College students and recent graduates who are looking for their first jobs face the added pressure of a tumultuous labor market in the midst of an economic crisis. Some may be in for a long, arduous process.

Holly Simpson, a career counselor for Valparaiso University, said she has seen an increase in students and alumni using the career center. She said the job market is "more competitive."

“You get the sense that there are tons of people out there, unemployed, looking for jobs,” said Northwestern University alumnus James Shih.

Shih graduated in June with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He said he sent out 10 to 15 cover letters and applications and got one callback and one rejection.

Shih said he has been looking for jobs in print journalism or new media, but the field has its own challenges. “The industry has been going down even before the economy,” he said.

Chicago newcomer Michael Weber studied environmental science at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. When he graduated last spring he expected to find a job in environmental consulting or environmental policy.

“It’s been really, really difficult, I feel, to find something that uses my skills,” Weber said.

On Wednesday he was soliciting donations for an environmental organization on a sidewalk in the Loop. “I think most of us are kind of taking jobs a little lower than we wanted to take… that’s just what the times call for right now,” he said.

Adolfo Laurenti, a senior economist with Chicago-based Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc., said that young people would be under the most duress during this time of job instability.

“This is not a good economy to look for your first job,” Laurenti said.

The national employment situation released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last week showed that 159,000 jobs were lost in September and nonfarm payroll employment fell by 760,000 since the start of 2008.

DePaul University’s first job fair of the year on Oct. 3 drew 103 employers, up 6 percent from the first job fair in 2007, and 1,105 job seekers, a 25 percent increase from the previous year. Undergraduates, graduate students and alumni were in attendance, according to Aisha Ghori, an associate director at the university's career center.

“I think they’re thinking, ‘I better get on this,’” Ghori said, adding that the media might be influencing the students’ sense of anxiety.

"I think there's always some general anxiety about finishing your education and figuring out what the next step is," Simpson said.

The Office of Career Services at Roosevelt University is busy as well. Director Terri Berryman said the counselors are assisting more students and more alumni in transition after layoffs.

Berryman said more than 2,000 students and alumni came through the office last school year. Roosevelt has a student body of about 7,000.

The alumni who return to the office in growing numbers are anywhere between two and 20 years out of school. Berryman said they were coming from various industries, but many were concentrated in finance and real estate.

In response, the counselors are talking about starting a monthly job session for alumni who have been laid off, Berryman said.

At recent DePaul networking events, 24 percent of the participants were alumni. The percentage is usually in the teens, Ghori said.

While the volume of job seekers increases, the number of employers visiting campus remains stable but uncertain.

Berryman said the best way to characterize employers at this time was “tentative.” She said many are waiting to determine the future of their companies before resuming their prior level of recruitment.

“I think there’s just so much uncertainty,” she said, adding that it was especially apparent in the last few weeks.

At Valparaiso the number of employers has increased along with the number of job seekers. Simpson said they had a record 122 employers at their last job fair.

Ghori said the number of employers attending job fairs had been stable. She said some employers have pulled out, but were replaced by new ones. The new employers are recruiting for positions in health care and sales jobs across multiple industries.

Some of the employers Ghori works with plan to convert internship positions to full-time positions rather than conduct open-recruitment.

She added that her office is reacting to the economic situation by being more aggressive and making sure the students are connected to them through new initiatives on Facebook.com and YouTube.com.

Berryman said the time and difficulty of finding employment varies by major, but even those areas in which it was a little easier to find work, such as government and non-profit jobs, are slowing down.

“It is a longer process than it used to be,” Berryman said.

Fall is the busy season for finance and accounting recruiting, and some students are able to line up jobs before they graduate.

Meera Venu was hired last January while completing her senior year at Stanford. She works at Morningstar Inc., an investment research firm in Chicago.

As an English major with a minor in economics, Venu said it was helpful to have a quantitative background on her resume.

Those interviewed agreed that the best strategy for finding a job is to use multiple methods including online job searches, career fairs, networking, social networking and joining professional associations.

"The best thing for students to do is be proactive, even before their senior year," said Simpson.

“The people who are successful are successful because they use multiple methods,” Berryman said.

James Shih is taking that advice by searching on journalism job Web sites, using his academic department’s career services, and contacting former employers. “I’m trying to work all angles,” he said.

Unemployment is inevitably challenging, but recent graduates often have the added burden of paying off their education.

Sarah Latan-Kasper is an acting major at Roosevelt University. “I think it’s a hard profession already, and with the current job market it’s going to be even harder, even just to keep a job or get a job that works with actors,” she said.

“When I graduate from school I’m going to have loans to pay back, and if I don’t have a job I’m not going to be able to pay back my loans,” she said.

Ghori is cautiously optimistic. She said 95 percent of DePaul’s graduating class of 2007 are either employed or in graduate school. Of the current crop of job seekers she said, “I think we’re all just waiting to see how things go.”