Although the number of seniors seeking career advice did not dramatically rise this year, students are seeking career center advice earlier, a Career Center administrator said last week.
Jeff Dagley, communications coordinator at the Career Center, said freshmen are now seeking career advice, looking to land internships in hopes of gaining a job post college.
“We are seeing more freshmen and more students interested in acquiring internships earlier,” Dagley said, adding that resources like resume critiques and on-campus recruiting have been popular this year.
“More students are contacting us in different ways, for example online, either via email, Facebook, even Twitter,” Dagley said, adding that an increasing number of students are looking for advice on ways to negotiate a salary.
According to the center’s data on graduates from the class of 2009, 62 percent are employed and 11 percent are actively trying to find work. The remaining 27 percent of respondents are pursuing further education or are not searching for employment.
No statistics will be available for how many 2010 seniors have secured jobs until next spring.
Senior Ashley Vij has already begun working part-time for USAID, where she is working with the Family Planning team to develop new methods of HIV/AID prevention. She will begin full-time after Commencement.
Vij, who did not use Career Center resources, said her public health professors and past internships helped her secure the position.
Senior Marc Friend, a legislative assistant at the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, said he secured his position after sending his resume to former employers, going on several informational interviews and having some good luck along the way.
He said he found the resources available through the Career Center to be very helpful.
“In September, I went in and sat down in a panic and they helped me get my resume together and find out about career fairs and other networking places,” Friend said.
Friend believes the economic downturn has affected how seniors perceive the job market and what jobs they are willing to accept.
“I applied for jobs that may not be my ideal job, but in this economy a job is a job and getting your foot in the door is half the battle. I feel very lucky to have a job right now as most of my friends are still searching,” Friend said.
Kevin DiGrazia said starting his job search early helped secure his position at PricewaterhouseCoopers, a professional services firm. He was also offered a position with the Environmental Protection Agency, where he worked for two years.
DiGrazia said he understands that some of his peers have not been so lucky.
“Other friends of mine have been applying to tons of jobs but have not heard anything back yet,” he said.
The Business School Career Center, a different entity than the one open to the rest of University students, is helpful, senior Ben Pollock said. He used their resume reviewing services and attended their cover letter workshops.
Hoping to break into television development, Pollack spent his spring break in Los Angeles doing informational interviews. Since then, he’s had several phone interviews a week, but has yet to secure a position.
“I definitely think I felt more pressure to lock something down, however, knowing the nature of the entertainment industry, I was prepared for the fact that it would be a little tougher to lock down anything before graduation,” he said.
Although the economy didn’t affect when he started looking for jobs, Pollack said it changed the scope of his search, saying, “I am definitely looking at a wider variety of places and taking any opportunity that comes up.”
