You probably heard last week's better-than-expected Jobs Report numbers, and hopefully it marks a continuing trend.  The summary headline was "Total employment rose by 130,000 in January.". 

Unfortunately, that headline by itself tells a very misleading story for my students and your kids who are 2025 college graduates or are the upcoming graduating class of 2026! 

First the Stats:

Unemployment for recent grads (ages 22–27) has surged to 5.3-5.7% compared to 4.1% for the general population and just 3.25% for this same age group back in 2019 marking 2025 as the toughest job market for new grads since the pandemic.  Will 2026 be much better?  My own prognosis is only marginally, since there are structural forces which are having a much bigger impact than just the economy, and those require a new playbook for college and recently graduated job hunters.  

Underemployment is equally alarming. The underemployment rate for recent college graduates rose to 42.5%-its highest level since 2020 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That means nearly half of recent graduates who do find work are taking jobs that don't require a college degree.

The application-to-offer ratio is collapsing.  Members of the Class of 2025 submitted 50% more job applications on average than the Class of 2024.  To put that very general comment into the reality of my personal perspective with my own 90 seniors in my various courses, on average, they submit 120 to 200 applications ending with only one to two actual offers. 

The outlook for 2026 grads is no better. About 51% of employers rated the job market for this year's college seniors as poor or fair: the highest share since 2020-2021. 

The Structural Forces Behind This

• AI automation is eliminating the entry-level roles that used to be the on-ramp to white-collar careers.  This is especially true in Sales and Marketing roles. Having said that, entry-level sales and marketing candidates who are totally fluent in their use of sales and marketing technologies such as Hubspot and Salesforce, including specific AI platforms, are in demand.

• Hiring freezes and uncertainty.  Tariff volatility, interest rates, and the general government unknowns are continuing to make employers risk-averse about new hires.
• Skills-based hiring is displacing credential-based hiring.  Most employers are increasingly indifferent as to students' majors.  They are very interested in what the candidate can actually do that will bring their company specific value in the short term.  

The New Playbook is about you Marketing Yourself!

The old playbook was about polishing your resume. Resumes are a total waste of time!  No one really reads them, and those that are "read" are first machine read providing an AI summary defining the structure of the words used and an interpretation of the jobs listed.  All of that then results in a six to ten second quick read of your prized resume by the actual hiring manager; less time is spent by the initial reviewer. 

What counts is how you are marketing the value you will bring, not just the history of what you've done.  

• What's your own personal Value Proposition statement that you are saying during your interview and writing in your follow up notes? 
• What are the metrics that you have achieved in your internships, in sports, in clubs and in academics that you can reshape into specific values that you will bring to your new employers?
• What's the personality that you are bringing to your interviews?
• What are the mechanics and the frequencies of your follow up notes and videos and related connected that will also tell your story long before there is a request for references?

In order to answer these questions a year ago, I wrote a free book, The Marketing of Me™ which is meant to be a how-to-guide for current students, recent alums and any of my older friends who are dealing with the new realities of a very different hiring environment. 

At Tufts, we're taking our responsibility to our students and our alums one step further, and a week from today, we are hosting an on-campus Tufts event at 5:00 PM next Thursday, the 26th, with an extraordinary group of highly successful Tufts alums who will share their own stories and job-hiring best practices as employers with the audience.  All very engaging and interactive with specific real-life examples of what it takes from the perspective of highly successful business leaders.

You can register here!

 Have a great day marketing yourself today!