Page 5 - HIWT Summer 2011 World of Welding

hiwt@welding.org HOBART INSTITUTE OF WELDING TECHNOLOGY

OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME

By Kyle Cardiff

Kyle is a graduate of the Combination Structural and Pipe
Welding Program at Hobart Institute.

With the economy in its current condition, I, like many other
people across the country decided to go back to school in
hopes of furthering myself. All I needed was a chance, an
opportunity to get my foot in the door. The overwhelming
concern that I had in returning to my education was: What do
I go back to study? Or what discipline can I pursue that will
help me stand apart?

Since my freshman year in high school I had consistently
been employed during my summers off. I held temporary
jobs in construction, apprentice electrician work, and valve
automation, but it was not until I graduated from high school
that I began to work on a consistent basis. When I continued
my education at the college level, I was forced to look for a
job that would be flexible enough for me to be able to attend
class without scheduling conflicts. I started working in the
restaurant industry in 2004 and worked my way through Kyle Cardiff displays bend test samples of his work.
college as a busser, table waiter, and bartender. I graduated
from San Diego State University in the fall of 2007 with a
Bachelors Degree in Business Administration. Acquiring my
degree in business, I felt would be broad enough at the time
to give me a chance to enter the workforce on a fairly open
playing field. I believed that by covering a wide spectrum it
would be less challenging for me to obtain employment.

However, within months of my graduation, the U.S. economy
started to spit and sputter down to the worst unemployment
rates and most competitive job market that we’ve seen in
decades, and certainly the worst it has ever been in my
lifetime. Suddenly the abundance of jobs started to dwindle,
and I found that in many of the jobs for which I had applied, I
was often competing with up to 200 other applicants. At the
end of the day, companies seemed to be hiring experience over
education in an overwhelming manner. An easy cost to cut
was the time that needed to be devoted to training programs
for new college graduates entering the workforce. With so
many candidates to choose from, I found that my resume was
rarely at the top of the stack.

Nearly two years had gone by since I had finished my schooling
and I still had not been able to leave my job at the restaurant to
start my career elsewhere. My new beginning came when my
father suggested that I start to look into the trades and to try to
become more specialized in my focus.

(Continued on page 8)

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