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Experts: Good News On Job Horizon For Recent College Grads

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RALEIGH, N.C. — Thousands of graduates recently said goodbye to college life. There is some good news for some Triangle-area graduates who are trying now to enter the workforce.

"The students graduating this year are far better off than those who graduated a couple of years ago," said Marcia Harris, director of Career Services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Harris said hiring was way up this year.

"We had about eight career fairs this year and saw some employers that we hadn't seen in years come back to us, particularly in technical areas," she said.

Harris said 60 companies came to UNC's April job fair ready to hire. Only 200 students showed up out of a class of 3,000 undergraduates.

"We've heard anecdotally that many students do have jobs," Harris said.

Officials said it is a reflection of the national job picture. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the economy added close to 300,000 jobs in April. That is on top of a gain of about 340,000 jobs in March. After about eight months, Tiffany Flomo landed one in advertising at MTV.

"[I'm] responsible for soliciting ads -- the commercials that you see on MTV," she said.

UNC graduate LaQuintes Jones is taking the internship route.

"I'm interning for UPS, so hopefully that will lead me into a full-time position," she said.

UNC graduate Ben Winegarden has not been as lucky, but he has not let it get him down.

"The job search was a very miserable experience quite honestly," he said. "I'm going to travel for a month in Europe, just pretty much the major cities, and I met, hopefully, my future wife on spring break."

Harris said many students are going into public service, taking jobs with The Peace Corps and Teach for America. She said for those graduates still job hunting, they should have their resume professionally done.

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