It was easy for people like me—freshmen, liberal arts majors—to ignore 2007’s rumbles of a subprime mortgage meltdown. I barely blinked in December when Bear Stearns, one of the largest underwriters of mortgage bonds in the nation, announced losses of $854 million. But for Georgetown students readying themselves to enter the banking and finance job market this fall or next, these economic tremors are making the employment search an uncertain task.
Rick Calle (COL ’08) is one of the more fortunate. After a spring recruitment period his junior year and a subsequent summer internship in the financial sector, he has netted a coveted entry-level position that he can still count on for the fall. In contrast, students who had lined up positions at Bear Stearns have since had their job offers rescinded, and others planning to work for Citigroup have been warned by recruiters of a possible revocation before they even get a chance to decorate their cubicle. According to Calle, Citigroup has said they will offer stipends upwards of $25,000 if job offers don’t work out, but that still leaves seniors feeling insecure about their future.
“When the markets went sour toward the end of the summer 2007, a lot of the kids who didn’t get summer internships and were banking on fall recruiting found themselves in a tough situation,” Calle said. “They’ve had to kind of scramble at the last minute because the job opportunities just aren’t there anymore.”
Goldman Sachs, Wachovia, Citigroup and others regularly recruit on Georgetown’s campus each spring, when juniors, specifically those pursuing careers in finance, seek summer internships that act as 10-week long interviews. But for students who don’t score a summer internship, fall recruiting becomes of the utmost importance—except that this fall, several companies came to campus to do interviews and didn’t extend any job offers at all. According to students who participated in the recruitment process, the companies came to maintain a relationship with Georgetown so that in better economic times, they will be able to hire again.
For students not planning to enter the financial sector, Richard Kirby, founder of Executive Impact, a career counseling company, warned against pursuing a career in a field that has remained stagnant in recent years.
“In my experience, technology corporations and the average company that hasn’t experienced very much growth is most susceptible to the boom/bust model of fluctuations in the economy,” Kirby said. “Right now, the healthcare and medicine industries are pretty much at the leading edge of growth.”
For many students, the previously-abundant $80,000 a year entry-level positions are now slipping away as investment banks and the financial sector downsizes. For students like me who will graduate in four years with a bachelor’s degree in English and a big question mark for where that will take me in today’s volatile economy, it’s beginning to look like graduate school is the answer.
