Christopher Fazzari has fired off more than 200 job applications since graduating from the University of Denver last year.

The 23-year-old would at least like to receive the occasional rejection notice.

Most of the time, he never hears anything from employers after uploading his credentials into an online abyss where algorithms — not humans — often get the first crack at whittling down hundreds of job candidates.

Fazzari, a Denver resident, wants to break into media or communications to write, podcast and inform people about education policy and news relevant to teachers. But the narrative of landing a job after graduation that he’d been sold his whole life hasn’t panned out.

“I did all the things I was supposed to do,” Fazzari said. “I went to college. I got an internship. I worked hard and did independent studies. I graduated. But the job system of the past no longer exists.”

Starting a career after college is a much different ballgame than it once was, experts told The Denver Post during the height of Colorado’s graduation season. The job hunt, like most things, has moved online. Whereas a firm handshake used to be the pinnacle of impressing a prospective employer, the new trick of the trade is learning how to stand out among heaps of digital applications that zip through automated screenings before ever encountering human eyes.

And the labor market isn’t making the hunt any easier.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers recently projected early career hiring for the class of 2024 will be down 5.8% from last year. That coupled with Colorado’s low unemployment rate is expected to hit new and recent graduates hard as they attempt to enter the labor market, said Edward Quinones, communications specialist for the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

How do you break through the noise and snag a job that makes your postsecondary education worth it? Career services experts in Colorado shared their expertise with The Post on what it takes, while recent graduates such as Fazzari divulged “mind-numbing” lived experiences in their quest to start a career.

“It’s not an easy job market right now,” said Tara Skredynski, a Denver-based career coach. “A lot of people are staying in their roles and not really leaving. There are fewer opportunities and more candidates. So much about the job searching process has changed.”

What’s the labor market like?

Makayla Salter worked as a marketing student assistant for the University of Kansas’s athletic department and completed two business and marketing internships during her time at the KU School of Business.

Salter, 22, graduated a few weeks ago. Her family’s Thornton home has transformed into her career headquarters, where she updates an Excel spreadsheet tracking the status of the more than 200 jobs she’s applied for since the beginning of the year.

Inspired by her internships, Salter is searching for a role in a collegiate athletic department or sports organization where she can flex her business acumen.

“I know everything is going to work out, but in the moment, it’s stressful,” she said.

Out of the 238 applications she’s submitted so far, Salter has heard back from 31 prospective employers. Some asked her to produce intensive work samples, which the recent graduate spent hours crafting, even having them reviewed by her mentors, only to be ghosted by the employers.

“It’s so hard to understand it because you hear so much about companies needing employees, but it’s hard to find the gap,” Salter said. “I get that not everyone is going to get the job, but I really don’t see anyone getting any jobs.”

Only about half of bachelor’s degree holders in the United States lock down a college-level job within a year of graduation, according to a February report by the nonprofit Burning Glass Institute, which researches the future of work.

The other half end up underemployed, meaning they work in jobs that don’t require a degree or make use of their collegiate-level skills.

Seventy-three percent of graduates who enter the workforce underemployed remain so a decade after completing college, the report found. A recent graduate with a college-level job usually earns about 88% more in wages than someone who only has a high school diploma, the report said. But an underemployed graduate typically earns just 25% more than someone with no education beyond high school.

Colorado’s unemployment rate for the first few months of the year was 3.7%, below the national average of 3.9%, according to a quarterly business report released by the state.

Headed into the pandemic, Colorado had the fifth-lowest unemployment rate in the country at 2.5%. By the end of 2020, Colorado saw 269,200 people without jobs and actively looking for one, a higher total for the state than any month during the Great Recession, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state had the nation’s fourth-highest unemployment rate after Hawaii, California and Nevada at the time.

Now, Colorado’s employment increased an estimated 2.2% in 2023, adding 64,500 jobs, and stood at a record 2.9 million in October 2023.

CU projects an increase of 41,900 jobs in 2024, or a 1.4% increase in the number of employed workers in the state.

There were 1.7 job openings per unemployed person in Colorado in the first three months of this year, the fourth-highest rate in the country. The national average was 1.4.

On paper, Colorado looks to be a good place to find a job.

“Right now, it’s very much a job-seeker market,” said Katherine Keegan, director of the Colorado Department of Labor’s Office of the Future of Work.

