<p>BTW - you can find sample.McKinsey hiring case study exams on line. They don’t require any real expertise or really any advanced analytical ability as far as I can tell. I wouldn’t trust new grad consultants myself, but I guess they fit somewhere on a xconsulting team.</p>
<p>Nope. “CC top school” grad. But it’s not been unusaually long yet, and several of her friends have jobs. Most went to tiny California Christian schools.</p>
<p>Good luck shrink’s D!</p>
<p>Thank you. She is pretty unhappy about it.</p>
<p>D 2012 unemployed, tutoring calculus/physics to HS kids locally, of her 20 HS friends, one working selling appliances, another working for parent, another working par time cashier retail. The remaining 17 are unemployed.</p>
<p>College friends about 60% unemployed 40% employed or soon to start jobs.</p>
<p>Son is working as a software engineer at the company he interned for last summer.</p>
<p>DS lucked out big time - had the right major at the right time and actually began work in his junior year and was able to complete the credits for the degree while doing so.</p>
<p>toblin, to answer your last question, the federal government is one place which hires these consulting companies (at least in DC). It seems to be the old defense of liberal arts degrees - they want people who can think. My D took a lot of quantitative classes, but she doesn’t think that she’ll be using those skills much on the job. No real expertise, just learn by working with a team.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, I googled consulting companies to see a list - one interesting item was average age. For a lot of them, it is 28-29, so they hire a lot of young people, but they must move on to other things when they get older.</p>
<p>@toblin—A lot of major companies you’ve heard of (Best Buy, DuPont, etc.), and the feds. I just hired in at a Fortune 500 consulting firm and moved to the DC area, and I have legitimately NO business experience. Instead, I had a hard science major with a liberal arts minor coupled with an extremely desirable/competitive internship. I questioned why they would want to hire me during the interview process and they flat out said that they like the way that science and tech majors think, they can teach the business or the finance or the IT knowledge, but you can’t teach the analytical thinking skills of STEM majors.</p>
<p>In my DH last position in state govt he hired a lot of consulting firms and most of the consultants are young as the job usually requires extensive travel and living Mon-Fri in a motel where the job is. Not a job conducive to family life, hence all the young hires. I would think the expertise they acquire make them excellent candidates for jobs after they worked for one for several years.</p>
<p>I’m a 2012 grad (history major). I was employed a few weeks after graduating at the company I interned at last year, first as an intern again and then in early August I got promoted into a “real” job.</p>
<p>Sorry-- the grammar police are screeching in my ears! Isn’t it “employed by” or “employed with”, not “employed at”?</p>
<p>… and “interned with”…
Sorry. Pet peeve.</p>
<p>There is nothing grammatically incorrect about saying someone is “employed at” a particular place. “Are you employed?” “Yes.” “Where?” “At the National Widget Company.” In other words, “at” is appropriate if you’re speaking of your “place of employment,” because you are employed “at” a place. Employed “by” is appropriate if you’re speaking more in terms of your employer, because you are employed “by” an employer.</p>
<p>Since my son is planning to apply to graduate school in Art History this fall, to begin next fall, the important issue is not whether he’s “employed” at a paying job, but whether he’s doing something productive in his field that furthers his experience and improves his chances of admission. He has had an unpaid internship at a well-known art gallery in Chelsea for the last month or so (which he was very happy to have, since even that kind of position is in high demand and by no means easy to get), but the work has consisted almost entirely of clerical work and calling clients, etc. So, even though he’s very good at it, it’s neither particularly fascinating nor particularly useful for him; it certainly doesn’t make the best possible use of his talents. </p>
<p>Therefore, he continued to apply to other positions, and was very fortunate last week to be offered an internship (which he immediately accepted) at a prominent New York City cultural institution, to do research and writing with respect to an extraordinarily important (both historically and artistically) photographic archive which was donated several years ago, and which will be exhibited to the public for the first time next year. It seems that he was competing largely against people already in graduate school; I think what made the biggest difference is that he was required to give three references, all of whom were Art History professors at the U. of C., and all of whom (as he was told at his interview) “raved” about him. So he’s extremely happy, and I’m extremely happy for him. This is way more important for his future than being “employed” somewhere – especially since photography is his field of greatest interest within Art History. </p>
<p>(Maybe I should have put this in the “bragging” thread, but so be it!)</p>
<p>I would venture to say 1/3 of my son’s friends didn’t gradauate in 4 years, so are still pursuing an undergrad degree. 1/3 are pursuing graduate degrees and 1/3 are working.
My son is in the graduate school group.</p>
<p>I believe you are employed by/with, but you work at…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I should amend that to say that the internship is four days a week, and that he just was offered and accepted, after a separate interview, a position as a gallery guide at the same institution one day a week. So I think he should be kept reasonably busy. I should also add that he’s living at home this year, so making money to pay rent is not an issue either.</p>
<p>No. Our S graduated with STEM degree from top 10 college and is still unemployed. He has 2.7 GPA, no internship and did not start job hunt until this summer. I am worried sick.</p>
<p>Donna, congrats to your S on the internship and hope he does well with grad school apps!</p>
<p>I was a journalism/polisci major and wound up in employer benefits/pension administration, including time at a big consulting firm. They liked my communication skills; they all too often hired techies and math majors who couldn’t write or speak to a group. (This company asked for my SAT scores – apparently they were surprised that journalism majors could score well in math!) In every job I’ve had, I’ve been able to leverage the writing and editorial skills into my work, whether or not those things were part of the original job responsibilities.</p>
<p>I realized while still in college that I was way too introverted to be a journalist. I had internships on the editorial side (academic press), but was not willing to live in NYC on $12k/year. Quickly came to the conclusion that while Vanguard (which was a 10 minute drive from our apartment) paid new liberal arts types about the same low salary, I would gain other useful skills and substantive subject knowledge that ultimately would get me into better positions.</p>