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Class of '07 Gets Plenty of Job
Offers
By Erin White, from
The Wall
Street Journal Online
Employers are diving back into the fountain of youth.
This year is shaping up as the strongest for college
recruiting since the downturn earlier this decade, colleges report.
Traditionally heavy recruiters, including management consulting firms,
investment banks and accounting firms, are intensifying college
recruiting efforts. They're also facing more competition from other
employers in such fields as technology, consumer products, government
and even nonprofits.
Employers plan to hire 17% more graduates from the class
of 2007 than they got from the class of 2006, according to the National
Association of Colleges and Employers. That would make this year the
strongest job market since 2000-2001, the association says. More than
half of the surveyed employers said they planned to increase hiring;
only 5% planned a decrease. Salaries were forecast to rise 4.6%,
according to another survey by the same group.
"We now again have the nice problem of having to help
some of our students choose among multiple job offers," says Jack
Tinker, director of recruiting at the career office of Connecticut
College. Mike Hendel, interim director for the career center at Carleton
College in Northfield, Minn., says he, too, is counseling students
deciding among "two or three really good offers."
Behind the increased recruiting are a relatively strong
economy, growing business demands and heady corporate profits. Employers
created about 1.8 million additional jobs in 2006. Average weekly
earnings rose 4.5%, compared with a 3.2% increase in 2005.
Some companies are also planning for future work-force
needs as the baby boomers' retirement looms. Employers "are finally
starting to get the message that [they] really need to do more" with
college recruiting as baby boomers age, says Dan Black, director of
campus recruiting for the Americas at Ernst & Young LLP.
At New York University, close to 40% of seniors have job
offers, which is more at this point in the year than in any year since
1998-99, estimates Trudy Steinfeld, executive director of career
development. Salaries are up about 5% to 10% since last year, and
companies are offering bigger signing bonuses -- up to $10,000, she
says.
At the University of Chicago, 119 companies conducted
on-campus interviews with seniors during the fall quarter, compared with
93 a year earlier. Employers posted 180 jobs in that quarter, up from
135 a year before. Recruiting mainstays such as management-consulting
and financial-services firms are active at Chicago, but so are
nonprofits and public-service groups: About 15 such organizations have
expressed interest in an April career fair, compared with none at this
time last year, says Meredith Daw, co-director of career advising and
planning services.
At a November job fair in Boston, the 12 sponsoring
schools turned away at least five employers clamoring for space. At the
University of California, Los Angeles, officials squeezed 10 additional
employers into a job fair last week that they had initially limited to
100 employers. Many of the companies attended a fall fair but need more
recruits.
Christopher Bothur, a Connecticut College senior, in the
fall accepted a job in an analyst-training program at Deutsche Bank AG.
Earlier, he had spoken briefly with the bank about a possible summer
internship, but he spent the summer working for the United Nations in
China.
When he returned to school, the bank called him, whisked
him to New York for interviews and offered him a position that will
include stints in New York, London and China. "The job kind of fell into
my lap," he says. Mr. Bothur says his base salary alone will be roughly
twice as much as it would have been at the think-tank jobs he was
considering.
College career counselors say the tone of campus
recruiting doesn't approach the dot-com era frenzy, among employers or
students. Students saw older friends and siblings suffer through the
downturn earlier this decade, and they understand that the job market
could tank again. And while the economy as a whole is strong, sectors
such as housing and autos are suffering.
One employer contributing to the rising demand on
campuses is accounting and consulting firm Deloitte & Touche. The firm
is recruiting about 3,300 seniors for full-time positions in the U.S.
this year, up from fewer than 3,100 last year, says Diane Borhani, head
of U.S. campus recruiting.
To attract candidates, Deloitte is raising salaries and
signing bonuses. Full-time starting base salaries in the U.S. are up
about 5% on average to as much as roughly $60,000 in certain markets.
Signing bonuses for new college hires in consulting range from $6,000 to
$10,000 this year, up from $4,000 to $8,000 last year, Ms. Borhani says.
Employers also hit campuses earlier. Yum Brands Inc.,
which markets restaurant chains including Taco Bell and KFC, sent
students welcome-back postcards and emails in August, the earliest it
has ever started campus recruiting efforts. "We tried to be there
literally the day that they got to school," says Misty Reich, Yum's vice
president of global talent management. Recruiters and senior executives
soon followed.
Companies are also trying to make their recruiting
efforts more personal. The management consultancy Boston Consulting
Group sent more young employees to campus this fall to talk one on one
about life at the firm.
Personal outreach went a long way to recruit Wayne
Vonder Heide, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, who recently accepted a management-training position
at Kraft Foods Inc. He interviewed with about a dozen companies last
fall, mostly for sales positions. "Just seeing how many jobs are out
there was really encouraging," says Mr. Vonder Heide, an advertising
major with a business minor. He was confident enough in his prospects
that he spurned follow-up interviews with about four companies.
Around Thanksgiving, Kraft offered him a post in
Cincinnati. Management trainees contacted him and the company invited
him to tour the office there. He met his would-be co-workers; one took
him around the city, including neighborhoods popular with young
professionals. "I could really see myself getting up every day and going
to this office and getting along well with all of these employees," Mr.
Vonder Heide says. "That was a deciding factor."
Email your comments to
erin.white@wsj.com.
-- January 25, 2007 |
