The following article, written by Donald H. Moyer '27, Assistant Director of Alumni Placement, is the second of a series of articles on "The Alumni Placement of Seniors", entitled "When and how Seniors are placed in business industry".
Undergraduates frequently have the mistaken impression that the employment of Seniors in business and industry is confined to the months of May and June. It is true that many Seniors are accepted for employment during these months, but the actual search for a job begins weeks or even months before. In general the season for Senior employment is from February until May of the Senior year. Some men may be "signed up" as much as a year before they go to work, bit one to four months represents the average interval between the acceptance of an offer and reporting for work. The important thing to remember is that getting a job takes time and thought and energy, and that few Seniors have much these elements left for anything but their scholastic work by the spring of their last year in college.
For the Senior seeking an opening in business or industry these are roughly four channels of approach: (1) The industrial representative or recruiter who comes to the Placement Office. (2) The employer who asks the Placement Office to submit candidates for a job. (3) Friends and relatives who are either employers or have influence with them. (4) The employer who has not solicited applicants but who may be appealed to by an aggressive, well-planned approach. In order of their relative importance to the average Senior these sources of employment should be ranked in exactly the inverse order. The truly ambitious job-seeker will avail himself of as many of the four means as possible.
(1) During the late winter and early spring a familiar figure in college placement offices is the industrial recruiter, whose task is to select young men for apprenticeship jobs in the various departments of his company. Usually he represents the larger corporations, and may come from a city a thousand miles away. Harvard is ordinarily but one stop in his itinerary which often includes as many as twenty or more colleges. He is here for a day or so and may interview as many as twenty-five students, some of whom may receive offers of employment from the company several weeks or possibly months later.
Although the industrial recruiter is in a sense the aggressor, the Senior's role is hardly a passive one. The employer's market for apprentices is wide and large, and he comes perhaps to select only one or two men from Harvard. Opportunities from the large corporations are therefore placed on a highly competitive basis and the Senior who compete for an offer must make fully as aggressive and convincing an approach to the recruiter as he would make to any other employer. In this type of employment a Senior subjects himself to the keenest possible competition and his chances of landing a job are reduced accordingly.
(2) The Alumni Placement Office is frequently asked by local employers to submit Senior applicants for jobs. Here the competition is somewhat less, and because the interview takes place in the company offices the role of aggressor is somewhat easier to play, and is often attended with better success.
Rich Uncles Help
(3) Friends and relatives are an ever-present and generally satisfactory source of employment, but where they are business men they must be approaches as such and not on the basis solely of charitable interest. This is the most natural of all forms of employment, and properly conducted in an intelligent and efficient way may prove the most fruitful of opportunities.
(4) The well-organized job hunt among companies of the sort the applicant wants to work for and where no overture has been made by the employer still constitutes the foundation of all employment. Here is employment denuded of all personal ties and placed on a purely business basis. The applicant determines the market for his services within a fairly narrow scope and sells to that market by sustained and systematic effort until he gets his job. This channel of approach should form the back log of any Senior's campaign to establish himself in the business world.
The CRIMSON will soon publish the last of three articles dealing with the employment of Seniors which will discuss "First jobs; some general characteristics and their significance.
