As the Economy Takes a Fall, Career Diversity is On the Rise

When Frances I. Martel ’09 visited the Office of Career Services her freshman year hoping to intern for MSNBC, she recalls receiving an unexpected reply: “Doesn’t consulting sound good, also?”

A common complaint among students like Martel is that OCS can seem like a restaurant with a chef who is hard of hearing: no matter what you order, you get the same dish.

According to Robin E. Mount, interim director of OCS, there is some truth behind the perception that her office primarily caters to consulting and finance. “I think that is an honest conclusion because when [finance] companies come to campus, they make a lot of noise,” says Mount. “That’s why we felt that we had to turn up the volume on these other options.”

Having attended an OCS panel, Alice Chi ’09 remarks that the office tends to focus disproportionately on consulting and what she terms “high-end jobs.”

Now that a slowing economy has burst the hiring bubble in financial services, OCS is making a greater effort to help students find careers in other areas. They’ve organized 15 “cluster areas,” ranging from human rights to sports management.

Last semester, Martel spoke about her summer internship at Telemundo on an OCS panel for careers in media and entertainment. “It was sort of like the OCS was giving us blessing. They were saying it’s okay to be in the media,” she says.

Though skeptical about the short-term benefits of the recent changes, Martel was optimistic about the office’s usefulness in the future.

“For my class and maybe the juniors, nothing will change because [the office’s] reputation is already instilled,” she says. “But for the freshmen whose first impression of OCS is a media panel or something more out-there, they would feel more comfortable.”

It looks like OCS is starting to offer more variety on the menu.