I want to share a publicly available resource for anyone that has a student in business. The Indiana U Kelley school of business undergraduate career services does a podcast every Wednesday. They are all up on Spotify.
I have found it to be very insightful about recruiting timeline. For example, early this year, they advised that the big four accounting firms were pushing their accounting junior internship hiring to fall of sophomore year (in other words, hiring a year early to lock up talent, the way some finance firms do). They also explained that while finance and accounting tend to recruit in the fall, marketing does more recruiting in the spring.
The career counselors on there were also very upfront at the beginning of the year about reduced demand in management consulting and encouraging students to have a back up plan, heading into fall recruiting.
I have a freshman finance major. We’ve already been talking about the recruiting push he will need to go through next fall. It’s still crazy to me that these kids need to do full on job search with one year of college under their belt, but it is what it is. My daughter is a junior in CS. She went through recruiting beginning of her sophomore year to lockdown a consulting internship for this coming (junior) summer. We talk all the time about how crazy it is that if she does well and gets a return offer, the only resume she will have ever submitted had only freshman grades on it. I think back to my freshman year in college … I would not have gotten a job with my freshman grades, but, that’s what law school was for.
That’s what my S has seen in his economic consulting firm. They only “require” 3 days a week in the office, but over the last year it’s become clear that if you only do the minimum in office time then promotions and opportunities will come much more slowly. The junior employees are starting to get it.
Whether it’s completely obvious to those interviewing for jobs is a bit less clear, but it certainly seems to help in getting hired if you express a strong desire to live in the city where the office is located rather than having closer ties elsewhere.
I agree that the major may have less impact on getting consulting jobs than the school or connections. My S had a self-designed major combining econ, environmental science/sustainability etc. without very many hard skills, but his GPA, ACT score and perhaps his college may have helped in getting an interview. He decided not to ask for a referral from an alum though, so no connections there. For future parents reading this, I was very surprised how early kids need to start preparing for consulting recruiting (summer after sophomore year) and some of the IB kids started even earlier.
Here’s another article - from one UVMs kid’s perspective - but further down there’s a lot more meat - and lots of talk about co ops - i.e. Northeastern and Drexel.
Many other recent hires within their one or two year probationary period are likely to be terminated soon. This will increase competition for private sector jobs.
Many other federal government employees will enter the job market due to full work week return-to-office mandate.
The current President is anti employment at the largest employer in America and brags about it. So that itself appears contradictory to growing employment.
He has frozen IRS employment. My friend at the IRS told me they are looking to cut salaries and pensions - which I don’t think they can do. People are going to retire but not be replaced. That is the result. The 80k slots were not all incremental but substitutional too.
So who will collect taxes ?
So in many ways, when we hear about more jobs, they won’t come via the nation’s largest employer.
This quote is pretty damning of higher education, although one individual thought that part of it was due to hiring organizations not willing to pay the amount that would get a prepared graduate:
Around 58% of hiring managers said recent college graduates are unprepared for the workforce, according to a December survey from Intelligent, an online magazine focused on higher education.
The UVM grad said this, but if she already had two internships while at UVM, then I’m unsure why she thinks having mandatory internships is part of the answer. Perhaps she means requiring career prep courses?
she felt her university had some “missing pieces” to fully prepare her for the job market.
“I’ve come across a lot of interviews where they’ll ask me questions that I just don’t have an answer for because I don’t have enough experience*,”* she said.
She feels she would have benefited from more structured support, such as mandatory internships, career prep courses and mentorship programs.
In discussing the WSJ rankings and the prioritization of career outcomes over prestige (bolding added):
Deming explained that these rankings reflect the market’s response to demands for colleges to focus more on career readiness and employment outcomes.
“Does it mean that people will go to Claremont McKenna or Northeastern over Harvard? Maybe not today, but maybe someday,” he said. “What it does is spotlight schools that are excellent in ways that are not traditionally captured by rankings, and that’s a good thing because students need to be informed.”
Although I disagree with this article’s description of the WSJ rankings’ focus on outcomes (it was largely based on incomes, and people can be very successful even if they elect professions that are not monetarily lucrative), I do think that there are ways that many schools are really doing excellent things for their students and that those things often aren’t captured by rankings. I care less about a ranking than at least being able to have info shared out on those excellent things, but I suppose that’s a different topic.
Perhaps her major is underemployed or the school is ? Or perhaps she’s restrictive in her desires - location, etc.
I’m sure when I started and many others, we were unprepared too.
Understanding the nuances of a workplace have always proved difficult - and covid really created change with so much remoteness. Now companies like mine are going back and employees are pushing back. Last year the employer cared and delayed. Now employers have the power !! The tide has turned.
Hopefully this young lady will find a job via her inclusion in the article. Good publicity
I think this article highlights that some schools just have a stronger focus on “career readiness” than others. I think it depends on the school’s priorities and students need to do their research about what’s important to them. For kids who know they want to go on to grad school, the career readiness part may be less important. For those hoping to go from their bachelors to work, it pays to do a deeper dive.
For my D, that was her top criteria. It went beyond having design classes from the start. In most of her classes the exam questions came from real world/industry problems. Including classes that are typically considered intro classes that everyone takes, like o chem. She had tons of projects in nearly every class, and every project required a fully flushed out design project report (typically 100+ pages) and a presentation to not just the professor and the class, but industry representatives. They had required seminars that covered everything from work place behavior/expectations to effective networking to career growth. They focused on project management skills, innovation, creative thinking, maximizing engineering tools, etc across classes. Essentially courses provided as much real world experience as they could which translates to having lots to talk about during interviews, especially for first internships or co-ops.
I just wonder if there’s dufference for an engineering or business major vs a sociology major etc.
