What determines whether a new college grad gets a great job, a temp job or a 'toxic' job? Dr. David DeLong's new book, Graduate to a Great Job: Make Your College Degree Pay Off in Today's Market, has the answers.

Graduation season is here and in the next few weeks more than 1.5 million college students will cross the stage to get their diplomas. Unfortunately, a high percentage of these graduates are walking into the world without a job. If the trend of recent years continues, a majority of new college grads will find themselves working in jobs that don't require a college degree.

The class of 2013 faces an uneven job market at best. While demand is strong for graduates in engineering, computer science and accounting, the job prospects for those in humanities and the social sciences remain bleak.

"The key to success in today's job market is knowing what works and what doesn't," says Dr. David DeLong, author of the newly published Graduate to a Great Job: Make Your College Degree Pay Off in Today's Market (Longstone Press). "The fact is about half of new graduates do launch their careers successfully. The question is what are they doing differently. "

Graduate to a Great Job is based on more than 30 case studies of recent college grads from Maine to California who have successfully landed good jobs. This is the most in-depth study of successful job search tactics since the Great Recession. Among DeLong's findings:

--Lack of career focus is a major cause of unemployment today. About 50 percent of new grads without jobs have no idea what they want to do for work.

--Many students have totally unrealistic expectations about how the job market is stacked against them and what success looks like. Only about 10 percent of the "successful" grads studied landed what they consider "great" jobs. Another 10 percent ended up in truly toxic jobs and had to get out.

--Post-grad internships for little or no pay are now a standard part of career paths into many fields. Knowing how to maximize the value of internships is more important than getting them.

--A generation that grew up with cell phones and laptops is being kept unemployed largely because of their ignorance of job search technologies. Failure to understand Applicant Tracking Systems is a particular killer.

--Parents are anxious watching their children flounder through frustrating job searches. But there are five ways they can help their Gen-Y children.

David DeLong is an expert on the skills needed to succeed in the changing workplace. A nationally recognized speaker on solutions for closing the STEM* skills gap, DeLong is author of Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce (Oxford University Press). He is also co-author of The Executive Guide to High-Impact Talent Management (McGraw-Hill). A former career planning researcher at Harvard Business School, the author is president of David DeLong & Associates, as well as a research fellow at the MIT AgeLab.

DeLong's work has been widely quoted in the major business press and he has been interviewed on NPR's "Morning Edition" and "Talk of the Nation."

Early reviews of Graduate to a Great Job have said:

"Should be required reading for every college student."—Megan Houlker, Director, Undergraduate Career Development, Babson College

"...a great resource for graduates and their parents. Read it if you want a competitive edge."—Michael A. Smyer, Provost, Bucknell University

"Learn from the experiences of 30 recent grads, and you, too, can succeed in one of the toughest job markets in recent history."—Jim Case, Director, Career Center, Cal State Fullerton

Graduate to a Great Job is available from major online booksellers and selected book stores. It is distributed by Pathway Book Service.

*STEM refers to jobs requiring science, technology, engineering and math skills.