Following email scare, non-technical OCR to move to fall semester in 2016

Study abroad or get a job — impending changes to the On Campus Recruiting process would have had some of this year’s sophomores deciding between experiences overseas and potential job recruitment.

On March 16, Career Services sent an email to all sophomores stating that the non-technical OCR timeline would be moved forward a semester, from junior spring to junior fall. Following immediate backlash, Career Services sent a second email the next day, March 17, announcing that the schedule change would not come into effect until the fall 2016 semester.

College sophomore Vidya Daryanani, who will be spending her fall semester in Sweden, said she considered canceling her study-abroad program when the first email was sent so she could focus on finding an internship for the following summer.

“I kind of knew that OCR was more important to me, so I made my decision that day, but many of my friends were still considering it and hadn't made up their mind when we got the email that it got switched back," Daryanani said. "I think they might have underestimated the importance of OCR to people.”

Senior Associate Director of Career Services Claire Klieger said that roughly “a few dozen students” emailed the office of Career Services and Penn Abroad with concerns about the OCR shift.

Technical interviews for students interested in technology sector jobs, specifically Engineering students, were moved to the fall semester two years ago to no complaint.

“We had such a smooth transition with technical internship recruiting. If we knew there was going to be that kind of response, we probably wouldn’t have sent the first email. It’s not our goal to upset people," Director of Career Services Patricia Rose said. “We had not expected anything like this. We felt that employers would accommodate students studying abroad through videoconferencing.”

When the office realized that Penn students were considering dropping their study abroad plans in favor of staying on campus for OCR, they decided to push the change to the fall of 2016, affecting the Class of 2018 and later.

In the second email retracting the original change, Career Services apologized for not making the decision earlier in the year, citing that they wanted to incorporate this year's recruitment data in the decision. By that point, most students had finalized their study-abroad plans for the fall semester

"Unfortunately, our time worked badly with study abroad," Rose said. "We knew that some students were upset and caught off guard, and we regret that."

Rose said that Career Services did not consult Penn Abroad regarding how the changes to the OCR timeline would affect study abroad options.

“We thought they had been made aware, and we didn’t consult them directly,” Rose said.

However, Rose and Klieger said that the shift in timeline was inspired by larger national trends in employer preferences.

“We encourage students who are going to study abroad,” Rose said, adding that “more and more of the employer presences are happening in the fall and students felt they were behind.”

“There are only a handful of schools in the country that don’t allow fall recruiting," she added.

Since employers are moving towards earlier recruiting, Klieger explained, Penn students have to vie for a smaller number of internship slots in the spring when OCR traditionally takes place, or strike out on their own during the fall, without going through Career Services.

“It's hard for us to advocate on behalf of the students if the students are not going through us,” Klieger said.

With non-technical OCR not moving to the fall semester until fall 2016, current sophomores — including the ones who contacted Career Services in response to the announcement — can continue with their plans without fear of missing out on an internship.

“We’ll make sure that we notify sophomores in September,” Klieger said. “Panic will not ensue.”

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