Diversity Recruiting

Although the Wall Street crisis might have job-seekers in a panic, Harvard’s Office of Career Services (OCS) is countering the downturn with a new philosophy and a new interim director, Robin Mount. Many graduating seniors are nervous about the weak economy this year, as there is sure to be a reduction of job openings in the popular finance sector (last year, 20 percent of graduates went on to work in financial services or management consulting ). Fortunately, well before the economy’s recent plunge, OCS had already begun work on this year’s initiative: a push entitled “turning up the volume on diverse career options” that is intended to make students aware of job offerings in areas other than investment banking and consulting. OCS has restructured and expanded its offerings into 16 new industry “clusters,” such as “Architecture, Urban Development, and Green Construction” and “Creative Arts” in order to make the job market more navigable for students.

This is promising. OCS’s primary job—as they state on their Web site—is to help students “explore and make effective career choices.” OCS does this most effectively when it builds bridges between the students who seek employment and employers from all industries. In the past, many students interested in areas other than finance and consulting have found that, at OCS, such bridges simply do not exist.

Despite the OCS’s legitimate efforts to expand their offerings this year, they remain overwhelmingly and unfortunately centered around finance and consulting. The influx of Harvard grads to the finance and consulting sectors is not the fault of OCS alone, but the way that OCS presents these sectors certainly contributes to their popularity. Admittedly, some students are attracted to banking and consulting jobs for reasons outside of OCS’s control. These jobs have “prestige,” the promise of a large salary, and some students are genuinely interested in the field. Unquestionably, however, their popularity is also related to the logistical ease of applying and to job security. For seniors who aren’t a hundred percent sure what they want to do with their lives (read: nearly all of them), the process of On-Campus Recruiting (or “eRecruiting”) is an easy answer.

OCS will claim that On-Campus Recruiting is not “easy,” and indeed, many students who go through the application process do not land finance or consulting jobs. However, the process is simpler than the average job search because of the fact that OCS essentially walks students through its steps. No comparable process exists for any other industry. This year’s “Guide to Jobs and Recruiting”—a publication that is co-published by the OCS and by Tahe Crimson—lists only seven “Industries,” four of which are related to finance or consulting. The final three categories also involve business. At OCS’s well attended “Jobs and Recruiting” meeting this week, a handout titled “Educational Programs with Employers” was divided into three sections: Investment Banking, Consulting, and Hedge Funds. Forty minutes of the meeting was devoted to a general introduction that focused largely on attitude: Be proactive. Be organized. Be polite. Twenty minutes of the meeting focused on how to navigate the On-Campus Recruiting Web site.

OCS is not insincere in its claim to helping students find jobs in a wide variety of industries. Rather, its efforts in this area simply fall short. First, OCS lacks resources. The University should allocate more funds to OCS so that it can expand its staff, include more specialists in more sectors of the job market, give students more one-on-one attention, and have a larger working budget.

With this increased budget, OCS should encourage more employers outside of the finance and consulting sectors to host on-campus recruitment meetings. Hosting industry-wide conferences—in conjunction with recruitment meetings—might provide companies with a financial incentive to come to Harvard. Second, while students ultimately must find their own jobs, OCS can and should “advertise” Harvard students to the job market. One way they could do this would be to create an online tool similar to the one used by On-Campus Recruiting that puts student resumes out in the ether and allows students to rank their levels of interest in different jobs. Web sites like the Common Application, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), and Harvard’s own Student Employment Office (SEO) digitally streamline the application processes to college, law schools, and term time jobs, respectively. OCS should create a Harvard-specific online application process that matches employers—even those who employ “just in time” rather than well in advance—with uniquely skilled candidates. While such a system might take time to get up and running or to gain popularity, employers and students seeking employment would ultimately benefit.

Not only can Harvard graduates not always rely on jobs in finance (as this year shows), but they also should not feel pigeonholed into applying for such jobs for lack of clear guidance in other fields. OCS should be congratulated for “turning up the volume on diverse career options.” Until Harvard’s options are buzzing with talk of these options, however, the volume clearly isn’t high enough.