AGA Today
Class of '07
Gets Plenty Of Job Offers
By ERIN WHITE
The Wall Street Journal
January 23,
2007; Page B1
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."