An Open Door, But for Whom?

Mia Riverton ’99—a performer since age four—knew she wanted to go into the entertainment industry when she graduated from Harvard.

But Riverton says she found few resources related to arts and entertainment careers when she went to Harvard’s Office of Career Services (OCS) for help.

The OCS counselor Riverton saw was “extremely

encouraging, but she told me flat out that they didn’t have the resources,” Riverton says.

To find a way into the industry, Riverton had to turn elsewhere, starting an e-mail list of people she knew who were interested in the field. As the list expanded, Riverton collaborated with Stacy Cohen ’89 and Adam Fratto ’90 to start Harvardwood, a non-profit organization that connects current Harvard students with alums in arts and entertainment.

Sparked by the dead end at OCS, Harvardwood today runs an intersession program and a summer internship program which together attract 100 to 120 Harvard students per year.

And Riverton says that OCS—partly through working with Harvardwood—has developed better resources for students interested in those careers than it had when she was a student.

But with nearly 2,000 students participating in the on-campus recruiting program for full-time or summer jobs this academic year, students and career counselors say that other employment options are overshadowed by the visibility, organization, and apparent ease of the recruiting process.

For fields outside of finance and consulting, which traditionally dominate the recruiting process, students say they have had a harder time getting career assistance at OCS. And OCS counselors say it is harder to provide students with direct paths to such careers—a source of frustration for students already busy with schoolwork and extracurriculars and perhaps overwhelmed by or undecided about the variety of career options available.

“I guess people would just expect that at Harvard the career services would be this magical place where you could find any job, because before you come to Harvard you hear that once you have the Harvard name on your resume, you won’t have any trouble finding a job,” says Kimberly M. Cheng ’06, who has participated in the Harvardwood program.

Both students and OCS counselors see a disconnect between student expectations and the realities of the job search.

Though students and OCS counselors try to collaborate to connect students with their desired careers, the counselors say their mission is not to place students in specific jobs, but to teach them lasting career-finding skills. With this goal in mind, they say that OCS cannot replace student initiative in the process.

THE CULTURE OF RECRUITING

This year, 1,912 students—almost a third of the student body—submitted applications to 433 organizations recruiting for either summer or full-time positions. The interview data excludes McKinsey and Teach for America, programs for which OCS does not have records, according to OCS Director William Wright-Swadel.

The companies know in September that they want to hire a particular number of analysts that year, and that they can reach that number by recruiting at Harvard and a certain number of other schools, so they participate in the on-campus recruiting program, Wright-Swadel says.

“The investment banks and consulting firms spend an enormous amount of money and have a process that is really kind of conducive to the academic schedule,” he says.

Applying for jobs in investment banking and consulting is often an attractive short-term post-graduation option for a student population where 70 to 75 percent of students say they hope to go to graduate or professional school, according to senior survey data.

“I think the world of work is such now that no one is looking for a career [the] first time out of school,” says Susan Vacca, assistant director of OCS. “For many students, they’re looking for something to try for a year or two.”

Some companies’ promotion schedules are disrupted when new employees only stay for a few years, Wright-Swadel says. But he adds that if enough Harvard students who are recruited by a company out of college return after receiving a graduate or professional degree, the company will become comfortable enough with that pattern to continue recruiting from Harvard.

In addition to its compatibility with students’ schedules and eventual educational goals, the recruiting process itself is very accessible to students—registering for the on-campus recruiting program involves submitting a resume and scheduling interviews entirely online.

OCS maintains a four-person office expressly for recruiting in addition to its 18 counselors.

In that office, two people focus on coordinating the on-campus recruiters while the other two handle all of OCS’s technology. OCS also has one full-time and one part-time business counselor.

And the long-standing connections between OCS and recruiters make it easier for students to find and match themselves up with potential employers in industries like finance and consulting.

“I was very satisfied with the extent of the support and the quality of services [OCS] provides,” says Timur Akazhanov ’05, an economics concentrator who participated in the on-campus recruiting program.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

The scale of the recruiting process, OCS counselors say, may lead students to perceive it as the road most traveled to careers.

“On-campus recruiting is very visible,” says Gail Gilmore, the OCS counselor for careers in the arts and public service. “Not only seniors see that, but incoming freshmen see that.”

Wright-Swadel says that this visibility perpetuates the idea of recruiting as a trendy career option.

“The kind of buzz that goes on around an on-campus recruiting program creates a perspective that that’s the dominant thing that’s going on in an environment like this,” he says.

Akazhanov says that he although he planned to go to graduate school in economics, he changed his mind during his junior year after seeing his friends go through the recruitment process for summer jobs in consulting.

Though Akazhanov was unsuccessful in the summer recruitment process as a junior, he says he did enough research to feel well-prepared to go through recruiting this year, and he succeeded in finding a job.

