David Lei | A less-stressful OCR

Spring break was a much-welcome respite, more so than it's ever been for me in the past.

That's because I spent most of January and February living in my suit, hustling for a summer internship in finance. The daily grind of information sessions, networking events, resume drops and interviews is a hallowed coming-of-age ritual for a Whartonite.(Or any undergraduate with banking or consulting in his heart). But as you can imagine, this year's experience was a bit more intense than it has been in the past.

Of course, there's little that can be done about the tough situation (the economy) we're in. But given that there's likely at least two more years of this ahead of us, now might be a good time to rethink OCR.

With firms that once recruited heavily at Penn no longer in existence or in severe straits, a palpable sense of fear has permeated Huntsman. It's understandable: The herd is spooked. Much of the anxiety is unfounded. But some of it certainly isn't, and all involved - students, recruiters and Penn administrators - can improve that aspect.

According to Penn's Career Services senior associate director Barbara Hewitt, the office is currently projecting a 27-percent decline in on-campus recruitment this spring, as measured by number of interviews. That's a dramatic increase over the 15-percent decrease previously estimated and the 13-percent drop-off recorded last fall. And it would be safe to assume that the number of job offers actually extended has weakened even more.

This confirms what most who went or are still going through OCR already expected. Still, some recruiters have been opaque or disingenuous about their hiring expectations.

When a company holds an information session for hundreds of attendees, you might make the reasonable assumption that a decent number of positions are available. In fact, all that competition could be for a half-dozen offers, or less.

At information session after information session, presenters cheerily proclaimed, "We're still hiring." True, perhaps, but that seemed a lot like creating false hope.

In their defense, the company employees who visit campus for these sorts of events are supposed to cast the best possible light on their employers. But they should certainly try to give students an accurate impression of how accessible opportunities will be. And they should also be completely clear about the candidates they're looking for (i.e. who has a chance and who doesn't).

Since uncertainty is the most potent ingredient of fear, these companies must be as up-front as possible. In my experience, far too few were.

But transparency will only be a marginal, albeit welcome, improvement. Anxiety is, of course, of our own creation. Left to his own devices, the all-too-pre-professional Penn student will freak out about his future.

Career Services counselors, professors and deans are doing the right thing by encouraging calm. But there's one very tangible action that could end some of the chaos: limit the number of active applications each student can have through PennLink at any given time.

The way PennLink is set up makes it tempting to drop as many resumes and cover letters as possible, without much thought. That's especially true when there's this anxiety about the job market. (Admittedly, I applied for more positions than I probably should have. But I chalk that up to legitimate competitive pressures.)

If we were all limited to, say, 25 active applications at time, that would force us to carefully evaluate where we apply, with little real limitation of choice. The net benefit would, of course, be a dramatic reduction in unnecessary competition. For recruiters, it would also be apparent that the students who have applied are actually interested.

By accepting this constraint, we'd be spared the artificial demand that otherwise might develop. We'd all have a better shot at the opportunities we prefer most - I can assure you we'd all freak out at least a little less.

As you can tell, I don't have the fondest memory of OCR, even though I was ultimately happy with my outcome. All this being said, it's reassuring to be at Penn, a school for which recruiters have such high esteem, and have access to the generous support offered by Career Services.

David Lei is a Wharton junior from Brooklyn, NY. He is the former Executive Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. The Lei-bertarian appears on Mondays. His email address is lei@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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