By DEREK FAY
Todd Garner, 28, from Layton Utah, graduated from BYU in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. Garner said that after working in Dallas for over four years, he felt dissatisfied with his situation, so he and his family decided to move back to Utah.
“We pretty much loaded up the truck and moved back … I quit my job and when we moved back I didn’t have anything,” Garner said.
Garner said he was unemployed and was able to obtain employment through the BYU Alumni Placement Center (APC) within a week. He was hired by Futura Industries, an aluminum extruding company in Clearfield, Utah where he currently works as a controller.
Job searching can be a daunting task for new college graduates and seasoned professionals alike, but graduates of BYU have a resource to help them fulfill the second part of the university’s motto, “Enter to learn, go forth to serve.”
The APC is dedicated to helping BYU graduates find employment in several fields whether they have graduated in the last two months or the last two decades. According to Scott Greenhalgh, the Alumni Placement Coordinator, it is a buyer’s market for job hunters.
Greenhalgh said right now the APC is receiving up to 200 job listings a week.
“I think we have a tremendous resource to help a lot of people. If they continue to make contact with us and continue to use our system, I think we’ll be very effective,” Greenhalgh said.
Several resources exist at the APC to help alumni get linked with companies seeking willing and able employees.
A career fair hosted by APC with around 80 visiting companies takes place annually on the BYU campus, Greenhalgh said.
This year the Career Fair will be held November 5 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m in the ELWC Ballroom. The expanded hours are new this year to accommodate alumni with work conflicts during the day, allowing them to attend during the evening.
“There are strong companies from across the country coming to the Career Fair,” Greenhalgh said.
Greenhalgh said this year’s job fair will include engineering companies, computer science companies, retail companies and accounting and consulting firms.
In addition to the Career Fair, the APC has job listings for graduates from all fields and levels of experience. Job listings vary from liberal arts to computer engineering.
” . . . job status would be anywhere from entry level to company president,” Greenhalgh said.
Literature about various companies, and an Internet site with a link to a database with 50,000 professional job listings, are some of the resources available to provide BYU alumni the opportunity to find the right job, said Melissa Jones, an assistant to Greenhalgh.
Alumni can subscribe to APC by purchasing a software package called Resume Expert that helps job hunters tap into the job market and the databases with employment listings, Jones said.
“(Job seekers) put their resume onto a disk, bring the disk into us, and we upload it into our system and give the disk back to them. From then on they’re in our database,” Jones said.
When job listings come into the office by fax or other means, APC searches the database for alumni with the necessary skills and desire to work in those fields. A list of the qualifying alumni is printed, and they are then contacted about the job opportunities.
However, having a certain degree or experience doesn’t preclude an individual from obtaining employment in another field, Greenhalgh said.
“I talk to alumni from all over the country on any given day and help them on their never?2Dending career search. I don’t believe that it ever does end. Everyone should always be looking for other opportunities, and that’s what we provide here,” Greenhalgh said.
BYU Alumni Placement Center is located D?2D240 ASB. The phone number for APC is (801) 378?2D8706. People interested reaching APC’s Internet site can do so by going through BYU’s homepage at http://www.byu.edu/newhome.html. ?1A
