Get a Job

Career Planning

Career - the very word stares at us constantly from employment ads to magazine covers. Somehow we are nothing without one. Our career choices and changes have a profound impact on our lives. Career options are continually explored. And then, once we're well embarked on our careers, there is the seemingly inevitable midlife career crisis. Young children are enrolled at the proper pre-school so that they will be able to attend the appropriate boarding school in order to be accepted at an Ivy League institution all in order to have a good career (and be able to pay for it).

Guiding Dartmouth students through this complex journey into the "real world" is the Career and Employment Services, better known as CES. An outgrowth of the College Placement Service (which was established in 1945 to help Dartmouth men returning from World War II find employment), CES now includes career planning and development, graduate and pre-professional advising, and a clearinghouse for leave-term opportunities.

Far more than simply a center for recording entry-level jobs, leave term table-waiting opportunities, test scores and faculty recommendations, CES serves to help students integrate their varied undergraduate experiences. As director Skip Sturman '70 explains:

"Dartmouth can be a series of unconnected experiences classes, offcampus programs, extracurricular activities leaving a lot of missing links. By taking students through a process known in the trade as 'guided self-discovery,' we look at their interests, identify some of their skills, help them define their values, and urge them to explore some of their interests during leave terms." Rather than push students toward a specific profession, Sturman and his staff help undergraduates recognize patterns in their choices and values and then see how these relate to specific careers. Information about careers is available through CES's extensive library and hands-on through a variety of intern experiences with concerns ranging from Aetna and IBM to the McNeil-Lehrer Report and the Whitney Museum.

Since Dartmouth students are available year-round and for periods of longer than just the summer, they are exceedingly attractive to employers as interns. CES maintains a listing of over 1200 leave-term opportunities available to the 800 or so undergraduates who will be off-campus during any given term. Despite the constant turnover of interns, employers are generally wellpleased with their Dartmouth students. Stephen Rhoades, a senior economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, readily commends his contingent of interns for "providing invaluable research assistance on numerous projects," (including, he notes with a smile, his collection of Dartmouth T-shirts, beer mugs, and other memorabilia). Echoing Rhoades' sentiments, Susan Wanner of Reader's Digest comments, "Our Dartmouth interns have consistently and substantially contributed to our editorial research department. They have all been hardworking, eager, and capable ... a pleasure to have at Reader's Digest."

Likewise, interns reap substantial rewards from both meaningful and menial work experiences, Reader's Digest hired two Dartmouth interns after they graduated. At the Boston law offices of Hale and Dorr, students get an accurate view of what the day-to-day work of a lawyer is really like, despite the fact that they are only mail clerks snd messengers, positions for which they are admittedly overqualified.

By urging students to check out their interests during leave terms, CES serves as a bridge to reality for students plagued with ivory-tower out-looks: Dr. Evalyn Hornig, an associate director, is responsible for overseeing graduate and pre-professional advising. She has quite a reputation for asking would-be doctors if they have actually spent time in a hospital dealing with the needs of the ill. Considering the cost of graduate education, questions such as hers are more than useful; they are crucial, and one had better realize before one starts that not all lawyers live like F. Lee Bailey or that being disgusted by blood does not portend well for a pre-med.

As a result of this ongoing exploration of career opportunities, current Dartmouth undergraduates are generally more successful than their predecessors or peers at other colleges at interviewing and in obtaining leave and long-term employment. One recent undergraduate had interned with Mobil Oil, Reader's Digest, and HEW while another had completed a brokerage training program, in French, at the Societe Generale de Courtage d'Assurances, and yet another had worked at three different banks, as well as the Chicago Board of Trade. With stars in their eyes, students still look for the idyllic permanent position where, according to Sturman, "they will work with people in a helping capacity, have a great deal of responsibility, be challenged, command respect, and earn a fair amount of money." In addition, he says, "The ideal position would allow for creativity and independence, and leave time for family life in between business trips abroad."

