Help Still Wanted

Meanwhile, someone forgot to tell Microsoft that recruiting by tech companies was down. Microsoft has always competed ferociously--no surprise there--for the brightest young minds. That has meant fat offers for students like Neel Murarka, a Cal Poly computer-science major who accepted a $70,000 starting salary--plus a signing bonus and stock options--to join a Microsoft team that will develop new software from the ground up. Antitrust troubles or not, Microsoft is still a cool company, and it wooed Murarka and other hotshot prospects with an all-expenses-paid visit to Hollywood, capped off by tickets to the Grammy Awards. "We had a blast," says Murarka. "Everyone who went to the show ended up joining Microsoft."

Few class of 2001 grads have been in greater demand than civil engineers. Their bridge, road and building-construction talent is coveted by companies and public-works crews alike. "We can't produce enough of them," says Al Barron, the director of career services at Southern. "Folks will come 2,000 miles to talk to one person." One like Montrell Harris, a graduating senior who is juggling six offers that range from $39,000 to $49,000. "The only hectic thing," Harris says, "is deciding which one I want."

For business and finance students, the outlook has grown decidedly mixed. More than half a dozen investment banks and consulting firms wooed Indiana senior Dick Pines, bringing him to New York City for expense-paid weekends that included one memorable stay in a $500-a-night hotel. Pines finally signed with Credit Suisse First Boston for $55,000, plus a $10,000 bonus-cum-relocation grant. But classmate Jori Issette is still sending out resumes. "I'm a little discouraged," she says, "but you have to keep your head up."

The seniors signed up by Cisco last fall have a new appreciation of Internet time: they were recruited, hired and fired in the space of six months without ever doing a day's work. They even collected three months' severance plus the run of Cisco's outplacement services. Some jilted seniors were happy to bid adieu to this loser. "In the fall Cisco was healthy and growing," a student says. "Now it's slowing down, and I don't want to work for a company with problems."

Ironically, the slumping job market could help rekindle employee loyalty, which had seemed as old-fashioned as a time clock when workers could bounce around with impunity. Accounting major Katherine Stiveson plans to start a $41,000-a-year job with Deloitte & Touche this summer after she graduates from California State University at Northridge. And Stiveson vows to work extra hard. "I'm going to make sure I'm doing my job well and stay an aggressive employee," she says. "I don't want to be laid off."

Sears recruiter Tiefenthaler spots a similar trend. "There used to be a job-hopping environment, but now I think the pendulum is swinging back, and people may want to stay with one company longer," she says. That shift has Sears "feeling pretty good." At the outset of the decade, it would be ironic indeed if one of the first legacies of the New Economy '90s turned out to be a docile class of '01.

--Reported by Carole Buia/New Brunswick, Michelle McCalope/Houston, Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and Leslie Whitaker/Chicago