Cezary Podkul | Liberal arts? OCR has you covered

For people who participate in on-campus recruiting, September and October stand out as one of the most stressful months of their undergraduate education.

It's that time of year when dinner means stuffing your face with hors d'oeuvres at company presentations, when you can't go out on a Friday night because you're stuck in the library writing cover letters until midnight, when the only reading you have time for is Vault and interview prep guides.

In the parlance of our times: It sucks.

But many students who participate in OCR make the process all the more stressful for themselves by fretting about things they need not fret about.

I'm talking, of course, about the most frequently asked question at any employer presentation: "What if I'm a liberal-arts major, and I'm not in Wharton?"

Geez.

It's one of those feel-better questions that always gets the standard corporate-line answer from any recruiter: "We hire our employees from a diverse set of backgrounds, so we accept English majors, classical studies majors and all sorts of other majors alongside finance and accounting or economics majors."

It's easy to view this answer with skepticism; after all, for the Class of 2005, 79 percent of Wharton students had job offers before the end of the fall semester, compared with 34 percent of their College counterparts.

Don't be intimidated by such numbers. If you look at how OCR hiring trends have evolved over the years, you'll realize just how good of a chance a liberal-arts major has at securing a job through OCR.

OCR, now about 50 years old, was originally crafted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, of which Penn's Career Services is a member, as a response to a surge in demand for engineers and businessmen after the end of World War II.

"Originally, the big employers were big industrials like GM or Bethlehem Steel and accounting firms," said Pat Rose, director of Career Services. She also added that virtually the only banking jobs available through the system were management training programs for large commercial banks.

Then, in the late '70s and early '80s, consulting firms and investment banks expanded their recruiting efforts. OCR then evolved into what it is today: one of the largest interview facilities in the country allowing hundreds of employees to fill thousands of positions through their recruiting efforts.

Today, OCR is no longer a smaller effort that focuses solely on recruiting engineering and business students. Instead, even if employers wanted to, they would not be able to fill all their vacancies with only Wharton and Engineering students - they must therefore look elsewhere.

Hence, many employers are beginning to make an extra effort to court liberal-arts majors. For example, consulting firm McKinsey & Co. recently hosted a special recruiting event for non-business majors.

Consulting in particular is one industry in which liberal-arts majors are in high demand. For example, in 2005, 19 percent of College students accepted offers in consulting, translating to 118 College students taking offers in consulting, versus 90 Wharton students.

This seems consistent with what I have heard from people in the industry. A partner at a major consulting firm mentioned to me that he preferred to hire liberal-arts majors with strong analytical skills over business majors. It allows him to start with a clean slate and not have to "un-teach" them anything on the job.

In addition, employers realize that many of their top performers in the long run are students who did not enter their organizations with much technical business knowledge. Recruiters would be remiss if they passed over some of their future top performers by focusing solely on pre-professional students.

Hence, if you're in the College and find yourself asking recruiters the same old feel-better question, you're worrying too much.

Anyone can get a job through OCR.

Cezary Podkul is a College and Wharton fifth-year senior from Franklin Park, Ill. His e-mail address is A HREF="mailto:podkul@dailypennsylvanian.com">podkul@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Salad Strikes Back appears on Tuesdays.

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