A senior at Washington University in St. Louis thought a job awaited her after graduation at a New York City dot.com company. During her internship there last summer, the boss said she was a shoo-in for full-time work.

But the dot.com got squeezed financially and laid off workers. The job offer evaporated.

Now the senior is out there with thousands of other college students looking for work.

Stories similar to hers are repeating themselves around the country. This year’s graduates are competing in a job market that’s tighter than it has been the past few years.

Blame the slowing economy and rising unemployment.

“The class of 2001 will certainly have a more difficult time finding a job than those college graduates who graduated from 1995 through 2000,” said Joseph Daniel McCool, editor in chief of the national Recruiting Trends newsletter. “The classes of “95 through 2000 really couldn’t have graduated at a better time. In many cases, students had three, four, five job offers waiting for them upon graduation.”

Joseph Hofeditz feels unfortunate that he didn’t graduate last year or the year before. The 25-year-old from Edwardsville, Ill., is getting his master’s in business administration at the University of Missouri-Columbia in May.

He’s worried that he doesn’t have a job yet. But he’s still hopeful. He’s interviewing, and believes he will find something in consulting or operations management.

“Of the people finishing up with us in May, the majority who already have jobs got them lined up last semester,” Hofeditz said. “Those who don’t have jobs feel it’s more of a struggle this semester. People this semester are in my boat, which is a frantic search.”

The economy’s slight downturn has prompted some companies to hold off on hiring. Some have laid off workers or introduced hiring freezes.

Plus, some high-flying technology and computer companies that offered big salaries and great perks a year ago have seen venture capital disappear. Some companies have folded; others have scaled back.

“The shakeout in the dot.com industry has sent a lot of those technology-savvy business professionals heading to a lot of the e-recruiting Web sites such as monster.com and hotjobs.com,” McCool said. “Suddenly, there’s a lot more competition for the jobs that are advertised online. That’s certainly something new for this year’s graduating class to consider.”

The dot.com financial situation doesn’t have as big an effect on employment for college seniors in Kansas and Missouri as it does on the coasts, career center directors at colleges in the region said. But they say they see small signs that the job market for seniors is tightening in the Midwest, too.

Fewer companies are coming this year to a senior interview day planned for this week at the Kansas City Market Center, said organizer Linda Garlinger, director of career services at Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph.

Companies are taking longer to make decisions on whether to hire students they have interviewed, said Cynthia Fulks, director of student and career services at DeVry Institute of Technology’s Kansas City campus.

Employers are looking for students with skills, not just energy and ideas, said Kitty Wilson, director of career services at Rockhurst University.

“A year ago, they said, “Send us whoever you have; we’ll look at them and talk to them.’ Experience wasn’t quite as important,” she said. “Now it’s very qualified, such as you have to have two years experience, or experience with specific software.”

A large technology company has cut the number of interviews it plans during an upcoming interview day at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said Candice Stice, assistant director of UMKC’s career services center.

The senior job market “has just slowed down a little,” Stice said. “But I still think if a candidate is really resourceful and maybe doesn’t necessarily want to work for huge, corporate America, they can still get a good salary and a good job.”

At the University of Kansas, Gail Rooney, director of university career and employment services, said this month’s job fair still had more than 150 employers looking for qualified workers.

“We’re not seeing the frenzied pace and the growth of the past couple years,” she said. “But we’re still seeing a positive job market for college graduates in entry-level positions.”

Rooney said some companies that have laid off workers are still hiring. They’re just hiring people with different skills. If the companies are looking for employees with technical knowledge, this year’s graduates can be successful.

The best opportunities still await those majoring in engineering, computer-related subjects and business, experts said.

Nationally, entering salaries for computer engineering graduates are about $53,443, up about 14 percent over last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The association reported that economics/finance graduates are being offered about $40,000, a 5.7 percent increase over last year.

Camille Luckenbaugh, the association’s employment information manager, said that most other areas are seeing boosts, but the increases are more modest than in past years.

“(The job market) is still good, it’s just not spectacular the way it used to be,” she said. “(Graduates) were getting salaries that were so high, bonuses that were so high, that now it seems this is putting us back where we belong.”

In other words: “If I’m going 200 miles an hour, I’m speeding. If I cut back to 100 miles an hour, I’m still speeding.”