Dartmouth applicants in the on-campus corporate and non-profit recruiting program consistently impress recruiters with their well-rounded liberal arts background but often lack certain key interviewing skills, according to Career Services and several recruiters.
Monica Wilson, director of Career Services, said that employers most often praise Dartmouth students for their breadth of experiences, both academic and extracurricular, as well as their ability to adapt to new situations and function well in social settings. Dartmouth applicants also make up for a lack of graduate school level expertise with their ability to learn quickly.
"Dartmouth students seem to be strong managers," Wilson said. "They have good people skills and can learn other specialized skills on the job."
Johnathan Ball, a recruiter with the educational recruitment firm Carney Sandoe, said that the quality of applicants has changed little over the years. The firm has been recruiting at Dartmouth since 1984.
"Dartmouth always has a high-caliber student population," Ball said. "The school has a strong liberal arts tradition and students have very diverse academic interests."
While the overall quality of applicants remains high, recruiters have cited certain problems in recent years.
According to Katherine Doughty, associate director of Career Services, several recruiters have complained that students lack knowledge about the specific job or company for which they interview. In addition, many applicants do not reflect enough on their time at the College and how they should present themselves to a particular employer.
"Students have a wealth of great experiences under their belt but it means little if they can't articulate why these experiences have been meaningful and how they relate to a specific job," Doughty said.
According to Doughty, the recruitment program's shift to online applications may make students approach the job-hunting process more casually. Wilson added that in some cases Dartmouth's BlitzMail culture can hurt an applicant in the job-hunting process.
"As students use technology to a great extent in the application process one thing that's easy to lose is the act of conversing with people and how to act in social situations," Wilson said. "I have had to tell students repeatedly that you cannot decline a job offer through e-mail; you have to pick up the phone."
While the on-campus recruiting program has changed little over time except for the move to the web, the companies that participate in the program and the fields they represent vary yearly.
According to Career Services, the types of companies participating in on-campus recruiting depend on a variety of factors, of which economic trends play the paramount role. Consulting and financial firms, contrary to popular campus belief, have not always been the most prominent participants.
In the 1980s, Dartmouth's program included many more consumer product and manufacturing companies. These types of firms became sparse by the mid-1990s after the entire manufacturing sector began downsizing.
Similarly, after the dot-com bubble burst, technology companies' on-campus representation dwindled. More recently, the economic recession that began in 2001 limited the number of companies hiring undergraduates.
Wilson said she thinks the future of on-campus recruiting will mirror changes in the business world.
"As the use of technology increases in various ways in business, there will be an increase in the need for those who are adept at using technology and finding new uses for it," Wilson said.
Recruiters also consistently praised Career Services at Dartmouth for their personnel and the programs they run.
"I travel to 60 to 80 universities per year and Dartmouth's career services program is the best ideal across the country," Ball said. "Monica Wilson is amazing and the entire office is very professional and on top of things. They do a great job of motivating students."
