So, with senior year final semester underway, how has your student been doing on the job hunt? I never knew until my oldest was in college that the top NYC finance jobs were filled by January. With that being said,has the job hunt been successful and are you and your student happy with your college involvment and choice in this endeavor?
What type of job and major? Many interviews?
My understanding is that Wall Street jobs are filled in early fall after summer internships. My son had offers (not Wall Street) starting in October and made his decision in later November.
Gotta love the military for eliminating this issue. OTOH, our son went through a ton of stress senior year over whether or not he’d get his first-choice branch and subsequently passed that stress on to us. We’ll always have issues with the military, but so much of the common angst over things like job security, leadership opportunities, good pay/benefits and such are resolved by this choice. It’s not for everyone, but it does have its upside.
Interesting that almost all of our son’s close high school friends are now on Wall Street. During his senior year in college, two of these friends reached out to him to see if he’d be interested in joining them at the firm they were headed to. (They didn’t seem to understand the nature of his military commitment.) In any case, all of these kids were “recruited” early senior year which fits with the OP’s comment about finance jobs being filled early. But, I will also add that all six of them interned at the firms that hired them, and almost all of them had parental connections with these firms and never doubted where they’d end up.
ETA: @hzhao2004’s post confirms the internship edge if not the connection angle.
I would expect most Choate students end up on Wall Street.
My s’s are engineers, and their job offers were received in the fall on their Senior year. Neither chose offers from internships, but instead attended campus job fairs. The schools had job/internship fairs in the fall and again in the spring, but the job opportunities came from the fall fairs. As an aside, older s actually didnt take the job offers from the job fair. He had offers but had an opportunity elsewhere that he chose at that time.
I’m not there yet but my D has plenty of friends graduating this year. At least in engineering, everyone she knows had at least one offer from co-op or internships and then others from the Fall job fair, which at Purdue is in September. She doesn’t know any seniors without offers. There is another job fair this month and in April but those tend to be more for internships and Co-ops.
Among my kid’s group, good students got accepted at their choice of graduate or professional schools. Ones who were looking for work or didn’t get into their desired programs, found good job options. Job market is strong, even if a gradate won’t get job of his/her choice, they won’t face unemployment.
It’s my daughter’s last semester in college. She’s a photography/art history major. She assures me she will visit the school’s career center and that she will be OK.
She knows she can stay with us for free through August, and then she needs to pay us rent or be on her own. It will be interesting to see what she does. She’s sharp and personable, so I think she will be fine.
My D was offered an exceptionally well paid job back in early November, but she is regarding it as her back up plan. She is going to keep looking and has other job interviews scheduled. Many of her friends are only just gettting started.
Our S received a very attractive offer last summer. We worked with him to evaluate the offer with the help of some CC’ers who live in the area. We learned two things: first is that the COL in the San Francisco Peninsula area is crazy, and second is that the pay packages offered by the companies is equally crazy. In the end, he’s opted to stay in school for an additional year to get his Masters.
Of his classmates that are looking for employment, all have accepted offers.
DS was offered a position he sought out himself (no previous internship, not at a college fair) in late November and he accepted. I think the variety of summer positions he had held helped him know what he wanted. He had sent out about 20 resumes after the job fair on campus but this was the one he was most interested in (type of EE work, geographic location, pay, benefits, etc).
As an aside, neither of my s’s are still in their first jobs. Older s graduated right at the time of the economic crash, and the company he was first with closed after he was there a year and a half. He has had other opportunities, took a job in our metro area after that one failed (and met his now wife here) but is now on the opposite coast. So things happen for a reason, and remind your kids, their first job is not their last job.
Younger s stayed with his first company for about 2 years, but then had an opportunity he couldn’t refuse, which also was coordinated with plans his now wife was making for grad school.
So again, encourage your kids to remember to look/think long term, not just short term.
Yes, @jym626 .My D is already planning to use her job offer, should other things fall through, as a way to save money and get experience. She as no intention of making a career out of it.
I should add that many of her friends who are only just looking for jobs have already filled out apps for grad schools, PhD programs, or scholarships such as Fulbright. Not all seniors are heading right into jobs.
My younger D graduated last year but I remember how stressed she was because all of her friends in finance had jobs by the fall and her ‘industry’ doesn’t hire til Spring at the earliest . It was nuts! Because her “ industry” if you’d call it that is healthcare; she was a nursing major. And there was no chance she would have any problem finding a job. We assured her multiple times and of course she had tons of offers and had her pick of jobs but it had still felt weird to her to be the only one without a job lined up in January of senior year.
My economics major daughter accepted a job offer in the fall from the company that she interned at last summer. This is a large financial institution, though not on Wall Street.
congrats to all of you with your kids finding jobs. Most parents who are in the process of their kids picking their schools or who have underclassman will be glad to hear of these positive stories.