Facing bleak job outlook, recent graduate turns to Broadway Extension billboard to market himself

Just next to the text is the picture of Mike Thompson, a recent graduate who took a creative approach to job-seeking.

Thompson, 27, graduated from Oklahoma Christian University in April with a master's of business administration. When he graduated, he entered a job market that experts say is still challenging for recent graduates.

Since he graduated, Thompson has sent out dozens of job applications. So far, he said, he's heard nothing back from any of them.

After spending about a month and a half searching, Thompson decided to get creative. So he bought billboard space in one of the more heavily trafficked areas of Oklahoma City highway.

“It's a total bottleneck,” Thompson said. “At 5:00, you've got to see me.”

Just a few months out of graduate school, Thompson said he's concerned about his job prospects. Thompson and his wife will be having a baby boy in November, so finding a steady source of income is all the more important, he said.

In the past, he said, he's done internal consulting work for firms in Tulsa and Joplin, Mo., finding ways to solve problems and make work run more smoothly and efficiently. He's looking for something similar now, but jobs like those can be difficult to find, he said.

“That's not a job that's ever posted,” he said. “The problem for me is finding the right job.”

Thompson isn't alone. Although the nation's labor market is improving slowly, experts say job prospects for recent graduates remain weak.

A recent report from the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute shows that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates spiked from 5.7 percent in 2007 — just before the onset of the recession — to 10.4 percent in 2010. Since then, the rate dropped slightly, to 9.4 percent in 2011. The report, titled “The Class of 2012,” was released in May.

That spike was even sharper for nonwhite recent graduates. In 2007, the unemployment rate of young black college graduates was 8.5 percent. By 2010, that rate had risen to 21.9 percent. Young Hispanic college graduates saw their unemployment rate increase from 7 percent in 2007 to 15.4 percent in 2010.