Center for Career Education busy during recession

With unemployment at an all-time high, business is booming at the Center for Career Education.

Despite the economic downturn, job offerings through the CCE are at their highest in history. Still, some students question how effective CCE really is.

“Have we noticed a change [due to the recession]? Absolutely. We got together and re-prioritized when we saw there were issues. Jobs are different and we have to work with students in a different marketplace,” Niamh O’Brien, the director of undergraduate career development, said.

Career development services have worked to bring seniors and alumni from a range of industries together in networking events like “Job Search Saturday.”

“You’ve got to have a lot of eggs in your basket at a time like this,” said Kavita Sharma, dean of the Center for Career Education.

According to CCE’s numbers, there are over 900 active job postings available on LionSHARE , the Columbia online recruiting system, at any given point during the semester. The positions range from entry-level, full-time, part-time, to internship opportunities. Sharma also pointed to numerous other resources for students, such as career fairs and industry panels, a vast alumni network, and mock interviews.

“There are opportunities. But the opportunities are going to go to the students who are actively engaged in the search,” Sharma said. “And that is more than looking in LionSHARE.”

As a freshman, Joanna Phillips, CC ’12, took advantage of CCE as soon as she set foot on campus. While she initially used it as a place to browse for babysitting jobs, Phillips eventually found her current job as a study assistant in the Equipment Room at the Graduate School of Journalism.

Irina Cuadra, CC ’12, found her internship through another of CCE’s services, the Columbia Arts Experience, which offers New York-based internships in the arts industry during the spring semester.

“The process was very smooth,” Cuadra said, describing an application and two-part interview procedure that landed her a job wokring in the archives of the Ballet Hispanico. “The CCE also helped me when I was applying to my summer internship at the Disney Studios. Even though it was only a10-minute walk-in appointment, the career counselor I met with was very helpful in making my cover letter as professional as possible.”

Senior Courtney Morrison, CC ’10, also secured a business development internship through the CCE as a sophomore, but hasn’t had much success through the CCE otherwise. Morrison has plans to enter the entertainment industry, and felt that the positions offered through LionSHARE and the On-Campus Recruiting program were geared more towards finance and consulting. “For internships, they seem to incorporate a wider range of fields, but when it comes to jobs, I haven’t seen very many.” Cuadra agreed. “For the career fair I went too, I felt like the majority of positions were finance jobs,” she said.

Sharma stressed that the positions offered through LionSHARE were not indicative of all the positions available through CCE and, moreover, available in the working world. “Each industry has a different hiring cycle, down to having different timelines. One of the reasons that you see so many finance, consulting, and technology [jobs] in September is because that’s their time. Whereas if you look at our spring program of events, you see more from the not-for-profit sector and media employers because this is their cycle.” Sharma explained that monitoring job availability in accordance with a shifting market is an important strategy for students looking to find the right job at the right time.

For seniors, opinions differ on how useful the CCE is in finding a job post-graduation. After receiving his degree, Pedro Duran, CC ’10, plans to work at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, continuing a clinical research position he obtained as a sophomore through the Office of Preprofessional Advising’s pre-health sector. “I think CCE is a great service, but I’ve never personally needed to use it,” he said. “It could be that those areas or fields of study that aren’t attached to an office—such as pre-health or pre-law—would need representation through the CCE.” Morrison also has no plans to use the CCE to search for an entry-level job, but mentioned a peer who continues to use their services after graduating last year. “I bumped into him at the CCE office. He said he was using it to job search, so I guess something [a job] fell through.”

O’Brien said that CCE continues to offer assistance to seniors in the summer after their graduation.

Brandon Storm, CC ’12, experienced frustration with the CCE after waiting a month to speak with a counselor. “At that point I was more interested in finding a research position, and the counselor I finally met with just told me to ask individual departments, which is not anything I needed to wait three to four weeks to hear. I imagine if I had asked them something more internship-geared, they would have been more helpful.”

For Storm, resources outside of the CCE have proven more helpful, such as the Office of Fellowship Programs and e-mails from the Office of Multicultural Affairs that offer opportunities in the field of policy and non-governmental organizations. “To me, LionSHARE is overwhelming. There’s forty bajillion jobs and I’m only interested in two percent of them, whereas with OMA e-mails, they’re relatively infrequent, but whenever I hear from them it’s all fairly relevant to what I’m interested in.”

emily.kwong@columbiaspectator.com