As juniors we got to see the on-campus job recruiters this spring, about four months earlier than in previous years. This is a great idea. It gives all of us more time to prepare and engage in some critical thinking about who we want to work for; or more precisely, who we are willing to work for.
I went to a presentation from one of the many consulting companies and listened to their pitch. Here is where the thinking part begins. One of their senior associates explained to us that we wouldn't be doing any sort of data entry or cold calling -- "our time is too valuable" is how he framed it. "We get people to do that sort of thing, minimum wage what is it, four dollars or something per hour, 4.75?" I was stunned at his ignorance. Do I want a job with a consulting firm employing someone in a responsible position who doesn't know what the minimum wage is in this country? A company with senior management that far out of touch with the pulse of America should set off some sort of social alarm, shouldn't it?
Investment banking is an attractive option. The turnout for a prominent New York bank's review confirmed that attraction. The banking folks wanted us to hear from a recent Dartmouth graduate, and after his short speech he revealed what the presentation team called a "funny or interesting incident or fact about his first year with the bank." The new analyst told us about traveling to a gold mine in Nevada, where a company that the bank was interested in was using cyanide leaching technology to extract gold from marginal ore deposits. He was amazed that it took, "cyanide leaching giant trucks and all that dirt for just a speck of gold!" (The exclamation point is his, not mine.) I don't think he understood what he was witnessing. Cyanide? Leaching? Giant truckloads of dirt? Poison. Water. Strip mine. Alarms?
At 8 p.m. on the 12th of April, I listened to an eager account executive hustle the advertising business in Silsby Hall. "This is a company," the exec told us breathlessly, "that took a cigarette, which was a woman's cigarette, and built it into the number one brand in the world." The incidents of lung cancer and associated cigarette driven diseases are rising around the world. This international company still advertises cigarettes on television where it can. On goes the thinking hat. Tobacco cigarettes kill people. Out come the scales. Hmm where is the balance? Job, one side. Shilling for a deadly product, the other. Balanced? Nope.
In fairness I have to thank Career Services and Collin O'Mara for getting us this opportunity, because this is serious business. There are bills to pay. We are entering the real world next year. We will have to pay our own way. The cost of living is real, but just as real is the moral bill that comes due after we make our choice from among the many companies out there.
The Peace Corps was here too, and Teach for America. I didn't go to the teaching presentation. They don't pay enough. Neither does the Peace Corps.
