OCS Career Week gets creative

Career Week is not just about finding that first job anymore.

Instead the week-long series of events, run by the Office of Career Services, helps students answer more instrospective, career-related questions—summed up by the title of one of Tuesday’s talks: “What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up?”

That’s all part of renovating the image of the OCS as a place that doesn’t just help student find recruiters, but instead helps students find themselves.

This week pays homage to that philosophy, featuring talks like “Careers for People Who Like to Make Things Happen” and “Careers for People Who Want to Make the World a Better Place.”

“Last year, it was a much smaller program,” says Bill Wright-Swadel, director of the Office of Career Services. “The program tended to be a lot more focused on business than this year.”

That pragmatic business focus was a boon to Jonathan Murstein, a Kirkland House senior and economics concentrator.

“I knew I was determined to pursue a career in finance, so OCS did nothing to sway me from that,” Murstein says. But, “as far as encouraging me toward that, not really. They were not there for directional purposes, in terms of future desires, they were more for logistical purposes. They helped me with a lot of stuff, like with the physical application process.”

If the OCS found success helping sutdents ship off applications to the financial world, why the big change in strategy this year?

“This is one big, splashy way of saying, ‘We’re here, we’re trying to listen,’” Wright-Swadel says. “There’s a great mythology that the career center’s only mission is in investment banking, medicine, and law.”

Hence Monday’s “Careers for Food Lovers” four-course lunch at the Faculty Club, featuring The Boston Globe’s food columnist. Career Week now emphasizes thinking creatively about skills (“Careers for People Who Have a Way With Words”), rather than pushing careers in a specific way.

“It seems, by the buzz, that we have hit the mark,” Wright-Swadel says.

At least that’s the case for Murstein, who will hit the Gordon Track and Tennis Center on Friday for some heavy-duty networking as part of what he calls “the intense recruiting process”—the culminating Career Fair, an integral part of Harvard’s culture.

“I will definitely not miss the career fair. It’s really informative and helpful,” Murstein said, who walked into last year’s career fair just with the notion that he wanted to go into finance.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into,” he says. Now, he does.