ARE prospective employees more interested in challenging careers or fat pay checks? What is the expected starting salary for a business career? for a career in government? If these questions intrigue you, you may be interested in Information Gathering Service (IGS), a division of Harvard Student Agencies.

IGS, which began in 1963 as a student-run employment bureau for computer programmers and now has several separate divisions, attempts to make the skills and talents of students available, on a paid basis, to the business community.

According to John J. Merrill '66, manager of IGS and one of the three full-time non-student employees (all other employees are students), the organization is unique in offering high salaries--the minimum wage is $2 per hour--for jobs which are both interesting and educational. About 200 students are on call at any one time.

IGS is mainly involved in consumer and industrial market research. Sometimes the group merely supplies man-power for professional market research firms such as Arthur D. Little, Inc.; at other times they supervise the research themselves.

IGS often works on as many as 25 projects at one time, many of which are handled directly from their head-quarters on Mass. Ave. near Harvard Square. Their clientele is primarily industrial and business firms. IGS does no mass advertising, but relies on promotional newsletters and word of mouth. Many of the assignments gotten this way are those mundane but vital matters businesses keep secret from each other.

3000 Passengers

SOME IGS projects involve traveling by interviewers. Once 40 students spend several days riding every branch of the New York Central Railroad, interviewing approximately 3000 passengers. Another few students spent the spring in Cleveland one year, interviewing gas station owners. For the recent Career Planning Study, interviewers were sent to 35 colleges all over the United States.

IGS's Translation Service is perhaps its most distinctive division. Don Gleason '68, head of Translating, says his department is particularly appropriate for a student organization because so many students have language skills. IGS has on file student experts in as many as 35 different languages; students translate only from a learned language into their native tongue. The real problem is matching the language talent with a particular skill area, since most assignments are translations of technical articles. IGS has had great luck with the translating bureau, making use of such unusual skills as a Czechoslovakian-speaking graduate student in East European physical science with secret security clearance. A company happened to be looking for someone with just this combination of skills. A student whose parents are Hungarian but who had lived in Germany was once asked to translate a marriage license from Hungarian into German.

Goethe

The least important of IGS's divisions is the Library Research Bureau. Most of their work is done in the Business School Library, looking up statistics. From time to time an interesting assignments comes along, as when they were hired to find a certain passage from Goethe about a soldier. They found it.

IGS HAS WORKED on many projects which affect Harvard students. One study they did with Arthur D. Little was based on the question: if New Hampshire raises the taxes on cigarettes and liquor, would they lose income from student buyers? When the study revealed that higher taxes would make no significant difference in quantity of sales, the Granite State promptly upped its rates.

Very often the results of studies are not clear cut, or else are contradictory to the projected answer. One study, which tried to discover why lawyers are not used more frequently in underprivileged communities, came up with mostly ifs and buts. Another study of the power of word of mouth communication in consumer buying turned up some rather surprising results. There is definitely a relationship between the frequency with which you hear the name of a product, and your instinct to buy it. But it makes no difference whether what you hear about the product is positive or negative--you might be told that soap X ruins your skin, but the next time you shop for soap all you remember is the name X, and you buy it.

Potluck

IGS has just finished a study of career planning, sponsored by various large business firms. Despite the backing of the business world, however, Merrill claims that the study is, if anything, more important to the students involved in it, and to all those who are now or will be soon investigating business careers. The aim of the study was to discover what attracts students to particular jobs or specific companies. Such a study helps students in several ways. By pointing out what they are interested in to various businesses, they are more likely to be offered what they want. And students are also forced to examine their motives; all too often a career is picked by potluck, or for the wrong reasons. The study hopes to bring the student and potential employer in closer communication with each other.

The study was run for the first time this spring. Merrill, who wrote the questionnaire, is already contemplating many changes in the format of the study, and hopes it will be run repeatedly in the next few years. For this year's study about 3200 students were interviewed at 35 schools including Harvard, Yale, M.I.T., Cornell, the University of Chicago, Rice, Cal Tech, U.C.L.A., and Stanford.