When the United States entered its recession, the unemployment rate soared from 4.8% to 9.7% (more than DOUBLED) in13 short months. The employed were laid off, cut back and had an ever-present fear that come tomorrow, they would be out of work. This fear became a reality to nearly 2.6 million Americans in 2008 (a record high since 1945).  While the employed lost their jobs, the unemployed lost hope.

I graduated in December, 2009 and finally entered the big, bad job market in January, 2010. At this point in time, unemployment rates rose even further reaching 10.6%. Needless to say, I was nervous. But as I searched posts, boards, companies and listings, I found out there were TONS of jobs available. I was applying to at least 20 jobs a day for 6 months… You do the math. However, as a recent grad looking for experience, I fell behind in the job market. Although the economy is slowly improving and therefore providing countless job opportunities, the unskilled and inexperienced are still left in the dark. There are tons of jobs out there, but they are all going to the professional that lost their jobs due to the recession.

Think about it: You have your job candidates. You have the recent grads that are looking for that entry level position, and you have the professionals with prior experience in the industry. Who do you hire? The answer is obvious. Unfortunately, both sides are falling short. The inexperienced are left with ZERO opportunities to gain experience (Well… that is unless they want to work for free. But in this economy, that’s definitely not an option. I can’t even afford a $15 doctor visit and get my $21 prescriptions), and the professionals with 5+ years of experience are taking jobs for which they are highly overqualified. Neither side has a chance to grow in their profession. The experienced are pushed back to square one and the recent grad can’t even get to that square one… It’s tough.

On the bright side though, unemployment rates are slowly starting to decrease. So… here’s to hoping.

I wish all of my fellow recent grads the best of luck in finding work and may the overqualified professionals make rapid advancement in their positions to get back where they left off when the US entered it’s recession.

Never underestimate the power of patience, perseverance and an optimistic attitude.

Information gathered from:

Google Public Data

CNN Money

US Department of Labor

US Bureau of Labor Statistics

Many of us remember the stunt he pulled at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

19-year-old Taylor Swift won her first MTV VMA at this years MTV Video Music Awards for Best Female Video for her hit “You Belong With Me.” She began her acceptance speech by thanking MTV for giving a country singer the chance to win a MTV. She seemed very excited… Until Kanye West hopped up on the stage and took the microphone from her. He then proceeded to tell all of America that Beyonce actually had the best video of all time… suggesting she should have won the award… leaving Swift speechless during her own acceptance speech.

That was a huge blow to Kanye. Shortly after it aired on TV, blogs, Facebook groups and discussions stormed the internet talking about their disgust and hatred for Kanye for what he did to Taylor. His repuation had been permanently damanged and many fans lost all respect for him due to his distasteful act.

His poor publicist had to do some major damage control. He was put on several talk shows soon after to discuss what had happened and apologize. He called Taylor to apologize personally and posted a blog explaining his action… Ouch.

However, the media seemed to blow things out of proportion. International students were receiving phone calls from parents across the world to see if they were OK. Each day, newspapers read higher and higher numbers of swine flu cases. However, if you look closely, you would have noticed Pullman only had a handful of confirmed swine flu cases. The rest were flu like symptoms.

It wasn’t long until Pullman was considered plagued by the swine flu.

This created huge PR issues for WSU. They had to step in with serious crisis management techniques to stop the bad publicity. Student Heath and Wellness Services handed out germ masks, flyers, information and hand sanitizer. They offered emergency walk-in times for students with flu-like symptoms and advised all students to stay home if they felt ill and not go to class.

It is interesting to see how it all played out… Since WSU was one of the first schools to start Fall Semester so early in the year, WSU received all the swine flu publicity. I’m sure many other schools would have experienced the same wrap if they had started earlier than late September.

Here’s a video about the swine flu outbreak in Pullman… just shows how blown out of proportion it became.

I am currently the account manager for a PR campaign we are doing for the WSU CEA in my PR 412 course. The WSU CEA wants to learn more about their alumni and donors and how to reach them. We are learning all about the importance of research in PR campaigns. After we complete all our focus groups, we are sending out a survey. The focus group provided a lot of very useful, in-depth, qualitative information to use in our PR campaign and research.

It’s all very exciting to finally get to put everything we’ve learned into action. I have taken countless PR, communication and research classes. Now I finally get to implement it all. It makes me that much more excited to get my PR degree and enter the PR field. I can’t wait to see where this PR campaign goes from here!