Placement Office Is Only for Career Seekers, Not Temporary Job Hunters

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

Each year students come to the Alumni Placement Office whose ultimate career objective is in professional work, but who for one reason or another want a "job for a year or two." Their reasons vary, but a few are common enough to warrant discussion.

First is the need to save money for further study. Students in this situation are not trying to establish themselves in business; they do not want "career" jobs involving years of apprenticeship. They want work which they can take today and leave tomorrow and which will pay as handsomely as possible, they should not look for "opportunities in business," but for plain jobs not labeled "for college men only."

The employers who come to the Placement Office are looking for graduates to train for responsible positions two, five, ten years hence, not men to fill specific jobs where they will be immediately productive. Here, then, is not a chance for the man who wants temporary work.

Should he accept employment in a training course of this sort, concealing his actual purpose of remaining only for a short time, he would not only render an injustice to his employer but might open a breach between the Placement Office and the employer which would jeopardize the opportunities for other students.

One of the most obvious aspects of saving money is minimizing living expenses while commanding as high a wage as possible. The cheapest place to live is usually at home, even if you pay for board and laundry as much as five or six dollars a week. Away from home, twelve to fifteen dollars will be necessary.

Therefore, stay home if you can. Get a job as an ordinary shop-hand, as a store clerk, or sell something if you think you can. Tutoring or serving as companion is remunerative work when it is available. So much for the money saver.

Most of the foregoing applies to the man who for any reason wants to work for a couple of years before returning to college or graduate school, but two other conditions may be touched upon.

Some students with a specific professional objective want contact with the work-a-day world before submerging themselves in teaching, research, or other academic pursuits. Such men must be governed by some of the above precepts, but they should also try to find jobs regardless of earnings which will be stimulating and contributory to their ultimate purpose.

An uninspiring job just for the sake of discipline and something to do may have merit, but life is too short to spend much time postponing the pursuit of a well conceived career.

Last of all is the man who wants a job to determine his vocational objective. He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life so he seeks a job which he thinks will tell him. Poor fellow, he'll never know; he's lazy.

For him it is too much trouble to investigate beforehand the most important problem of his life; he must learn behindhand by experience. This for Methuselah, but hardly for mortals. In any job this man will get but a worm's eye view of one business, and his hours will be too full even to give much thought to alternative occupations.

No man takes a job without some reservations, some risk, but to think that any job at all will answer the perplexing question of what life work is best for him is absurd; he might better spend the time reading novels. This is not on idle suggestion, and if he were to sandwich in a few biographies he might learn much more about the world of work, enough at least to stimulate him to further investigation.