Jobs in the works Interns Accept Full-Time Offers

Last summer, Moeed Yousaf '00 slaved away in an office building, working long hours and finding out what the world of Wall Street was really like. Yousaf, an economics major who interned at Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter, learned the hard way that working for an investment bank is not as glamorous as Princeton students sometimes imagine.

But Yousaf said he enjoyed his experience. And at the end of the summer — when his employers offered him a full-time position after graduation — Yousaf knew he had a tough decision to make. Should he accept the offer to work for MSDW in a familiar office with people he knew? Or should he start fresh with another company?

After taking several weeks to make his decision, Yousaf elected to stick with MSDW. "It was a great chance for me to see if I wanted to do investment banking and work for Morgan Stanley," Yousaf said of his summer job. "Once I got the internship, they made sure I'd come back to Morgan Stanley if I was interested in i-banking."

Yousaf's experience is not unique — big-name companies increasingly are using internship programs to recruit and train students who will eventually become full-time employees after graduation.

Without an internship program, companies risk losing top-quality recruits, who often lock up jobs before they graduate. Many firms, therefore, have structured their internship programs with the intent of hiring summer employees for full-time jobs after they earn their bachelor degrees.

Ada Au '00 is also an economics major who said she plans to work full-time for Morgan Stanley after her job last summer. "Internships give [companies] a chance to assess how well you'd do in a full-time position," Au said. "And they give you an opportunity to find out whether you want to work in that industry."

But while the assurance of a job can set most seniors at ease, signing a contract early in the academic year might not always be in a student's best interests.

Beverly Hamilton-Chandler, director of Career Services, said while she encourages students to take internships throughout their Princeton careers, sometimes accepting the first offer a company makes is not always the best option. "It's a really competitive job market, and the jobs are there and the companies move quickly," she said, referring to the numerous firms that recruit Princeton students. "And the firms are very persuasive and somewhat seductive in terms of how they entice students. And students feel that it's easier [to accept the offers than wait for more choices]."

Hamilton-Chandler explained that seniors are often preoccupied with writing their theses and completing other academic work and thus do not want to be burdened with the process of finding a full-time job for the following year. "Students feel that because the job search seems so time-consuming, and that if they have worked at a company and really like what goes on and the offer was attractive enough, then they accept," she said. "We do think it's early if you accept something at the end of the summer before you have had the opportunity to interview at other places, and we would like students to give themselves more time."

She continued, "But companies make them offers, and it's an opportunity to get the issued settled. And by the time we are saying that we are encouraging them to think longer, they have already decided what they are going to do."

Computer science major George Nyako '00, who interned in Seattle last summer for software giant Microsoft, said he plans to work full-time for the Microsoft-owned company, WebTV.

"Microsoft has a lot of resources," Nyako said. "Because WebTV was just bought by Microsoft, it has the startup atmosphere, but also has access to Microsoft's resources."

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Nyako, who is originally from Ghana, said he chose to work 70 hours per week testing software and detecting bugs in Excel.

Despite receiving many offers from different companies, Nyako said there were several reasons why he chose Microsoft. "First of all the location is great, and they're paying me so much more," he said. "And thirdly, it had always been my top choice."

"They treat interns much better in hopes of getting full-time employees," Nyako said, adding that his housing and rental car were heavily subsidized. "I'm actually getting paid an extra premium for having been an intern."

Positive experiences with internships, however, do not always influence a student to accept a full-time offer. "I was offered a job, but I took a different job," said Jeff Zielinski '00, who interned at Robertson Stephens, but took an offer at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong. "I viewed the internship as a way to get my foot in the door. But going to Asia was what I really wanted to do."

Zielinski explained that he received an "exploding offer," which was only valid until Nov. 15. Companies use these offers to lock up future employees early before they begin to receive offers from other companies.

Though Zielinski chose not to work for Robertson Stephens, he said he had a positive experience. "It was very fast-paced," he said, adding that he often worked 80- to 90-hour weeks. "You could be on the phone with one banker and he's screaming that he wants something in 20 minutes. Then you get e-mail from another banker who wants something faxed in 10 minutes. Then someone comes over to your desk . . . It's crazy."

Gary So '00 also took an offer from a different company than the one he interned for the summer before senior year. Though he interned with Anderson consulting, So said he accepted an offer from Bain consulting for the opportunity to gain international experience and for its "better focus on strategy consulting."

"A lot of consultants get business experience and then go on to 'dot-com' companies or become the top people at Fortune 500 companies," So said, citing e-Bay CEO Meg Whitman '77 as an example of a former consultant who moved up the business ladder.

Though Career Services advises seniors to avoid rushing into any decisions, students often choose to take the offers nonetheless. But internship programs benefit companies as well as summer employees — the companies who recruit the interns also profit.

"We have had wonderful success with many of our summer analysts returning to the firm as full-time hires," said Tim Kingston '87, the firm-wide team captain for Princeton recruiting at Goldman Sachs. "These candidates often become leaders in their full-time class because they are already familiar with the firm and our culture."

Nyesha DeWitt, a recruiter for Robertson Stephens, agreed. "It gives the company exposure to potentially good candidates," she said. "It also gives the candidate exposure to us."

In an increasingly fast-paced business world, internships are becoming more valuable for students as they start their careers.

"It's becoming more and more important for you to have an internship . . . I-banking is so intense, so you need the experience," Zielinski said. "All these businesses have an acute need for new talent. An internship program allows them to build personal relationships with the intern and see how they work."

And for many students, these relationships draw them back after graduation to the same companies where they interned. When it was finally time to make his choice, Yousaf went with the company he knew best.

"I think it was the people, the fact that I had been there," Yousaf said of his decision to work for MSDW. "It was really an informed decision when you decide to go back."

A decision that may or may not be be in his best interest, depending on whom you believe.