Even in grad school, the career stuff was there but you had to go get. Same for both my kids undergrad. Kids often are focused on school or life they forget about after school.
Definitely nice that Purdue has it embedded but is it the same in all departments ( I wonder )?
From what I know, yes, although our personal experience is with engineering.
For example I pulled this from the Purdue communication major website: From beginning to end, students have the opportunity to learn by doing in addition to gaining a greater understanding of communication theories and practices. First-semester freshmen can participate in the Welcome to Communication Learning Community. Boiler Communication is a student-run PR agency in which students at all levels can participate for multiple semesters. Several classes at the 300 and 400 level involve projects with actual clients.
And from English: In Purdue’s English department, expert faculty interact closely with students, imparting the skills to analyze literature and/or Global English, write about it (and anything!), and figure out what students want to do after they have graduated. Our English Ambassadors program means that students find community when they arrive, and our internships and career-based classes help students start thinking, at the beginning of their degrees, where they might go next.
On the way, students cultivate skills that will never go out of fashion, including:
Reading and writing skills (how to read patiently, and with empathy and insight; how to recognize patterns in texts; and how to express observations effectively)
Creative and literary thinking (metaphorical and other non-literal reasoning; connecting the dots both globally and historically; telling stories with data)
Analytical and research skills (how to take texts and ideas apart for a greater understanding of the whole; how to find, compile, and synthesize important information)
Cutting-edge presentation skills (how to read and understand images and digital texts; how to present your ideas in the most effective manner)
Some majors generally attract a more pre-professional student cohort than others (business obviously, and economics at schools without business majors), and some majors are seen by employers as having prepared graduates better for jobs that they hire for (engineering majors for companies hiring engineers).
My son got his first engineering internship offers in March his freshman year. He interviewed while home on spring break and had offers at the end of the week or early the next week.
He’s a junior now and has 4 companies that he’s actively moving through interviewing. He had nothing in the fall, despite applying and going to the career fair. He is hopeful one will work out, but if not, he can return to the place he’s been. He’s just hoping for a different experience.
He’s been applying to 2-3 a day. He’s being pretty picky about the job for the most part. He’s somewhat less picky if it’s close to home. There are new listings every day still.
Thanks. He went back to the same place last year as well. He’s been fortunate. I’m sure he skips applying some days, but it is much easier to spend 30 minutes a day and apply to 3 places than it is to try to do 20 on a weekend day. It’s a bit tedious.
My Purdue Bio major had a one-credit class in her first year that focused on career options, professional behavior, etc. I believe she’s also received similar info through the Women in Science Program over the past 3.5 years. She doesn’t share a lot about her classroom work/projects, so I don’t know how much is explicitly geared to workplace readiness.
I’m happy to say that her internship company came through with the job offer that she was hoping and waiting for. Big sigh of relief all around! After reading some dismal stuff over the past few years about outcomes for bio majors, I’m pleasantly surprised by her starting salary.
And a public service announcement- a regular job (summer, during Xmas break, during the semester) is ALSO fine. Do not play into the Darwinian fear that if your kid doesn’t land an internship their professional career is over before it even began.
I know people IRL who are in a literal panic that their freshman college student hasn’t landed “that all critical internship” for the summer. “It’s already January”.
Please- step away from the ledge. Work experience is very important. But employers do not fetishize internships and coops the way folks on CC do!
Your kid can’t find a “prestigious” CS internship and has to “settle” for a summer job working the help desk at a P&C insurance company? Tell your kid to knock the cover off that ball! Show up early, stay late, volunteer for overtime over July 4th weekend. Ask the bosses boss “what are the key priorities for the tech team for the coming year?” Be the person who everyone wants to work with because Kid can speak tech language and plain English at the same time.
Kid’s plans for an internship on the Wealth Management team at a high end financial services firm falls through? Kids college has an endowment- which means an endowment manager (outside, and paid) PLUS a board of trustees/investment committee (not paid) PLUS the CFO or similar (on the college’s payroll) all of whom have a part to play (portfolio management, risk management, compliance, regulatory and reporting) in the “wealth management” of the college. Kid, get going. This one can fall right into your lap, especially if one of your professors picks up the phone to tell the CFO “this kid runs a doomsday risk simulation with more sophistication and understanding than anyone I’ve taught in years”.
Honestly- the point is to develop useful skills, show that you can be part of a team, demonstrate work ethic/leadership/communication skills and all that jazz. There aren’t enough desks at Goldman Sachs and Google and Nvidia for every college kid in America this summer and that’s OK.
I agree! While my son had an internship, I’m sure it was because of his high school robotics experience. My daughter didn’t do that and she will just get a regular job. She’s not even sitting for anything engineering. I think that’s perfect for her. She’ll have work experience, earn money, etc. I’m hoping she comes home for spring break to try to set something up for May. I’m really not worried about her not having an internship! She’s planning on 5 years so there is plenty of time too.
following up to my own post from a few months ago…
This time we posted for a mid-level IT analyst role with 100% remote opportunity with very specific job requirements and 6+ of relevant experience on our website on a Friday afternoon and by Monday evening, our recruiter comes back with 1600+ applicants ranging from a barista who has been an “analyst” for a few months on their recent job that has nothing to do with IT, folks who graduated an year or two ago to seasoned folks with 20+ years with exact kind of skills i was looking for and everyone else in between.
We had to revise the job posting and make certain skills as mandatory along with explicit references to the experience in the industry but we still ended up getting over 2500 applications before we closed the position in a week after selecting a great candidate.
My point is, It’s not getting any better for the experienced job seekers too and they are probably getting drowned out by the shot-gunning approach of the recent grads.
It was not easy to sift through those hundreds of resumes for my recruiting team either
