“The students, I think, felt comfortable coming into the department...so I thought they might be more likely to ask the kind of questions they need to ask with other students around who know them,” Peterson says.

OCS has worked to expand its relationships with companies at which students might work or intern. For example, counselors recently helped Ralph Lauren develop an internship program, according to Nancy Saunders, OCS counselor for business and summer opportunities.

But despite outreach efforts, it is still sometimes difficult for career counselors and students to be on the same wavelength.

Lance Choy, the director of the Career Development Center at Stanford University, says that employers want students to take initiative in the job search.

“At Stanford there are a number of students who struggle with this picture of reality,” Choy writes in an e-mail. “They have worked so hard to get into such a prestigious institution, and they concluded that they have it made. Employers will be seeking them out.”

Choy says that this is not the case, and as a result, students become frustrated.

Ultimately, students and counselors say it behooves students to complete career searches themselves.

“From my perspective as a career counselor, you do the student a much greater service to teach them how to go about the process...helping them to find a career that’s right for them,” Gilmore says. “Whereas when you place them in a job, you don’t enable them to go through that process.”

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.