Mount Assumes Helm of OCS

As turmoil sweeps the financial sector, rattling the potential employers of a traditionally large chunk of the senior class, interim leadership will stand at the helm of Harvard’s Office of Career Services, Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds announced last Thursday.

Robin Mount, who has served at OCS for the past five years specializing in career planning for graduate programs in the arts and sciences, took over the office’s top position after 13-year veteran director William Wright-Swadel left Harvard for a similar job at Duke early in the summer.

Though the majority of Mount’s interaction has been with graduate students, she has also advised undergrads interested in pursuing graduate school.

About 80 percent of her graduate student advisees tend to go on to jobs in academia, she said.

As the economy continues its downturn, with the Dow falling more than 500 points yesterday, OCS is attempting to hedge students’ opportunities with a new push called “turning up the volume on diverse career options,” directed at expanding offerings in areas outside of finance, Mount said.

The drive to increase career options was also a priority of Wright-Swadel, whose popularity among students was high throughout his tenure.

As part of the initiative, OCS will be offering 55 programs this fall in areas such as entertainment and sports management, energy issues, fashion, human rights, and global health, in addition to finance and consulting.

“They’re not all new, some are repackaged,” Mount said. “Our nuts and bolts—our pre-med and fellowship programs—are the same, but the focus on the different cluster areas are what’s new.”

The office will also be holding its first-ever “Senior Month,” starting yesterday and lasting until Oct. 15, with special events and drop-in hours targeted at helping seniors learn how to search for jobs.

Despite the shift in emphasis, the normally scheduled career fair will not shrink this year, Mount said, as recruiters’ attendance was confirmed in May.

She added, however, that students interested in finance may have to begin looking beyond traditional investment banks to smaller groups like hedge funds and venture capital firms or the finance arms of companies like Disney.

Mount said that tough times are ahead, not only for graduating seniors, but also for those recent alums who risk losing the jobs they secured in a healthier economy a few years ago.

“I think that this can be really great because it builds certain skills,” she said, explaining that smooth economic conditions sometimes produce students who don’t know how to go about a job search.

Hammonds wrote in an e-mail that no search for a permanent director for the office has begun yet.

Mount said she was under the impression that a national search for a director would occur within the academic year, as she was asked to serve through only that period.

—Staff writer Aditi Balakrishna can be reached at balakris@fas.harvard.edu.