“I’ve basically got my dream job, and I couldn’t be happier,’’ Ristaino said.
For many Wentworth students, finding a good, well-paying first job is proving to be a lot easier than it was a couple of years ago. As the US economic recovery appears to gather steam, a new survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that companies expect to hire 19 percent more college graduates this year than in 2010, the biggest one-year increase since 2007. And most of those new jobs are concentrated in Wentworth’s sweet spot: engineering and computer science.
About 90 percent of Wentworth’s students have a job, or are in graduate school, within six months of graduation.
“We’re seeing a lot of hope and a lot of changes since the recession in most of the disciplines our students go into,’’ said Gregory Denon, Wentworth’s director of career services. In Ristaino’s specialty of computer networking, “we have more jobs than we have graduating students,’’ Denon said.
More than 130 companies showed up to recruit students at Wentworth’s annual career fair last month, 40 more than in 2010. And employers have posted 408 jobs on the college career website, compared to 182 last year.
The surge is strong at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, know for its engineering programs. “We definitely have seen recruiting pick up this year,’’ said Melanie Parker, MIT’s executive director of career services. The university’s spring job fair last week was packed, with recruiters from 35 would-be employers; another 30 companies were turned away for lack of space.
There’s intense demand for top students from top schools — and those students “are definitely in the driver’s seat right now,’’ said Scott Dunlop, founder of the Bivium Group, a Belmont company that recruits workers for high-tech firms. “There’s definitely some significant bidding wars out there, but I wouldn’t say it’s as crazy and over the top as it is on the West Coast.’’
