Job market still has room for Elis
While the economic crisis has made finding post-graduation jobs more difficult for seniors across the country, Yale students are faring better than many of their peers.
The number of job offers accepted by Yale students so far this year — according to a survey answered by one-third of employers who recruit on campus — is 10 percent lower than last year’s total, Undergraduate Career Services Director Phil Jones said. But nationally, the number of offers extended is projected to be 22 percent lower than in previous years, said Emanuel Contomanolis, president of the National...
Graduates should do fine in this environment. But keep in mind what they said about the internet. You will very rarely find a job through that. Work your networks instead.
To Anonymous, Consulting is fun and challenging if you like variety and policy issues, and you have the potential to impact organizations that really need help. But steer towards the public sector work. Consultants are not always "overpaid."
Ten percent reduction in OCIP job offers my arse. Ever heard of survivorship bias? More like 50-70%. If you're a junior right now, time to start panicking and figuring out plans B, C, and D, cause chances are, A isn't going to work. For instance, if you're thinking of doing consulting for a few years and then grad school, get the grad school apps in right away even as you prepare to apply for consulting jobs.
Seriously, on-campus recruiting is a subset of a subset of jobs. Completely irrelevant to the question of all jobs.
There is an enormous bias in relying on UCS’s data to gauge the job situation for this year’s seniors: as Yale figures out how it is going to meet cost cutting metrics, naturally career services’ staff is running scared that *their own* positions might be at risk; consequently, this may show up through numbers that have an added dose of optimism they would not have had in any other year.
A meaningful complement to this article would be a survey of Yale students (the YDN certainly circulates a good number of surveys already) asking seniors whether they have received/accepted any job offers as well as what their sentiment is regarding how responsive UCS is being in light of the current climate. It’s unfortunate that there is no baseline of recruiting sentiment among prior years’ senior classes since it would also be relevant to see if the kinds of positions being considered/accepted by seniors this year are the same ones they would have considered before (thus, even if it looks like students are being employed, if they are receiving positions normally considered less competitive, the seriousness of the situation is greater than a simple employment percentage.)
UCS should not – and, indeed, cannot – be blamed for the current prospects [or lack thereof] available to the Class of 2009 and, possibly, to the Class of 2010 as well … however, it seems that UCS is painting a dangerously calm picture for soon-to-be graduates for the sake of ensuring the UCS team is unaffected by the ongoing cycle. UCS should be bluntly honest in advising Yale seniors that they may want to consider their long-term objectives in the context of short-term realities when deciding which of their no doubt many ambitions makes sense as a next step (i.e., attending graduate school now rather than later might be wise).
i wish Yalies and UCS would stop conceiving as the job market as the i-banking and consulting job market. for example, i don't have hard numbers, but i found that most of the employers recruiting at this fall's job fair were consulting firms. i get the same impression from OCIP.
there's so much more that a talented ivy league graduate can do with his/her life. do you really want to spend the next few years as an excel monkey at an i-bank? or as an overpaid, under-informed, management-ese fluent leech from a consulting firm? bleh.