October 2013 – Page 3 – Penn & Beyond

Fall is Here!

by Crissy Iglesias, Graduate Assistant for the College Team.

Fall is here! You can feel it in the air: the cooler breezes, the colorful leaves swirling down around you, and possibly the most obvious sign: the number of seniors finding themselves anxious about OCR. When it seems like everyone around you is pursuing OCR, it can be hard to step back and gain some perspective. As a counselor new to Career Services, I, too, have noticed the student emphasis on OCR during Fall semester. However, I’m also armed with some helpful stats to illustrate that OCR doesn’t have to be the single determinant of success in your job search.

As you’ll see from our 2012 Career Plans survey report, only 28% of seniors found their jobs through OCR. Even more tellingly, 45% of seniors received their full time job offers from January through August (another 3% received their offers from September through November). So if you’re feeling behind on interviewing or receiving an offer, please don’t worry! Statistic don’t lie: you’re in the majority.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that typically, OCR attracts a very specific type of employer: usually those from the financial services and consulting industries. These industries know their recruiting needs very early on because they follow a set timetable of 1-2 years for graduates to stay in their entry level positions. For full-time positions, most other industries don’t start recruiting until the beginning of the Spring semester. If consulting and financial services aren’t your thing, then you can relax a little bit. However, it’s still important to be on top of your job search in Fall semester, but you can pursue this in other ways. Research companies or organizations that you’re interested in and try to learn more about what they look for in candidates. Network through conducting informational interviews or attending company information sessions. Take advantage of our resume and cover letter reviewing services, schedule an appointment to discuss your job search, or you can even drop by for a shorter walk-in appointment. We’re here to help!

Continue reading “Fall is Here!”

Wharton Undergraduate Class of 2013 Career Plans Survey Now Available!

Last weekend was Family Weekend, and it was great to see so many parents, grandparents, siblings, and others on campus. Career Services held an open house for families and, as usual, we received lots of questions about the outcomes of Penn graduates. Four years at Penn (or any university, for that matter!) is a huge commitment of both time and financial resources, so it is understandable that people are eager to learn more about where our graduates go and what they do when leaving Penn.

The Career Services staff recognizes the importance of making such outcome data available, so we spend a lot of time collecting and analyzing data on what our students do while at Penn (during the summers) and also after leaving Penn (in both our Career Plans Postgraduate Surveys and our Alumni Surveys.) You can see all of our surveys here:
http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/reports.php

I recently finished analyzing the data from the Wharton Undergraduate Class of 2013. The class as a whole fared extremely well. Here are a few of the major findings:

88.9% of respondents were employed and 4.4% planned to pursue additional education.
The average starting base salary was $67,986. The range for students accepting full-time jobs was $28,000 – $120,000.
The average student had 11.5 first-round interviews and received 2.2 job offers.
Of the students who reported accepting jobs, 74.9% accepted them during the fall semester ended and 90% accepted before graduation. 5.7% of students reported they were still seeking opportunities as of our last follow-up in September 2013.

You can access the complete survey for the Wharton Undergraduate Class of 2013 here: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/files/WHA_2013cp.pdf.

Parents’ Weekend

Career Services is currently holding an open house for parents and students as part of Penn’s Parents’ Weekend activities.

Comeby and meet our career counselors, learn about our services and enjoy some light refreshments.

Pat Rose, director of Career Services, will be offering a talk to parents in our conference room at 2:15 and 3:30pm. Come early and grab a seat!

Day in the Life: Google+ Education Partnerships Lead

Have you Googled all the careers Google offers? In case you haven’t, they offer quite the array of paths. Not only do they offer careers in sales/marketing, software development, product development (like their nifty Google Glass), they have paths focused on community relationships and education. What better way to learn about their work in communities, and whether that is a path that may fit your interests, than to hear first-hand from a Penn alum who works in that area? We couldn’t think of a better way, either. Which is why we’re excited to welcome Lisa Jiang (WH ’08) to @PennCareerDay on Tuesday, October 15th and learn about her role as Google+ Education Partnerships Lead. To learn more about Jiang, read her bio below and be sure to follow her on the 15th!

In her five years with Google, Lisa Jiang has gained experience across marketing, strategy & operations, and product, working on both B2B and consumer products (Search, Maps, GoogleX, and AdWords). In her current role as Google+ Education Partnerships Lead, Lisa works closely with partners like NASA, National Geographic, and The White House to provide new educational experiences for learners young and old on Google+. Leading a Partnerships team that spans K-12, STEM, higher education, and maker/DIY, Lisa is passionate about the intersection of education and technology, and about providing access to educational resources through tools like Google+.

Get Lucky

This week I attended a wonderful panel discussion featuring alumnae who were all varsity athletes. They discussed the success they have achieved in a variety of fields, and described how their experience as student athletes prepared them for their professional lives.

One panelist made the following comment (I am paraphrasing): everyone’s career is the result of chance, typically a chance meeting with someone who introduced the person to a field, a company or an opportunity. Although it may not seem to be true when everyone you know is purposefully interviewing in OCR, the fact is that we end up in our life’s work by happenstance. In fact, there is a wonderful book that describes this: Luck in No Accident: Making the Most of Happenstance in your Life and Career by Krumboltz and Levin. Their Happenstance Learning Theory attempts to put clients in a position to transform unplanned events into learning opportunities.

This is what we try to do in our work with Penn students. I myself do not believe in any kind of magic matching system that takes answers you provide on an instrument or survey and determines what is your best career fit. Such exercises may well be valuable in your self-assessment, as a way to learn more about your strengths, but they do not have The Answer, or the perfect match.

By all means have a plan, at least for the short term. But be open to opportunities, ideas, directions that present themselves to you. Branch Rickey of Brooklyn Dodgers (and Jackie Robinson) fame once said, “Luck is the residue of design.” That is undoubtedly true. It is important to prepare yourself, and to plan. But luck can present itself in many guises, and may be hard to recognize. Be alert to opportunities as you face them, this year, and throughout your career, so you can make the most of them. May you be lucky, again and again.