Get a job…ANY job! Don’t wait for a job in your college degree set.

That’s the advice being given to current college graduates. With the current job market already tight and with new grads competing for choice jobs against folks with already established career experience, new college graduates are being told to face reality and get a job so that they can support themselves and not to wait for that dream job to come available. At least, not right now.

Take A Job, Not Necessarily The Job:

Thornel Ruff and his wife are following in the footsteps of their three children and graduating from college this spring. But this family tradition, albeit in reverse, comes with a cost and no guarantee of employment, as thousands of college students discover upon entering the work force.

“I’m excited about finding a job, but I’m kind of worried,” said Ruff, who earned a degree in sports industry operations at Metropolitan State College of Denver and estimates his family’s college debt will be about $40,000.

Ruff hopes he finds a job coaching football quickly but will probably accept less than his dream job to pay the bills.

“My time frame is immediately. I’m paying a mortgage,” Ruff said.

On average, Metro State students graduate with $13,364 in student debts – an increase of more than $2,000 from last year’s graduating class, according to the college.

Ruff has the right attitude because it takes most students four to six months to secure a job, said Bridgette Coble, interim director of Metro’s Office of Career Services.

Nobody is advising grads to let go of their dreams. After all, they worked for four years or more to get that degree and they expected to be able to use it once they graduated from college. But, reality is a mother. Now that they have graduated, they have all those student loan bills to start paying back, not to mention providing for every day life. Unless they come from money, they need to get out and get real jobs to bring in the money to survive on.

That might mean taking the first job offer that comes along, whether it pays as much as they would have expected after all those years of targeted study.

(cross-posted)

The perfect song with a little doo-wop flavor: