The first thing you need to know about "corporate recruiting" is that it does not exist, at least by that name. Oh, sure, there is an entity which we in Career Services proudly call "on-campus recruiting" (or just plain "recruiting") but we don't use the term "corporate recruiting" because many of the employers who physically come on campus to recruit or participate in employer fairs aren't corporations.
Besides household names such as the Peace Corps and Teach for America, our recruiting ranks include government agencies such as the U.S. Government Accountability Office, not-for-profit employers such as the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, law firms, teacher placement agencies, environmental organizations and much, much more.
Okay, Skip, semantics aside, aren't you being a bit disingenuous to suggest that the recruiting ranks at Dartmouth aren't filled with corporations, particularly finance and consulting firms? Busted. You're absolutely right. Those fields -- which are vast and all-encompassing -- are disproportionately represented in recruiting because they have great needs each year for entry-level employees and have had great success recruiting Dartmouth graduates. Naturally, alumni in finance and consulting wish to replenish their ranks with more Dartmouth graduates, and we are glad they do.
That's all well and good, I hear you say, but not everyone is interested in finance and consulting. Why don't you try to attract other employers to campus? We do. But the truth of the matter is that no matter how hard we try to attract a wide range of employers, only a small fraction -- those who have substantial resources and predictable hiring needs -- will commit to on-campus recruiting. Many organizations, such as social service organizations, publishing houses, museums, public relations firms, etc., prefer to have individuals contact them directly to indicate their interests.
So how do people find entry-level jobs besides recruiting? According to the annual Senior Survey administered the day before graduation, of the students with job offers in hand (approximately 73 percent of the total planning employment in June, 2005), almost 30 percent of jobs were found through networking; 10 percent through MonsterTrak postings (Dartmouth's job posting service); 7 percent through previous internships and 15 percent through "other" sources, such as academic departments, referrals from professors or coaches, or online job boards.
Bottom line: check out the wide array of employers who participate in on-campus recruiting, including "sleepers" such as Steve & Barry's University Sportswear or the Green Corps and by all means take full advantage of these wonderful opportunities -- if and only if, as Trustee Michael Chu '68 recently told a gathering of students, these opportunities engage both your heart and your mind.
Paraphrasing Chu, "look at the people you will work with and report to and ask yourself, 'would I enjoy learning from these people? Is this work that I would find interesting?'" Ultimately, heed Michael Chu's advice to know yourself and not let the world define you.
In the end, recruiting is just a well-structured, convenient means to bring you together with a relatively small group of employers who, unlike the vast majority of employers, have predictable hiring needs. And, as Trustee Chu declared, "It is the end, not the means, that matter."
