that this isn’t just about what careers are growing now or what pays well, which parents may tend to focus on, but the deeper skill of evaluating a market and understanding the gaps and how the student wants to plug in and add value with their skills.” This distinction matters profoundly for how parents approach coaching conversations.
The reflexive parental impulse often focuses on immediate security, which fields are hiring, which roles pay well, which companies are stable. These questions have merit, but Zimenoff suggests they’re insufficient for sustainable career positioning. “This is something parents can help with, and it will mean taking a step back from the current ‘get a job’ crisis for a broader and future-focused evaluation. What skills are in demand? What tasks will be replaced by automation? How do the skills they already have or can quickly gain fill those gaps?” This forward-looking analysis becomes particularly valuable given the risk of underemployment. Students who position themselves around emerging needs rather than current openings may find themselves building more durable career trajectories, even if the first job takes longer to secure. The parent who helps their student think about where industries are moving, not just where they are today, provides guidance that compounds over decades rather than solving for a single hiring cycle.
Coaching practices for parents
Parents play a critical role in providing empathetic coaching, perspective, and emotional support as their students or graduates navigate the current labor market in pursuit of highly coveted employment opportunities. Four strategic priorities deserve particular attention. The first priority is to help your student identify their strengths and where they’ve created value throughout their life. Self-assessment is work that benefits from a parental perspective, as patterns often emerge early and persist across contexts. As Zimenoff notes, parents can help students remember instances when they’ve used their strengths, not just in academic settings but also in volunteer work, part-time jobs, and even family responsibilities. These experiences become the foundation for articulating a unique promise of value.
Secondly, help your student translate experience into employer-identified language tailored to specific roles. With the prevalence of skills-based hiring, this translation work becomes essential. Encourage your student to describe every academic, club, or part-time experience as evidence of a marketable competency, whether that means problem-solving, leadership, or critical thinking. More importantly, encourage them to articulate these competencies in the context of the specific roles they’re targeting, as generic resumes yield generic results.
The third strategic priority is to engage your students in forward-looking industry analysis. Resist the temptation to focus exclusively on what’s hiring today or what pays well immediately. Instead, help them research which skills will be in greater demand as automation reshapes work, where gaps are emerging in their fields of interest, and how their existing or quickly acquired skills might fill those gaps. Doing this will shift the conversation from reactive job hunting to strategic career positioning.
Fourth, prepare your student for longer timelines without losing their confidence or strategic focus. Employers have made significant adjustments, often delaying offers until spring and summer rather than fall and winter.[11] The 15.3% unemployment rate immediately following graduation suggests that many graduates may experience extended search periods.[12] Help your student budget time and energy for a sustained search, recognizing that a more extended timeline does not indicate personal failure but rather reflects current market realities. Use this extended timeline to refine positioning rather than simply sending more applications.
Providing perspective when it matters most: the degree still delivers
When the labor market and headlines provoke anxiety and fear, parents can help ground their children with reassuring facts. Before your student becomes discouraged by the competitive nature of hiring, it may help to reflect that their degree retains value in challenging job markets. For context, workers aged 25 and over who have less than a high school diploma face 6.2% unemployment and median weekly earnings of only $738.[12] By contrast, the overall unemployment rate for the nation’s entire college-educated population aged 22 to 75 stood at just 2.3% in 2023, demonstrating stability over the long term.[13] The sheer volume of opportunity for college degree holders remains immense. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects approximately 19 million job openings annually across all occupations from 2024 to 2034, with 178 occupations typically requiring a bachelor’s degree for entry.[14] The question facing today’s graduates is not necessarily whether the degree has value, but rather how selective the market has become for converting that credential into immediate professional employment.
As you continue to support your child, focus on celebrating each of their small wins, submitting a quality application, receiving an interview request, making a meaningful professional connection, and completing research on industry trends and emerging skill needs. These incremental gains can provide the emotional support needed during inevitable setbacks. The job search process can feel grinding and impersonal, and your encouragement matters more than you may realize.
When your student feels tempted to join the “AI-bulk application” approach, remind them that recruiters and hiring managers can tell the difference between thoughtful targeting and mass application submission. The market rewards strong articulation of skill and unique promise of value, strategic positioning, and genuine value alignment, not application volume.
To increase the efficacy of their job search efforts, remind your students of the power of networking and encourage them to incorporate informational interviews into their strategies. The hiring outlook for the Class of 2026 demands strategic execution. The opportunities are real, but they require clear communication, sustained effort, future-focused thinking, and realistic expectations. Success belongs to the graduates who can effectively translate their achievements and experiences into demonstrated, marketable skills while positioning themselves around emerging industry needs rather than yesterday’s job descriptions. As a parent, you can empower your student to navigate this labor market with confidence, determination, and perspective, recognizing that the path may be longer than anticipated but that thoughtful positioning today builds career resilience for decades to come.
Read more from Sandra Buatti-Ramos, ACRW, CLMC
Sandra Buatti-Ramos, ACRW, CLMC, Founder, Chief Learning Architect, & Lead Coach
Sandra Buatti-Ramos is a preeminent voice in career strategy and career education ecosystem design. As founder of Hyphen Innovation and Post-Traditional Careers, she develops research-driven, AI-powered frameworks that dismantle outdated talent development models and create scalable pathways to career mobility. A "Top Career Coach" known for her work with students, professionals, and forward-thinking organizations, she fuses dynamic coaching strategies with cutting-edge instructional design to accelerate workforce readiness transformation. Her portfolio spans award-winning career coaching initiatives, the creation of a workforce preparation Innovation Lab, and the launch of a first-of-its-kind AI-driven learning ecosystem.
References:
[1] Gray, K. (2025e). Hiring flat for the college Class of 2026. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
[2] National Association of Colleges and Employers. (2022). Job outlook 2022.
[3] Collins, M., & Gray, K. (2024). Job outlook spring update: Overall hiring dips, but most employers will maintain or increase hiring. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
[4] Gray, K. (2024). Hiring up 7.3% for the college Class of 2025. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
[5] Gray, K. (2025a). Hiring projections level off for the college Class of 2025. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
[6] Gray, K. (2025e). Hiring flat for the college Class of 2026. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
[7] Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. (2025c). College enrollment and work activity of recent high school and college graduates-2024 [News release].
[8] Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (2025). The labor market for recent college graduates.
[9] Gray, K. (2025d). Students report being unfamiliar with skill-based hiring. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
[10] Gray, K. (2025f). The gap in perceptions of new grads’ competency proficiency and resources to shrink it. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
[11] Gray, K. (2025b). Employers continue to recruit in fall but adjust timing of offers. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
[12] Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. (2025a). Education pays, 2024. Career Outlook.
[13] National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2025). The college-graduate workforce in the transition to a post-pandemic labor market: Trends in employment, professional engagement, and work arrangements (NSF 25-331). National Science Foundation.
[14] Torpey, E. (2025). Education level and projected openings, 2024-34. Career Outlook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
[15] Collins, M. (2025). Job stability, healthy workplace culture top new grad wish list. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
[16] Gray, K. (2025c). Facing a tough job market, Class of 2025 responded accordingly. National Association of Colleges and Employers.
