Job market better for seniors than last year

Job prospects for members of the Class of 2010 may be sunnier than those of members of the Class of 2009, as the economic climate begins to show some signs of stabilizing.

Though the only major investment bank to attend last Friday’s career fair at Dillon Gymnasium was J.P. Morgan, recruiters and students alike noted a distinct improvement over the condition of the job market last year.

“The prospects for undergraduates looking for full-time jobs are a lot better this year, though still far from what they were during the years leading up to the crisis,” said a recruiter from a prominent consulting firm who attended last Friday’s career fair and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of his company.

“As far as I know, the recession hasn’t effected a structural change in recruiting. I expect that this year will still be highly competitive, as fewer opportunities will exist for the same pool of graduates, but apart from that, firms will be targeting the same candidates as before,” the recruiter added.

Jennifer Asinugo, a representative from Anheuser-Busch, said that her company was not hiring at all last year. “Now there’s a lot of opportunity.”

The career fair came on the heels of a recent announcement from Alan Kreuger, a University professor and a former assistant secretary of the Treasury, that “labor-market conditions are not deteriorating as rapidly as they were in the first half of the year.”

Though employers cut 263,000 jobs in September, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor, that figure is down from the monthly averages of 691,000 and 428,000 in the first and second quarters of this year, respectively.

Tiffany Tang ’10, an economics major who has been an intern at financial companies in Hong Kong for the past two summer, echoed those sentiments.

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“When I was doing my internship interviews last year, they kind of managed the interviewees’ expectations,” she said, adding that she was told then that some companies were hiring an intern class that was only one-third or one-half the size of past years’.

At her banking job this summer, Tang said she could tell the markets were picking up, though not as much as most people had hoped for. Nonetheless, “people are definitely hiring this year,” she said. “The job market isn’t that bad.”

But other students weren’t as optimistic. Electrical engineering major Jonathan Newman ’10 said that prospects for interns were better than those for full-timers this year.

After last year’s crisis, he said, “I think employers are noticeably more conservative. They’re a lot more willing this year to hire interns, but are less willing to commit to full-time offers.”

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Newman said that he spoke to a variety of firms in both the financial and technical sectors and found that they were confident that the economy would recover, but were hiring interns with “a view to the future.”

An internship experience was crucial in preparing operations research and financial engineering major James Tate ’10 for a full-time job and clearly played a major role in his receiving a full-time offer, Tate said.

Tate, who was offered a position at the boutique investment firm he has interned at for the last two summers, was not optimistic.

“I think the job market will continue to be poor,” he said. “What we went through was a credit contraction, and regardless of the news, the crisis is still going on.”

Recruiters are also focusing on their companies’ core businesses, Newman said, and jobs outside that focus are much harder to come by.

“You could work for a finance company in a technical position or HR [human resources], but those jobs aren’t hiring anymore,” Newman explained.

Newman said that the current state of the economy compelled him to apply to jobs in areas he would not have previously considered, since “the chance of getting any particular position is going to be lower.”

“I’d say it used to be in the past that you could choose some particular field or goal,” he said, “but that kind of single focus might not be successful. It probably pays to apply to places in a number of different fields that you might not normally consider.”

Newman said he is applying to about 15 jobs in a variety of different fields, from financial firms to consulting companies to technology powerhouses.

Facing the current constraints on hiring, Princeton students are trying harder than ever to make themselves attractive to recruiters. Asinugo said resumes have changed in the past few years and “a lot of students now know the value of being involved in extracurriculars, developing leadership and getting out of their comfort zone.”

In general, she added, she sees “a lot more” on students’ resumes these days that’s “not just school.”

Tate added that he has noticed a marked difference in the behavior of recruiters on campus over the past few years.

“I think that recruiters now want substance and they want a degree that is more geared to what job you’re looking for,” he said. “I’m seeing more signs where they’re asking for an engineering degree,” he added, noting that he saw more inclusive posters from companies when he was a freshman.

Tate explained that he was recruited for his company by a headhunter who was “looking for a specific type of candidate, someone who was already involved with the stock market.” And Tate, who has made two or three stock trades per day since graduating from high school in 2006, fit the bill.

He also noted that he thought the University’s influence would be very helpful to prospective applicants. “I don’t think the job process is as bad as the news makes it because we go to Princeton,” he said. “I think Princeton students will be spared from a very bad job market.”