I don’t believe even if the federal hiring freeze is lifted, there will be many new hires. With all the planned cuts to almost every agency except defense, they will be reducing staff through attrition.
@NoVADad99 totally agree. It’s likely that they’ll go the buyout route and if they do it well (give a couple years of service to entice people) a good chunk will be out the door. Which is exactly what they want. I don’t think it’s possible for too many people to leave at this point - statement not meant to start a political discussion.
The exception I see is possibly cybersecurity and SS/FBI - but the latter likely won’t be looking for fresh outs.
The government rarely does buy outs now. The retirement policies are pretty good. You get extra time credit for unused sick leave.
The hardest thing is you are usually competing with vets for jobs unless it is an exempt job like attorney or tax accountant, and some exempt jobs require two years of experience .
The federal Pathways program for new graduates is still operating.
This could be a good time to consider the military, for those who are interested. Other federal agencies, not so much. A friend’s daughter told us about her friend who graduated in May and recently got hired by the EPA. Had to wait all that time to get hired, but I wonder how long that poor kid’s job is going to last.
I doubt the Fed Gov’t is going to be doing too much hiring. A general good rule of thumb is you do not want to begin your career at a company in bankruptcy. The Fed Gov’t is deed in debt and utterly bankrupt. Grads are better off working for a growing company with plenty of profit and wall street appeal.
FWIW, this wasn’t my children’s experience. D1 (CS 2015 grad) got her first job after submitting her resume online (big Silicon Valley company); in essence, a cold-call. D2 landed last summer’s internship by cold-calling (well, cold-emailing 
) companies in an industry that interested her, asking if they had any openings and explaining why she wanted to work with them. Anecdotal evidence and all that. Still worthwhile to try many different avenues. Both D’s are now exploiting connections gained as a result of those first connectionless jobs.
Federal government hiring: the federal government isn’t some huge monolithic company with one single reputation. It hires an enormous range of people, for an enormous range of jobs. Anyone comparing job offers coming from private industry and from a federal agency should be comparing those jobs on their own merits, not just on a perception that the federal government is “utterly bankrupt.”
@kappie: Does the job have a contract with the strings attached mentioned above? Does it require him to stay for some time and if he leaves, pay a hefty “training fee”? Does it have a non-compete clause (which may not matter if he actually wants to move away)? If it is an “at will” employment situation meaning he can leave whenever (and the company could let him go whenever) and if he doesn’t have even another interview lined up, I would encourage him to take the job. Anyone can last for 6 months to a year at a job, even if it is not great. If there are many strings attached, I would agree with those who say to avoid it.
Can he take the apartment for a few months or is it a one-year lease? This may be the incentive he needs to start driving. Can he live in a more interesting area of New Haven and use public transit or uber to get to work until he can get his drivers license?
I am not a tech employer or recruiter, but it seems like the issue for him is that his experience is all in game design and while he has lots of coding experience, he did not do coops or internships in that field. This job, while not ideal, may give him that experience. If the company has been around since 1988 (or 1998 (can’t recall what you wrote) seems like it must have some record. Can he call NEU career counseling to ask about the company?
If he doesn’t take this job, my guess is that he really needs to change his approach to job hunting. Specifically, he should go to the NEU career services, like them or not, and use them for recruiting. He should also go to job fairs. NEU is not an inexpensive school and he really should use their resources. Once he has been out of work for a year, it becomes more difficult to be “entry level” or go for recent grad jobs. Hopefully he can spin the work on the game as what he has been doing since graduating. I also would strongly discourage him from taking a job outside of his field.
Good luck to him. It is not fun to job hunt.
@twoinanddone At the federal agency (defense) where I work, they’re talking about more early retirement buy outs. I received an early retirement buy out 5 years ago.
No buyouts likely at DH’s agency.
S1 got to know folks at his employer (and they, his work) through the open source coding. He interviewed at other places as well senior year and had several offers. He was involved in ICPC (international collegiate programming competition) and that generated several requests for interviews.
Google and others have programming competitions (codeburner, IIRC) that are useful in demonstrating (and improving) skills and getting interest from recruiters/companies.
He has a pretty extensive network now as his work is used by many people. He also posts as an expert in some forums, so people get to know about his work that way, too. For him, it has been pretty organic and not so much schmoozing.
S2, in a non-tech field, found that attending subject-related conferences, posting on subject-area forums and going on informational interviews worked really well for him. He did listen to me about customizing every resume and cover letter. He didn’t drop a lot of resumes into the ether, but targeted places that hired people like him. It’s hard to land something in his field straight out of undergrad, and it took him a long time, but it has worked out well.
He also spent a year temping, which got him consistent employment on the resume. (It is a lot harder to get temp work than when DH and I did it.) It may be easier to get such gigs in the tech field – which might be an alternative for OP’s son to get OTJ experience. Even Craigslist might have some temp jobs that would be useful and give OP’s son some recent work to discuss in interviews.
If he wants a job in a hot field, get himself some certifications in cybersecurity. Get the Network+ and Security+ certs. They can be done via self study. Books are available for them. If he gets the certs, he’ll be a sought after commodity.
How good is his statistics knowledge? That is another sought-after skill.
When my husband got laid off in early 2016, unemployment paid for him to attend classes to get at last one IT related certification. He encouraged my underemployed son to also take advantage of that training. Perhaps unemployment in your state would pay for your son to also get additional training and certs.
^^^ I respectfully disagree with the above if your son wants to code. IT/Operations people are the natural born enemy of developers! 
Seriously, a QA job will help him advance to coder, but an IT job will not.
S has been working at the fed govt since graduating in 2010. He has not mentioned any cutbacks or buyout offers. H was offered early retirement incentives which he turned down and actually was paid to work for 6 months after he retired. It really does depend on what one is doing in the fed govt–which agency/dept.
What do you consider to be IT job?
QA is a dying breed. We expect our developers to do their own QA. Most QAs do not know how to code. They come up with test cases (can be automated) to validate if the software is doing what it is supposed to do.
“Seriously, a QA job will help him advance to coder, but an IT job will not.”
In 10 years all IT people will have to be able to code or they are out. Everything becomes software and everything is programmable.
Dumb question: what do IT ppl do if they can’t code? Troubleshoot?
Probably lower end IT jobs that require little technical skill, or their jobs get outsourced to outsourcing companies (the H-1B hogs that crowd out the companies trying to hire top talent that was the original purpose of the H-1B visas, or companies that do IT remotely in other countries).
A QA job writing automated tests is a desirable job for a software developer. A QA job doing mostly repeated manual testing is a less desirable job.
Dinosaurs like myself who cannot code will have to die.
Seriously, there will only be low-level jobs (largely manual work) and high-level architect/manager jobs that do not require coding. IT in-between will be writing automation software that deploys and maintains computer environment. Developers will be provisioning computer resources and connectivity themselves with a click of a button. They will have to become a little bit more knowledgeable about IT space.