Issue date: 9/19/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Boyang Tang/DP Staff Photographer A sign at the engineering career fair in Towne Hall informs participates that the Lehman Brothers information session is cancelled. [Click to enlarge]

This week's chaos and upheaval on Wall Street has hit home for many Penn students, who are feeling the backlash in an increasingly competitive and unstable job search.

On-campus recruiting, Penn's main job hunting mechanism, is bearing the brunt of the financial industry's woes, according to Career Services counselors.

The financial sector is usually the most sought-after by Penn students, said Barbara Hewitt, associate director at Career Services, but this year, many have broadened their search to increase the likelihood of getting hired.

The shift in student opinion is a likely response to the decline in recruiting.

"Many of the organizations and firms that are still coming have either reduced their schedules or are uncertain about how many positions they can offer our students," Hewitt said.

And some well-known companies that have always made visits to campus aren't coming at all. Lehman Brothers ­- which was sold in part to international financial-services firm Barclays earlier this week - cancelled a planned session, according to Career Services.

"We've been trying to get the message across to students that this is the environment - the financial industry is hurting right now and students need to be more creative in terms of where to look for opportunities," she added.

To make the environment of OCR even more competitive, many of the firms have also explicitly said they will take most of their new hires from internship pools rather than conducting an external search.

Wharton senior Steven Okon, who has applied to about 40 firms, has taken this advice seriously and has begun applying to consulting firms in addition to investment banking firms, his primary interest.

The broader search that students like Okon are conducting is increasing the pressure among students who weren't even planning to look for finance jobs.

Continued...

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