These Utopian indulgences aside, Dartmouth men and women have a lot to offer. Typically, he or she will have spent at least three months living overseas, will have worked in at least one business, non-profit, or political setting (if not all three), will be fluent in a foreign language, and will be familiar with computers. With students having these qualifications, it is easy to understand why more than 100 recruiters will brave Hanover's winter weather this year to interview 400 seniors. Carolyn Kohn '76, who returns to Hanover annually to interview for Banker's Trust, comments that Dartmouth students "tend to be more poised, more polished, and better informed than other applicants." She adds that although they interview at all the Ivies, Dartmouth is the only place where they have been able to offer a position to at least one senior each year.

According to CES associate director Burton Nadler, 122 members of the Class of 1983 received job offers as a direct result of on-campus interviews. Well over 400 students annually participate in Winter Term Recruiting although only about 30 percent of Dartmouth job-seekers find employment through this program. Many other positions (approximately 30 percent) are obtained through direct inquiries to employers. Each year, the gap continues to widen between students seeking employment directly after graduation (60 percent last year) and students going directly on to graduate or professional school (23 percent). (Editor's Note: Some plans are hard to classify, such as the '84 who plans to go into beer brewing and is off to England to obtain a degree in brewing science.) The vast majority of Dartmouth students still plan to eventually obtain a graduate degree, as did their predecessors 20 years before.

It is estimated that of each class of freshmen entering Dartmouth, 25 percent have decided that they will pursue careers in medicine. However, by senior year, only 10 percent actually file applications. The same reductions, while tougher to document for pre-law or pre-business types, generally are comparable, at least in terms of applying directly to law or business schools. Although flunking organic chemistry or macroeconomics may account for some of the changeover, much is due to the continuing barrage of career information sessions presented by CES, with some very "savvy" assistance from alumni.

Over the past five years, more than 150 alumni have returned to Hanover to share their views of life after Dartmouth. Undergraduates are eager to know what certain careers involve, how one gets them, the connection with their current studies, the drawbacks, the frustrations, the effects on family and social life and of course, the pay scale and "perks." Alumni from the Classes of 1922 to 1983 have returned to discuss topics ranging from "Careers Using Foreign Languages" to "Careers in Planning, Design and Building." They have covered both the traditional "Banking Before Graduate School?" and "Law Alumni Day" and the less traditional "I Love Children Career Conference" and "Careers for Pragmatic Idealists Letting Your Conscience Be Your Guide." The Class of 1961 established a fellowship so that two of its members may share their careers with undergraduates each fall. And the Class of 1978 sent a dozen members to the College to present a five-year-out perspective on "Alternatives for the Future."

It is not only through visits to the Hanover Plain that CES taps into the tremendous resource of the alumni body. Dartmouth clubs throughout the country have established job development and career advisory officers to serve as liaisons with CES. Through the tireless efforts of these officers, CES has been able to locate leave-term and entry-level positions throughout the country and establish a network of more than 2000 "career advisers." In this way, Dartmouth undergraduates are able to get solid advice about both their career paths and the places where they would like to be. They are also able to get perspectives ranging from entry-level to the top of the heap.

With CES's wealth of information, it is inevitable that alumni will want to tap into their resources when faced with career changes and choices. Although Sturman avers, "We wish we could do more for the alumni," CES is not adequately staffed to provide as thorough a resource as they might like for older graduates. Alumni are, however, welcome to utilize the Career Planning Resource Library in College Hall, which has videotapes of past programs. CES and local job officers can also provide names of career advisers who might be able to help. One recent panel member had contacted Sturman less than a year before, after losing his job. Obviously, the assistance paid off doubly he located a new position and later returned to share his career saga with students.

With the growing push for career satisfaction and the continuing questions about the validity of a liberal arts education, it is apparent that CES will help future Dartmouth students to know themselves to find meaningful work and recognize where they want to be long before they find themselves out in the wide, wide world.

The CES library is impressive.

Sometimes it's leafing through books...

sometimes it's looking and listening.

Anyway, it's all here at CES.

Nancy Wasserman '77, no stranger to regular readers of the Magazine, has worked as a free-lance photographer and writer since her graduation from the college.