As graduation nears, and reality sinks in, Career Services tries to make things just a little easier each year for the hundreds of seniors whom they help find jobs.
In addition to providing information resources and workshops, Career Services offers three different services to assist seniors in their job-search: on-campus recruiting, resume referral and job fairs.
Acting Director of Career Services Kathryn Hutchinson said on-campus recruiting, the most common of the three options, involves submitting resumes to Career Services which are forwarded to companies of the students' choice.
Students chosen by firms are interviewed here at Dartmouth, she said.
Resume referral is a similar process that yields interviews at the company's location instead of on-campus, according Hutchinson.
Job-fairs are gatherings of many employers who setup shop on campus and do on-the-spot recruiting and interviewing.
Last year, there were 169 employers to which students could send their resumes and 529 seniors participated in the process, Hutchinson said.
The popularity of the service Career Services provides is attested to by the many students constantly crowding their cramped Collis office.
"Can you take a picture of how busy we are?" Career Counselor Tom Lord joked.
The "pace is very high" Hutchinson said.
Last year's numbers represent a 64.6 percent increase in the number of employers working through career services, and 34 percent increase in the number students submitting resumes, according to Hutchinson.
This year's numbers have already matched last year's and they're only going to get higher, she said.
In spite of the great increase in the business the office handles, the only corresponding increase in its handful of staff was the addition of a full-time student assistant this fall.
"We're always understaffed," Hutchinson said.
She said this is a problem for Career Services because it is "the staff that takes the toll," not the students.
"I think we deliver a very high quality of service ... we make that a real point" she said.
Many students agree.
Tony Mamone '96 said, "They're doing a lot for the number of people they have up there, they're doing an awesome job."
"They've been really helpful," Scott Lasonde '96 said.
Some students expressed concern about Career Services' strict rules. "Because of their five minute deadline, they're pretty much [messing] up your future," Cameron Turner '96 said.
Students whose resumes are late are forced to send out their resumes on their own.
"Cutoffs are part of the real world," Hutchinson said. "Deadlines are necessary to ensure ... quality."
Mamone said workshops teaching skills such as resume writing and interviewing were helpful to students, as were panels and mock interviews put on by Tuck School graduate students.
But Cameron van Orman '96 said the scheduling of workshops should be more sensitive to students' other activities. "It's some of the details that could be ironed out," Orman said.
"Tom Lord's always been there ... I've had like a thousand questions," William Tovel '96 said.
Several students had suggestions to improve the services offered.
David Palshaw '96 and Leslie Jennings '96 both lamented that few companies from the west coast are available through Career Services.
Tovel suggested arranging interviews for suddenly vacated spots be done by preference-matching instead of on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Akiko Ohnuma '96 said a one-on-one mentoring program should be set up between Tuck students and Dartmouth seniors. "I would have liked that," she said.
