Companies use aggressive tactics to bolster employee recruitment

Capping off a vigorous college recruiting season that has included ski trips to Utah and dinners at Lahiere's, consulting and investment banking firms find themselves brokering some of their most competitive recruiting deals ever, offering graduating seniors an unusually high average of $40,000 to $45,000 salaries and luring them in with gifts like Cheerios basketballs and "Lost World" water bottles.

Recruiting tactics have changed since last year when Charles Valentine '97 was applying for jobs. Now an analyst at Morgan Stanley, Valentine said his job-search process was stressful.

"I wouldn't say it was overwhelming once I got the job, but trying to get the job was," he said.

"I don't think I've ever seen it this good – except for the great days of the eighties," Associate Director of Career Services Bill Corwin said.

Last year's seniors were receiving salary offers that hovered around $38,000 to $40,000, Corwin said. Compared to the bulk of the job market, consulting, investment and software companies make the most luxurious recruiting offers, he said. Some students plan to make more than $80,000, and a lucky handful are expected to earn a six-figure salary, according to some seniors.

"It's a real moneymaking time on Wall Street," Corwin said. "The consulting firms all are hyper-competitive and they want to make sure no one outbids them," he added.

The firms' vigorous approach to attracting the best candidates is a courtship steeped in salary competition and wining and dining.

"They come after you," Corwin said. "If you're hiding under the bed and you don't want to talk anymore, they'll come and get you." Seniors report that firms have flown them out to their branch offices or treated them to a day in New York City with expensive dinners or cocktails before putting them up in upscale hotels.

"Delloitte and Touche took us out for dinner at Windows on the World," said Courtney Jones '98, who later took a job with the consulting firm A.P. Carney, also located in Manhattan.

"The companies always do a good job to help you relax and make you feel comfortable with the people that work there," she added.

This trend of aggressive recruiting reaches well beyond just the New York City consulting firm culture. One senior female English major, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she is debating between marketing positions at a software company out West and General Mills.

"(The software firm) took me out to Utah for skiing – and they sent me luggage and a fleece blanket," she said.

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Scott Renner, Director of Campus Recruiting at A.P. Carney, justified this recruiting style by arguing that the competition between companies to hire graduates, especially those from top universities, is too fierce to ignore.

"The rapid growth of the major consulting firms looking for top talent from elite college campuses such as Princeton and those firms also expanding their business analyst programs. . . are factors that have made it important for us to have a sense of what the competitors are doing as we set our compensation packages," he said.