There aren’t very many cars on I-5 at 1:45 a.m. on a weekday. Beth Witham, 22, is behind the wheel of her black Honda Civic. Her eyes are a little glazed over but she does not take her eyes off the road in front of her. She is either in need of more sleep or her body is just whacked out from her crazy night-shift schedule – maybe it’s both.

Witham arrives at work just in time to park her car at the underground parking garage at Fisher Plaza in downtown Seattle, grab her employee ID badge and take the elevator to the fourth floor, the news desk at KOMO 4, the ABC network’s affiliate in Western Washington.
This young journalist is fresh out of college at the University of Washington. She graduated with awards including that of the top feature writer in her class. She is just about to complete her first year as an assistant producer and news writer at KOMO 4. But her job at KOMO 4 is temporary, and will soon end. She has everything employers look for; she is smart, professional, enterprising and experienced. And she is about to join the ranks of unemployed college graduates.

Witham did not think much about post-college life until recently. The whole “entry-level, job-seeking process,” as she put it, barely touched her. She was offered a position at KOMO 4 News two weeks before she graduated. She had previously interned with the news station, and the affiliate needed to temporarily fill a position being left by an employee taking maternity leave. “They called completely out of the blue,” said Witham, “I didn’t have [plans] after graduation, so even though it was a temporary job, I thought it’d be a good fit, and a thing to put on my resume.”

Witham is one of many recent college graduates entering the post-college “unknown.” But for Witham, it caught her by surprise, “I’ve just had a lot of luck in having opportunities come my way,” said Witham. “I never thought I have to work so hard just to find something, anything.” She can sense that she is now in a different stage of life: “It’s the first time you have in your life that you have to fully focus on work. You are not trying to balance different commitments. Work becomes your number one priority, when school has been your number one priority your whole life." Witham’s feelings are shared by many college graduates.

Job recruiter Brad Near with the Seattle company Business Careers was quoted recently as saying that college graduates are hungry for jobs but uncertain as to how to proceed.
Near said their hunger may arise out of the social stigma of being adrift – the feeling that “I’m out of college and family and friends want to know where I am going to go to work.”

He said that recent college graduates often have expectations that are higher and more unrealistic than those of non-entry-level job seekers. “Just like a college degree is an entrance to a new career,” he said, “an entry level job is a foot in the door to a new business.”

Witham believes that finding a new job will take a lot of hard work and persistence. As she said, “I wasn’t concerned because I have so much experience, but the TV industry is a competitive industry in which to find work. Having worked one year at KOMO doesn’t mean it (will be) easy to put my foot in the door at another station. I just have an advantage.”
At her desk in the KOMO 4 newsroom, Witham is about to send her news stories to her senior producer, then head up the stairs to give news briefs to the newly arrived anchors.
The newsroom is separated into clusters of four desks. Witham and her producer share a cluster, and for the first two hours of the day they are the only two people on the fourth floor. As the morning wears on, more employees begin to trickle in – first the news anchors, then the radio station’s DJs and then the rest of the morning production team.
By 3:30 a.m., Witham has responded to her Emails, met with the senior producer and worked on her writing assignments. At 4:30 a.m., Witham begins work on the “third line,” the headlines that run across the bottom of the screen during the newscast. Preparing the third line is one of her main responsibilities.

If Witham were to apply for a permanent job at the station, then she would be competing with industry veterans, all vying to work in the nation’s 12th largest television news market. Witham decided to test the waters in smaller markets.

In early November, she went on her first interview for a job producing special features at KI-TV station in Hawaii. She believed that she was qualified for the job; during her tenure at KOMO 4, she was in charge of producing special features. But she said she was a bit nervous when she arrived at the interview, especially after searching for the building entrance for 20 minutes. The producer conducting the interview then said he was concerned about her limited amount of experience in the industry.

“If anything is frustrating to me, it is that I believe I can do the job, but you still have to prove that to other people,” said Witham. “Each new job search has its new challenge.”
Witham still doesn’t know where she’ll be working. All she knows is that she has a lot to offer, and will persevere. As she thinks unemployment after college is not a new concept, and now more than ever, the piece of paper with your name on it doesn’t mean a lot – except that you have a starting place. Witham says her job search will entail filling out applications, checking Web sites, contacting TV news stations and interviewing. All that, she said, plus “a whole lot of persistence.”