In practice, job seekers told The Post that it felt more complicated than what the statistics revealed.

Labor market changes have long been brewing that are now coming to a head, Keegan said. Younger generations who are more diverse than ever before are entering academic and employment systems that have disproportionately not served them well, she said. Meanwhile, older generations are working longer.

The power of apprenticeships

Keegan envisions a different future of work — one where apprenticeships reign.

“In Colorado, we are trying to live out this idea of the big blur between education and work,” she said.

In previous generations, Keegan said, kids graduated high school and finished postsecondary training before entering the workforce.

“We know that’s not creating the talent pipeline that businesses need,” she said. “We’re trying to create more work-based learning opportunities in high school and postsecondary education. Apprenticeship is a big part of that and helps people learn skills while they earn money. It helps employers shape the talent they need.”

This is where a school like Emily Griffith Technical College excels. The Denver college offers workforce training and industry-aligned postsecondary certificate programs in creative arts and design, health sciences and administration and trades, industry and professional studies.

Areas of study include cosmetology, culinary arts, nurse assisting, automotive services and welding, among other pursuits. The programs are driven by industry demand, said Tiffany Jaramillo, who manages Emily Griffith’s career services.

“Many students are gaining employment before completing because there’s such a demand for them in the industry,” Jaramillo said.

Career coaches go into Emily Griffith’s classrooms within the first week of courses to introduce themselves and the services they offer. They go back mid-way through the program to create skill-based resumes with the students. A few weeks before graduation, they come back once more to see who has a job and who could use a resume refresher, interview preparations and application help.

“Our instructors are from industry, and that is incredibly valuable because they have the insight into the industry as well as the connections,” Jaramillo said.

How to stand out

Fazzari intended to use his college years to explore career options and forge connections. The Denverite made the most of his time at DU, but he can’t help but wonder how many opportunities were squandered by the pandemic.

“If we’re thinking about careers as a race, it almost feels like the starting block got ripped out from under my feet before I could even start running,” said Fazzari, who is working as a substitute teacher in the Cherry Creek School District while his job hunt persists.

He’s had numerous professional contacts tell him they would love to hire him but have not recovered from the budget fallout of 2020 and don’t have jobs to offer, he said.

If an applicant is only relying on uploading their resume and sitting back awaiting a response, career coach Skredynski said it’s going to be a tough job market for them.

Applicants should be researching the hiring manager, the recruiter, peers in the organization and trying to connect with them via the networking site LinkedIn, she said.

“Take that extra step,” she said. “If a company is getting hundreds of resumes, that’s how you can stand out.”

Instead of reaching out with a “Hi, I just applied for this job” message, Skredynski said it’s important to craft a concise, clear outreach message about why you’re interested in working for the company and what relevant skills you bring. Then request a quick phone call to connect.

Most companies, she said, are using applicant tracking systems to sort through thousands of resumes.

When an applicant submits their resume, the document gets scanned for key words that usually align with the job posting. Tools like SkillSyncer can help job hunters align their resumes with words from job descriptions, Skredynski said.

For free career coaching advice, a job applicant’s university is often a good place to start.

At the University of Colorado Denver, alumni can come back and visit the school’s career center for life, said Sarah Trzeciak, the school’s assistant vice chancellor of career development and immersive learning.

Trzeciak has been with CU Denver’s career services for 11 years, with a front-row seat to the evolution of the job hunt.

“Really, what it has become is, how do you in this world of electronic applications get your documents to stand out in front of a recruiter who has thousands of applications they’re looking through?” Trzeciak said.

The key to a good cover letter, she said, is a four-paragraph method. First, note what position you’re applying for.

Second, explain your skills and connect them to the job.

Third, show why you want to work for the company and make it clear you’ve researched the organization’s mission and values. Fourth, state that you look forward to connecting.

Trzeciak also knows her way around a resume.

Because recruiters skim documents from left to right and top to bottom, she said it’s crucial to include a qualification summary box in the upper-left corner to immediately demonstrate that you meet the employers’ needs.

The box might feature skills mentioned in the job description or certificates or education required.

“Yes, we’re hearing the market’s hard,” Trzeciak said. “We still have employers wanting to recruit our students. We don’t have an empty table at our internship and job fairs. The difficulty they are experiencing is more of that shift to online and not really knowing how to stand out.”