This is a phrase becoming all too common in the lives of college seniors. Thanks for your interest but…

our company has recently entered a hiring freeze, we had far too many qualified candidates to interview them all, etc. etc.

Around September or so my friends and I started to get worried about getting jobs in a tough economy. The responses we got from our counselors and relatives though were mostly positive. “You’re a senior at Stanford, I’m sure you’ll do fine.” “Even if the job market is down, you’ll still find a job.” We fervently wish this to still be true, but it certainly has been worse than expected.

The stock market crash happened in the middle of fall recruiting schedules. One of my friends got an email from an investment bank saying that they were no longer hiring, but she could still go to the interview if she wanted (how generous of them, right?). Another of my friends was told by a consulting firm that he was great and would be the perfect candidate except that they barely had enough space for the returning interns they had already offered positions too. Many are turning to graduate school instead, hoping that the job market will have improved by the time they finish. Graduate school applications are up, making it more competitive now than ever.

I keep getting surprised by how often my smart, qualified friends are getting turned down for jobs they would be perfect for. Then, though I came across this article by Penelope Trunk: Reason to give thanks: there is no job shortage for young people. And I just couldn’t help wondering if she was living in a different universe.

• Her main proof seems to come from a Beyond.com study that job postings for candidates with 0-3 years experience increased from September to October in 2008.
• I checked out the actual study and noted that job postings actually decreased for candidates with less than one year of experience (which may be the situation for many college grads).
• Postings increased for candidates with 1-3 years of experience, which is certainly hopeful. But, while job postings for these candidates went up by 3.68%, the resume postings for the same group went up by 6.33%, implying that demand for jobs is increasing more than the supply.
• I also suspect that the job postings will decrease from October to November, but I don’t think Beyond.com has published those results yet. It’s pretty clear to us all that things have been getting steadily worse since October, not better.

Now, I don’t want to be a downer. By all means, I’d love to believe that college graduates will not be affected by our current depression, but the reality around me is all too clear.