Alumni Placement Office Useful for Men Seeking Science, Industry Jobs

The following article is the second in a series of seven dealing with the University's alumni Placement Office which will appear during January.

To what extent in the Alumni Placement office established to secure employment for graduate students? Today, as when it was organized, the Placement office will try to aid any person ever enrolled in any Department or School of the University to obtain employment in business and industry. This includes undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni seeking permanent placement.

Employment in business and industry only is the qualifying distinction of the Office's activity. By definition, therefore, graduate students in law, medicine, education, etc. will find little to gain by registering for placement. These students, on the other hand, who are graduates in business, science, or engineering are encouraged to use the Alumni Placement Office as one among other sources of employment.

The Graduate School of Business Administration provides for its second-year men its own placement offices which is the principal souse of employment for its graduates. The Alumni Placement Office is neither a substitute for the Business School placement office, nor a competing University department; it is but a supplementary source of business opportunities and normally has, in fact, but few job orders for Business School graduates as such.

Graduate students in engineering, although their school does not posses a placement office, will find many opportunities to meet employers through the Office of the Dean and through their professors. Here also the Alumni Placement Office provides a further chance for business openings in industrial operation and research.

Actually a large proportion of the job orders received by the Alumni Placement Office specify engineering training. For these graduates the Placement Office may prove especially promising for employment.

Chemistry and Physics students will find companies sending representatives direct to their respective Departments, while other contacts will be available through their professors individually. At the same times, the Alumni Placement Office each year bears of many opportunities for men who wish to apply their scientific training to industrial work.

The demand for graduate chemists has been particularly large in recent years, and all such graduates are urged to register early in their course with the Placement Office in addition to establishing contacts through professors of the Chemistry Division.

Law students frequently inquire at the Placement Office about openings in business for men with legal training. It is true that law and business have much in common and lawyers are often employed by business and industrial companies.

But, few lawyers who have not practised law are able to make business connections simply by virtue of their course in law school; legal training per se has little commercial value to the business employer.

For the reason any graduate in the Law School who seeks a business or industrial position through the Alumni Placement Office must do so rather more in spite of his legal preparation than because of it.

These students in the Law School, however, who were undergraduates in science and engineering, or who may have studied accounting will find some bind with one of these other fields and the Placement Office can offer them occasional encouragement as applicants for legal work in patents, taxation, accounting, banking, etc.

The Alumni Placement Office may then prove a fruitful sources of employment for graduate students seeking business and industrial opportunities. As a University department, however, it is not the sole means of assistance to these men; each school and academic department makes some provision for the placement of its own graduates.

The Alumni Placement Office is supplementary to these other facilities, and is a focal point for business placement of graduates especially from Harvard College and the Graduate School of Arts and Science.