Job prospects heat up for the Class of '06

Class of 2006...prepare to flip your tassel with confidence. The way things look right now, the nearly 1.5 million college seniors expecting to graduate this spring are set.

Recruiters are reportedly fighting for space at campus career fairs, according to college career offices. And employers are expected to hire 14.5 percent more graduates this year, according the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

"We looked back and this was best year in the past three or four years," said Andrea Koncz, a spokesperson for the NACE.

Maybe the best indicator of the strength is the number of recruiters that have flooded college campuses.

"This year we've had 23 percent more companies on campus in the fall than we did last year," said Donna Goldfeder, director of career services at Lehigh University, which graduates approximately 1,000 seniors every year.

Recruitment efforts have even been so strong that at Washington University in St. Louis and at the University of Texas at Austin, officials reported they could not accommodate every recruiter.

Velma Arney, who oversees 4,500 undergrads as the director of career services at Texas' McCombs School of Business, said "we were booked very early and we knew it was going to be a strong [recruiting] year."

In addition to increasing their visibility on campuses, recruiters have also been trying to lock up talent earlier, according to Terry LaMarco, the associate director of the career center at the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

This year, more students are even finding themselves in the enviable position of deciding between a handful of job offers, according to Mark Smith, the director of the career center at Washington University.

"We had some students with offers in the fall who are shopping around," said Smith. "That's a great position to be in when you're 22-years old."

•	Job prospects heat up for the Class of '06 CNNMoney.com, Friday, Feb. 24, 2006 Byline: David Ellis