Placement Office Plays Vocational Doctor to Seniors

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

Some Seniors are able to step directly into a family business or to accept employment under the auspices of friends or relatives when they graduate. Lest these men fool that because they are fortunate enough to have jobs waiting for them they are unwelcome at the Alumni Placement Office, we hasten to assure them that the facilities of this Office are as much at their command as for other students.

In this group of students there will, of course, be those who have so wisely resolved their problem of employment that it would be presumptuous to solicit their further attention. But there are those, on the other hand, who for one reason or another accept such proffered employment hastily and with little or no effort to appraise its nature or its consequences.

Sometimes they guess right, sometimes wrong; the chances are about even that the issue will be a satisfactory one, that they will stay placed and find their work congenial. It is principally to these men who are tempted to step blindly into jobs tendered by friends and relatives that the Alumni Placement Office would utter a word of caution and ex- tend what assistance it can.

When your roommate's father asks you to come to work in his business and you accept, are you making a rational choice of a career or is someone deciding this important question for you? A frequent human fallacy is to attribute to others the same reactions we ourselves experience to any given set of circumstances.

"You and I are friends, I like my job, therefore you would like it"; or, "you are my friend, you like your job, therefore I would like it." What we forget is that "you" and "I" are different persons, each with his own talents and interests, and that even although our environment is the same, the odds are no more than even that we shall each succeed at the work.

The medicine that is good for you may put me to bed, although you may be trying to render me a friendly service by offering me a cure--your cure--for my troubles. If you are wise, you will probably ask your doctor whether or not he would prescribe the remedy in question.

By implication, it would now appear that any Senior, tendered a job by some well meaning friend, should consult his doctor--his vocational doctor--to make sure that the job available to him is not poisonous--at least for him. Actually we cannot draw this parallel quite so far, for the reason that there are no vocational experts qualified to issue pills of wisdom which will decide for all patients what course they ought to steer.

Any vocational consultant today is best qualified to listen and to give information; he can hardly afford to give much advice or make any decisions for his clients. However, the old adage that two heads are better than one still holds, and the best proof against poor judgment from biased advice is to seek information from as many places as possible.

Thus let any Senior keep an open mind and use his best critical judgment in deciding the worth of the job he can have so easily as compared with available alternatives.

The Alumni Placement Office is another source of information. Whether or not the issue be placement, a senior or underclassman who can have a job for the asking when he graduates is welcome to come here to discuss the factors which should govern his decision. No effort will be made to reach any conclusions for him, nor will he be persuaded against his will even to consider other employment than that which has been offered him