You've graduated. Good luck finding a job.

NORFOLK

Rachel Davidson hasn't been a slacker in the hunt for a job.

Since November, the Old Dominion University senior has put in 40 applications. Not one has yielded an offer.

With graduation less than a month away, "I'm getting pretty nervous," said Davidson, 23, a business management major from Williamsburg. "It's a lot more difficult than I thought."

One sign of trouble she's noticed: Her competitors at campus job fairs aren't just seniors. Some are alums.

For many college seniors such as Davidson, the recession has tempered pre-graduation giddiness with the jobless jitters.

The number of on-campus recruiters has shrunk.

The number of applicants, many with significant workplace experience, has ballooned. And so has the number of prospective graduates with uncertain futures.

Tiera Burford, a senior at Norfolk State University who is majoring in political science, said she knows only two seniors with job offers. But she's not worrying.

"Everyone's in the same boat, looking for one," said Burford, 21, of Upper Marlboro, Md., who hopes to find work as a legal secretary in the Washington area. "They're going to get one. There's always someone hiring."

Rianka Urbina is less sanguine, though she won't graduate until December.

"It's really scary, being that Virginia Tech is a well-known university for its education, and we're still not being offered jobs," said Urbina, 22, a finance major from Norfolk. "We kind of have a sense of entitlement: Because we have a degree, we'll get a job."

No longer. Her peers graduating next month have three choices, she said: Move back home and keep looking, go to graduate school, or work for free in their field until the economy rebounds.

University placement directors offer a message of reassurance, coupled with a stern warning.

Yes, there are places still looking to hire. But students will have to hustle more, not rely solely on on-campus recruiters, and widen their targets for employer, salary and location. Some might have to start their careers with a summer internship.

Employers foresee hiring 22 percent fewer graduates this year, according to a February survey of more than 170 businesses by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

College placement offices are seeing and hearing from fewer of them.

At ODU's Career Management Center, job postings for the first three months of the year plummeted more than 41 percent - to 429 this year from 734 in 2008. The number of employers recruiting on-campus fell about 25 percent at the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia.

"Everything is down, and if it's not down, the decision-making for offering employment has been pushed back," said Ladd Flock, director of career services for U.Va.'s College of Arts and Sciences. Some students who were interviewed in the fall, Flock said, are still awaiting responses.

Bank of America will honor job offers to seniors but is making overall "graduate hiring adjustments," spokeswoman Nicole Nastacie said. "Like other financial services firms, we are not immune to the present economic climate." Nastacie declined to provide figures.

Some employers, though, say it's full speed ahead.

Northrop Grumman Newport News hired about 70 graduates in 2008, most with engineering and business degrees, and plans a similar number this year, spokeswoman Jennifer Dellapenta said.

The Geico insurance agency also expects to hire the same number this year for analyst, sales and customer-service jobs, said Joanne Stagemeyer, the regional college recruiter in the Virginia Beach office. She visited Old Dominion recently in search of job candidates.

Not every senior is in career limbo.

Well over half of the 325 soon-to-be graduates of the McIntire School of Commerce, U.Va.'s undergraduate business school, have accepted offers, said Tom Fitch, the school's assistant dean of career services.

So has Kharye Pope, a 33-year-old electrical engineering major at Old Dominion. Pope, a Norfolk resident who served in the Marine Corps for seven years, will join the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office outside Washington as a patent examiner.

His success illustrates the continuing appeal of the engineering degree. Business and computer science majors also remain strong draws, along with health sciences - such as nursing and dental hygiene - and accounting, according to career advisers.

Pope reflects another booming area: the federal sector.

A handful of U.S. departments have been "really active" at Norfolk State, including the Census Bureau, the Central Intelligence Agency, the General Services Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, said Nash Montgomery, the university's director of career services.

Some graduates have adjusted their sights accordingly.

"You have a group of students from U.Va. that had their hearts set on a consulting career or an investment banking career, and now they're looking seriously at government agencies," Flock said. "It's a place to develop their skills and abilities, get interesting experience and parlay that back into consulting or banking once the fog clears."

The graduates are competing not just among themselves, but against mid level and senior managers and "CEOs looking for anything they can get," said Randy Shabro, director of employer programs at ODU's career center.

The students may look weaker in terms of experience, but they also carry some advantages, career advisers said. For one thing, they're cheaper. They're also more likely to stay with a company. And some companies, such as Geico, promote from within and don't hire mid- or upper-level bosses from outside, Stagemeyer said.

Now more than ever, she said, students must do their job-hunting homework to stand out: Research the company and the available jobs before an interview. Don't walk in and ask: "What do you guys have going on?"

Even so, instant success isn't assured. Davidson, the ODU business major, said she worries that she won't find a job before graduation and will go home thinking: "What am I going to do now?"

But Mary Schilling, the director of William and Mary's career center, said: "I think that we need to relax a little bit and not assume that every graduate is expected to have a job on graduation day. There's a good reason to take time off, especially if you don't know where your focus is or you want to take a break.

"All of us eventually seem to find our first job and move on."

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com