60% of Paid Interns Received At Least One Job Offer

Much has been written over the years about the difficulty recent college graduates have in finding career-related employment and, in many cases, any employment at all.

A recently released survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers demonstrates the wide disparity between college grads who didn’t start applying for jobs until they graduates versus those who applied for jobs prior to graduation versus those who completed at least one internship or co-op position prior to graduation versus those who completed a paid internship or co-op position.

It may seem intuitive to some but the infographic provides a helpful reminder that you can’t get hired if you don’t apply. Only 25.2 percent of grads had accepted a job offer prior to graduation but that number skyrockets to 44.2 percent when you look only at grads who had applied for at least one job.

Another interesting statistic is that only 55 percent of grads had internship or co-op experience while they were students. The 45 percent who didn’t have such experience were clearly put at a huge disadvantage when looking for a job upon graduation as 60 percent of those with paid internships received at least one job offer upon graduation.