Facing a decrease in funding due to the College's budget cuts, Dartmouth Career Services was not able to provide the same recruitment opportunities that it has offered in previous years, including sending students to off-campus recruiting events, according to Associate Director of Employer Relations Monica Wilson. The Tuck School of Business' Career Development Office, however, has actively collaborated with other business schools to coordinate off-campus opportunities for the institution's students, according to Rebecca Joffrey Tu '97, director of the Tuck Career Development Office.
Employer recruiting is much less predictable as a result of the recession, Wilson said.
"Employers are much more last minute than they used to be," Wilson said. "We don't turn anyone away we bend over backwards to make sure [recruiting] can happen."
With the recession, Career Services directly contacted members of the Dartmouth alumni body and others with ties to the College, asking them to notify Career Services of employment and internship opportunities.
"Last spring when things were really at their worst, we sent out 50,000 communications to over 30,000 people," she said. "We got a great response to that massive campaign."
There was a drop in employment offerings in Fall 2008, likely because of the national economic crisis, Wilson said. Recruitment numbers this Winter term, however, are so far comparable to those in previous years and show a 30 percent increase in offerings from last Fall term, she said.
The discontinuation of non-stop passenger flights from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Lebanon Municipal Airport in November 2008 hurt recruitment efforts, making Dartmouth's location more difficult for postgraduate recruiters to reach, Wilson said.
"There are ways to get here but not having that direct flight makes it much more difficult," she said.
Cape Air plans to begin service on a new flight from Lebanon to White Plains, N.Y., later this month.
The College's undergraduate Career Services bought equipment several years ago for students to conduct video interviews, but it went largely unused and is now obsolete, Wilson said. Career Services has not purchased new equipment, but instead borrows equipment from the Tuck Career Development Office when required, she said.
Wilson added that some students use Skype, a video conferenceing service, to conduct interviews with recruiters.
The Tuck Career Development Office has coordinated with other institutions to provide recruitment opportunities, including a one-day corporate interviewing event in Boston in February, which was co-sponsored by the Johnson School at Cornell University and the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, Joffrey said.
Twenty 2nd-year students from Tuck were selected for interviews by companies participating in the event, which was not funded by Tuck, she said.
Companies were receptive to the program, and Tuck will continue to reach out to other institutions to collaborate on future recruiting events, Joffrey said.
"We just realized that if we make it easier for companies, we'll get opportunities that otherwise might not come to Hanover," Joffrey said. "We will continue to revisit this as an option and we may add geographies next year."
Expanding recruitment outside of Hanover is a way to increase the number of job opportunities available to Tuck students, she said.
"For Tuck, [off-campus recruitment] is a way to reach out beyond the companies that come on campus, so that's our impetus for doing it," Joffrey said. "Teaming up with other schools gives us a broader reach out for companies."
Tuck students will also take part in a corporate recruiting event April 9 in San Francisco, she said. The event will be co-hosted by Tuck and seven other business schools ranked in the Top 25 in the United States, Joffrey said.
The Tuck Career Development Office also facilitates video interviews upon students' request, although it is not a widely-used service, she said.
"Companies typically lean toward face-to-face interviews," she said. "But for us, it's a good way to target some geographies where face-to-face is not as likely to happen, at least for first-round interviews."
Although off-campus recruiting opportunities have decreased, Career Services hosted its on-campus Employer Connections career fair an event that included more than 100 employers and 800 student-participants this Fall term, Wilson said. The fair will likely take place next year as well, she said.