Gilmore says part of the appeal of jobs that hire through a recruiting process is that the system offers students an accessible, already-established framework to follow in order to achieve employment­—a framework that is largely absent in other fields.

“It is a very clear path to a goal that in some ways allows people to skirt some of the more proactive” elements of the career search process, Gilmore says.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BANK

A 2003 survey by Sarah Deighton, who interned with OCS while a student at the Graduate School of Education, showed that the number one career choice among students in all years—who were asked to “indicate the top three fields you are most interested in working for after you graduate”—was working with nonprofit organizations.

Compared to the 13.3 percent of students surveyed who chose nonprofit work, 11.8 percent said they were interested in consulting and 6.3 percent in investment banking.

Gilmore says the number of students who actually inquire at OCS about nonprofit careers does not match the high demand suggested by the survey data.

But she suggests that a number of students may take jobs in business initially to develop skills for nonprofit work later in their careers. She also suggests that students may see work with nonprofit organizations as less fit for someone with a Harvard degree.

“The expectations surrounding a Harvard degree weigh heavily,” Gilmore says. “They have a very strong sense...that they must do something prestigious and high-paying in order for their work to be worthy of their degree.”

But 9 percent of students in the senior class apply to the Teach for America program, according to Orin Gutlerner, the director of the Undergraduate Teacher Education Program.

And resources exist for students who seek jobs in fields other than business, like the Center for Public Interest Careers. Students who are interested in such careers, however, say they have not found adequate career resources at OCS.

Cheng, who interned with an independent film company through Harvardwood’s summer program after her freshman year and will intern with another company through Harvardwood this summer, says that OCS counselors directed her to an alumni database and to a Monstertrak listing of careers when she went to OCS during her freshman year.

“It was useful once,” Cheng says. “But as far as actual advice given to me during those appointments, it was not really helpful.”

‘MAGIC WANDS’ NOT INCLUDED

OCS counselors note that some student frustration with OCS may stem from the fact that students expect OCS to show them the direct path to a given career.

“If we could wave the magic wand like that, it would make our lives easier, too. [But] it would sort of negate the whole process of helping students navigate the career process,” Gilmore says.

Counselors say that some students may feel too busy or overwhelmed to do their own career research.

“Everything that [students have] done so far, the path to the goal is clear. Most everything else requires self-assessment....It’s unsettling and time-consuming,” Gilmore says.

Vacca adds that career decisions can be just one more stressful project for students.

”I think Harvard students and anyone who’s in a transition phase can feel overwhelmed,” she says. “They’re here for four years to be students....Making career decisions along the way can sort of just be the piece that topples the whole tower.”

The counselors also say that many employers are simply uninterested in a direct on-campus recruiting process like the one that exists for finance and consulting firms.

“Would we love to have the Wall Street Journal come and recruit 15 people each summer in a kind of big array like an on-campus recruiting program? Absolutely,” says Wright-Swadel. “Would they spend the kind of money that it takes to do it that way? No.”

Vacca says perhaps OCS could do a better job of making it clear to students that OCS is a guide rather than a career placement service.

“I think many students would like to see us be more of a placement office,” Vacca says. “That’s the place where we could do a better job in setting expectations,” she adds.

BRIDGING THE GAP?

With the help of students, departments, and programs like Harvardwood, OCS is trying to reach out to students, connect them to more companies, and inform them about careers with less obvious entry points than recruiting.

Alexa L. M. Von Tobel ’06, editor-in-chief of Career Magazine, says the goal of the publication is to introduce students to industries—including sports and advertising—that do not recruit on campus.

“I thought that it was really important for Harvard students to know what kind of options are out there,” Von Tobel says.

Career Magazine is passed out in dining halls and distributed at OCS.

OCS counselors also speak to students in their departments when invited, as at a discussion for English concentrators organized by department administrator Inga Peterson.

“The students, I think, felt comfortable coming into the department...so I thought they might be more likely to ask the kind of questions they need to ask with other students around who know them,” Peterson says.

OCS has worked to expand its relationships with companies at which students might work or intern. For example, counselors recently helped Ralph Lauren develop an internship program, according to Nancy Saunders, OCS counselor for business and summer opportunities.

But despite outreach efforts, it is still sometimes difficult for career counselors and students to be on the same wavelength.

Lance Choy, the director of the Career Development Center at Stanford University, says that employers want students to take initiative in the job search.

“At Stanford there are a number of students who struggle with this picture of reality,” Choy writes in an e-mail. “They have worked so hard to get into such a prestigious institution, and they concluded that they have it made. Employers will be seeking them out.”

Choy says that this is not the case, and as a result, students become frustrated.

Ultimately, students and counselors say it behooves students to complete career searches themselves.

“From my perspective as a career counselor, you do the student a much greater service to teach them how to go about the process...helping them to find a career that’s right for them,” Gilmore says. “Whereas when you place them in a job, you don’t enable them to go through that process.”

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.