Although it is still early in the year, a small portion of the senior class has received and accepted job offers. The students who receive job offers early in the year are usually working in the fields of consulting and finance.
“Typically the earliest campus recruiters are those that have large classes of students that they’re hiring, so they’re hiring 150 or 200 entry-level employees, and they’re blanketing the country and targeting certain schools to find those candidates,” said Director of Career Planning Tim Diehl.
“The absolute raw number of students that actually have accepted jobs right now is relatively a small portion of the senior class,” Diehl continued. “It’s really only reflective of this small slice of the pie in the career pursuits that are represented.”
This year has seen a strong start, which is in part a result of an increase in employers visiting campus. For example, McKinsey and Wells Fargo both expressed interest in hiring full-time employees and interns this year.
“We’re in a very robust hiring market in general,“ Diehl said. “The economy is recovering well, and there is no shortage of Bowdoin alumni, parents and other friends of the college who are reaching out to us now and indicating that they would love to hire a Bowdoin candidate.”
In addition to finance and consulting firms, there have been many employers from the education sector on campus this fall. Hiring opportunities in fields such as marketing, government, communications, education and health tend to peak in the late winter and early spring as opposed to the early spike in finance and consulting hiring.
In the first 10 weeks of the semester, Career Planning has already hosted 100 events, which have been attended by over 3,100 students in total. Last year, Career Planning was involved with organizing 220 events, which were attended by almost 6,200 students.
In comparison to other NESCAC schools, Diehl believes Bowdoin has been successful in terms of student preparation and success with career planning.
“We are typically at the top end of volume of activity,” said Diehl. “The campus recruiting program that is physically on campus is only one small part of what we do, obviously, as an operation. But even just looking at access through campus-based recruiting, we’re in a very competitive place versus the other NESCAC schools in terms of volume.”
The Eastern College Career Day Program is an event in which eight small liberal arts schools collaborate to give students access to smaller organizations that do not visit each school’s campus.
“Bowdoin students were the top in terms of number of students who applied to the program, number of applications submitted and number of students that attended the program,” said Diehl.
Some Bowdoin students have been taking advantage of those resources and have their job search wrapped up.
Cam Chisholm ’16, an economics major, will be working as a strategy and operations business analyst at Deloitte after graduation. Chisholm received his offer in early October and accepted it last week.
“During the whole application process, I went to all of [Deloitte’s] workshops,” said Chisholm.
Networking was key for Chisholm, who maintained contact with alumni who work at Deloitte.
“There was a two-week period of time where I think I had 12 networking calls, so I would have to do research,” Chisholm said. “I was doing 6 per week, which I don’t think is uncommon, but I don’t think it’s common either.”
“The students that are successful often are very engaged in learning from their peers who may happen to just be a year or two ahead of them,” said Diehl.
“Many of them were very savvy in seizing that network of people,” said Diehl of the seniors who have received offers.
Allyson Fulton ’16, a neuroscience major, learned about the job she recently accepted at the Unum Professional Development Program (PDP) from Todd Herrmann at the Career Planning Center. Fulton also sought out alumni at Unum to learn more about the company.
“I did a lot on my own in terms of finding the people. Since there are a lot of alumni, I really took advantage of that,” said Fulton. “But Todd had a really big hand in it, and I owe Todd for this job.”
Some students remain independent in their job search. Rachel Snyder ’16 recently received a job offer in finance.
“I don’t really feel like [the Career Planning Center] had a role at all in my process,” said Snyder. “I think I pretty much did it on my own.”
Snyder cited her participation in the Tuck Business Bridge Program as a key reason for her early offer. She spent her summer at the four-week program, which is a crash course that aims to help liberal arts students gain knowledge in topics essential to a business career, such as accounting, corporate finance and marketing.
“I think it made me a more competitive applicant," she said.
Summer opportunities like the Tuck Business Bridge Program often aid the process of finding a job.
“Our goal is to encourage students to consciously engage the three summers that they have while they’re at Bowdoin so they can try things out,” said Diehl. “The program for support for Bowdoin across campus is relatively robust for students’ summer experiences in terms of funding sources. The experience of those internships begins to build the story and the student’s capabilities to be a strong candidate. Internships are certainly the gateway to full-time employment.”