More students seeking career help in recession

College career services throughout the country are feeling the reverberations from the economic crisis that began last fall, leaving students with more confusion and less opportunity.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, a recent National Association of Colleges and Employers survey of about 50 colleges and universities found that more than half of the schools reported an increase in traffic to their career services centers while only 20 percent reported a decrease.

But at the same time, the number of companies recruiting on-campus has dropped, the survey found.

According to Career Services Director Patricia Rose, Penn is not immune to this trend.

She explained that by December 2007, 60 percent of the class of 2008 had been offered the job they eventually accepted. While the polling for this year will not be completed until this spring, Rose said that percentage will be lower for this year's seniors.

This drop likely stems from the falling number of recruiters coming to Penn's campus, she added.

For fall recruiting, the number of interviews was down from 8,437 to 7,371, or 12.6 percent, according to Rose.

"With that said, 7,361 is still a lot of interviews," Rose said. "Penn is still a top choice. If employers have jobs, they're coming here - there are just fewer jobs."

With fewer jobs available and fewer industries coming to campus, students have sought refuge in career services' help and ability to guide them through this uncertain economic climate.

Rose explained that students have always gone to career services, and the "numbers remain very strong this year, as they've always been," though perhaps the number of students has risen slightly this year.

The main difference, Rose said, is not in the volume of students but in the type of advice they seek.

"The conversations are different conversations this year," Rose said. "Last year, students would come to us saying, 'I'm deciding between these two offers, which should I choose?' This year, students are asking, 'I've applied to all these places and I haven't heard back, what should I do?'"

Students seeking jobs in the financial industry face obvious strife and stress. But students pursuing careers in fields in which it has always been difficult to find jobs say they are not finding much help from Career Services.

College senior and Political Science and Communications double major Erica Stone said she has gone to Career Services several times in the past several months to no avail.

"If I was a Wharton kid, I'm sure it would be different this year than in the past," she said. "But coming from the College, it's hard to point me in the right direction because there aren't job openings given to the office that they can really pass to me."

"All they could do is point me to network with alumni," Stone added.

But neither students nor Career Services have given up. According to Rose, 60 employers are attending a career fair in Houston Hall on Friday.

"Many employers are continuing to recruit and post jobs on our Web site," she said.

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