<p>I’ve decided to try for an internship and have come to the realization that I’ve not heard much about CU’s career services office. How helpful is Columbia with regard to getting internships (and job placement after graduation, for that matter)?</p>
<p>I think the conventional wisdom is that career services is OK for finance type jobs simply because a lot of the companies in that sector come on campus to do job fairs and interview. The people working in career services are low-paid kids who know nothing and have no experience, and you're pretty much going to have to do the legwork on your own for most jobs/internships. That isn't to say that is hard to get them.</p>
<p>Somewhat related--I remember last year at Commencement, athletes were given a booklet full of names and contact info of employers (who I assume were all Columbia athletes as well).</p>
<p>c2002 is too pessimistic by half here. i've spent a lot of time with CCE recently and here's my two cents:</p>
<ul>
<li>No question, CCE is best at Finance and Consulting jobs. They're the ones most kids are most interested in, because of the career opportunities they carry as well as the salaries.</li>
<li>The actual officers at CCE are actually very, very good at what they do. I've had personal meetings with Yuri Shane, Vanita Sharma, and others, all of whom are clearly highly skilled professionals. If you do a taped practice interview, or a practice case study, or discuss career options, they're very helpful. As usual with any expert, the more specific your questions, the easier they find it to provide advice.</li>
<li>In contrast, the support staff at CCE is sometimes frighteningly incompetent. There are times I feel like it is their job to prevent you from getting in touch with the actual officers there. They are the ones that give CCE its reputation for red tape and lack of actual value.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>So, if you are pushy enough to get past them, you can actually get a lot of useful help from CCE. In addition to finance and consulting, they have plenty of connections in the software / IT world, in government, in the nonprofit sector (although nothing like Princeton's Project 55), and engineering firms. The Preprofessional office is good at law school and med school admissions. They're not so good at lower-octane industries like insurance, advertising, education, trades, etc.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Glad to know you had good experiences with career services. I wonder if they got better over the last few years, because my sentiments were pretty widely held when I was there.</p>
<p>Oh, you're completely right that that's the popular opinion. The thing is, the vast majority of students get turned off by the support staff without ever getting to the highly competent officers they're protecting.</p>
<p>It shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone that the biggest problem with a portion of the Columbia administration is customer service. Been to the cheery souls at the Registrar lately?</p>
<p>Why is the bureaucracy like that? Why is it not being fixed? It really seems to be one of Columbia's worst problems from what I've read.</p>
<p>that's a more subtle question than most people really understand. The distinction is just like for Career Services, only broader. I worked for Housing & Dining for 4 years and this is my experience across all student-services departments:</p>
<p>Senior Management: These people have chosen to insulate their opinions and actions from the student voice. They set policy on the basis of bottom-line considerations and their positions are thanks to university executives, not the "will of the people". In particular, the VP of student services, Lisa Hogarty, came over from running Facility Operations at St. Luke's Hospital, and her background is in hospitals and hotels - she has no prior experience with universities. So, as a result of being incompetent, her political strategy is to do whatever will please the deans she answers to the most. Her underlings - for example, the Registrar, or Bursar, or Lerner Hall management, or Facilities - are similarly politically structured, and their motivation is bottom-line dollars, not student satisfaction.</p>
<p>Student-facing Officers: These are the professional university employees who deal with students on a day-to-day basis. Examples: Associate Directors and Managers of Housing & Dining, your friendly Academic Advisors, the people running Residential Programs over at SGA (i.e. Kevin Schollenberger's underlings), and yes, the officers at CCE. These people genuinely care about serving the interests of students. Every time their policy allows them some flexibility to bend the rules where appropriate, they will do it. Surprisingly often, when they have the chance to go the extra mile - to communicate better, or devote more of their time, or listen harder to interest groups, etc - they will do it. Some of them are more sticklers for going "by the book" than others, but by and large most of them can do favors as long as they justify it to their bosses as being both fair and in the interest of the student body. They tend to work here because they either have experience in higher education or love the atmosphere. Many are former Columbia students themselves.</p>
<p>Support Staff: By and large, these are the source of the dissatisfaction with columbia's bureaucracy. It's not that they're mean-spirited, it's that they just don't care. By and large, they are all New Yorkers with a give-a-s**t attitude, working for $7-10 / hour, and their goal is to do the absolute minimum their day requires, take an hour and a half lunch break, and go home at 4:50. As a result, student inquiries that would sound like common sense to most get met with the reaction of "that's not the way we do things here". Many students don't have the time or inclination to get pushy, so they just get disaffected.</p>
<p>If I've learned one thing about dealing with large organizations as a result of my 4 years at Columbia, it's that being pushy will often result in you getting what you want. The way to deal with these people is to talk to their (salaried, officer) bosses, in a professional manner - set up a meeting, come well-dressed, and present things in an orderly and logical fashion. I've talked my way into some pretty sweet arrangements as a result.</p>
<p>I hope that makes things a little clearer.</p>
<p>Yes, that's an absolutely wonderful answer. It's so interesting to understand how things work there. I mean, I'm sure if it were an easy issue to fix that it would have been taken care of a while ago. Well, hopefully it's getting better!</p>
<p>Thanks again for your detailed and thoughtful response, Denzera.</p>
<p>That's a great response and sums it up quite well. But I do think that some of the "Student-facing Officers" fall into the "Senior Management" mentality. Some of them might care to some degree about serving the interests of the students but are far more concerned with kissing up, covering their arses, not plssing off anyone above them, etc. so they can score promotions and work their way up the bureaucracy and into senior management.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Been to the cheery souls at the Registrar lately?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'd rather go to the DMV. Actually, I was able to take advantage of their stupidity and laziness one time by getting into a full class that I couldn't register for by on the SSOL website.</p>