Scene and Heard: Harvard Kids Seek Jobs, Nalgenes

FM went to the OCS Career Forum on Friday afternoon hoping to come back with a job. Instead, it came back with a free Rubik’s Cube, two containers of breathmints, three Nalgene bottles, a mousepad, a whiteboard, and a paper airplane kit.

Not bad. And all it took was smiling and schmoozing with every suit in the in the Gordon Indoor Track and Tennis Center.

First tip: MDT Advisors was giving away golf balls, a free goody that perhaps appealed only to a certain set. The bigger (and perhaps more universal) prize? Laptop bags, doled out by QVT Financial LP. With all that booty, it was easy to pass up dartboards and packs of cards that littered a few other tables.

So why exactly are Harvard students worth all that and a bag of Chocolate Chex Mix? (Potential interviewees could pick up three bags from the General Mills table before the reps started giving dirty looks.) Said Jessamyn C. Fleming, a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, “I guess there’s the obvious. There are smart kids at Harvard.”

Perhaps, but at least they’re smart enough to milk potential employers for as many freebies as they can get.

Inyang M. Akpan ’07 said that he visited the tables where he could find the best advice. “And whoever had the best stuff,” he said. He showed off a t-shirt from Steve and Barry’s University Sportsware. “I didn’t have to stop, talk, or feign interest. They just handed it to me.”

And who said Harvard students weren’t enterprising?