Colleges handle job placement woes: advisers help students and alumni prepare for careers - but they need to find jobs on their own.

• Author: Caley, Nora
• Position: EDUCATION

Here's some good news for college students: Hiring is expected to increase 4 percent, across all degree levels, for the current group of soon-to-graduate students, according to Michigan State University's annual Recruiting Trends study.

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Still, near-grads are nervous about their job prospects. College career-services offices are responding with new programs, online assistance and even extra staff lo help students learn how to write a resume, prepare for interviews and network.

One thing the offices don't do, however, is find a job for the student.

"We don't use the word 'placement' anymore," says Bridgette Coble, director of the Office of Career Services for Metropolitan Slate College of Denver. "What we teach is career self-reliance. Students will do this process multiple times."

The office, which is funded by student fees, works with cur-rent students and recent graduates. Metro State's alumni relations office added a staff member to handle requests from people who graduated more than a year ago. The offices often collaborate on job fairs and other events.

Students might think counselors will hand over a list of job leads, but that's not the case. "The hardest part of our job is not getting people access to job opportunities," Coble says. "It's getting them ready to perform well when they have those opportunities presented to them."

Other experts agree. "We are not a placement office per se," says Michelle B. Gjerde, director of the Career Center at Colorado State University-Pueblo. "We are responding to our students and have been very busy coaching them on this market. Students need to take a much more active role in their own job hunt. It is very competitive in this job market."

CSU-Pueblo's two-person office serves more than 5,200 students and alumni. "We are seeing more alumni than ever before," Gjerde says. They return to their alma mater to have their resumes reviewed, find contacts and gain access to the online job-posting system.

Renee Welch, director of career services for the University of Northern Colorado, has also seen an increase in alumni requests for phone or in-person counseling. For the academic year 2009-2010, 30 percent UNC's career services were to alumni. "That seems high, but it also makes sense considering the downturn lo the economy," she says. Alumni who graduated within the previous war represented the largest segment.

UNC's career-services office partners with...