Foreign companies step up recruitment

Nachiket Mor, the executive director of ICICI, India's second largest bank, stood in front of an audience of graduate and undergraduate students last month trying to convince them to take a job in India. "It never gets very cold," he joked.

ICICI is one of a growing number of foreign corporations recruiting students from top universities across the country, encouraging young graduates to forego traditional opportunities at home and work overseas instead. While European-based companies have been recruiting at U.S. universities for decades, those based in China and India have only recently begun to develop a presence.

Germany-based Deutsche Bank, Indian conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., and the Monetary Authority of Singapore are just a few of the international companies that have recruited here at Princeton.

An increasing number of U.S. college graduates are applying for jobs abroad, seeing an overseas job as valuable for future ventures in business or elsewhere. "Now, without some international experience, you're really handicapped when it comes to working in the States," said Bob Richard, director of employer relations at MIT.

Though foreign recruitment is a "longstanding practice" on the University's campus, Career Services director Beverly Hamilton-Chandler said, other colleges are seeing changes in the number of foreign recruiters on their campuses.

There has been a "definite rise" in the number of Indian and Chinese corporations recruiting students from college campuses, Richard said. "I've had several Indian companies and a few from China contacting me to plan a strategy to recruit people on [MIT's] campus over the next few years," he said.

While Indian companies have been actively recruiting on college campuses for two to three years, Chinese organizations have only been visible on campus since last fall, Richard added.

At Harvard, recruiters from Germany, India, Japan and Singapore have made visits, said Loredana George, director of the school's international experience program, citing as examples Japan's Shinsei Bank and Indian IT company Infosys.

But others schools, like Stanford, which is known for its strong engineering programs, have not seen foreign recruiters on their campus.

"We have U.S.-based corporations that have international locations," said Beverley Principal, assistant director of employment services at Stanford, "but we don't have companies from other countries."

Who they want

Traditionally, foreign recruiting has focused on attracting international students back to the home countries, Hamilton-Chandler said. But now, foreign companies are looking beyond nationals of their own countries when hiring in the United States.

"In some cases, [the companies are] looking to expand their global organizations or they want an international work force," Harvard's George said.

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But for ICICI's Mor, there was another reason to travel several thousand miles to recruit in the United States. Though he is a banker, he is seeking individuals who want to work on human development projects — in fact, his audience was comprised mainly of Wilson School graduate students interested in international development.

Mor predicts that the future growth of his bank will depend directly on the continual growth and development of India's economy, including the welfare of the poorest segments of Indian society.

Though Mor said that Indian students are "much brighter" in finance and engineering than U.S. students, who don't have the same "levels of technical competency," he added that Americans are more eager to work in human development jobs — which is precisely why he came to Princeton.