Career Forum to Include New Recruiters

In past years, students have complained that College-organized events meant to introduce them to life after Harvard have shown them too small a splice of the working world.

"When my brother and I went as students, it was either investment banking or consulting or bust," said Hadi Partovi '94 of the Career Forum, the annual fair for exploring job possibilities.

But this year, organizers of the forum and Career Week, a three-day event meant to introduce students to their options after graduation, are making an increased effort to broaden the fare of employment opportunities they present.

Career Week, in its third year, began on Tuesday with a panel entitled "Life after Harvard" and will culminate with the eighteenth annual Career Forum tomorrow.

Throughout the week, organizers--Harvard Student Agencies (HSA) and the Office of Career Services--are trying to include information about a diversity of fields, from entertainment to the computer industry.

"Last year [Career Week had] a very narrow focus," said Hector C. Bove '00, co-director of HSA's Center for Enterprise and a Crimson executive. "This year we tried to increase the scope of what is available to students."

Bove cited the "Life after Harvard" and the "Entertainment and Media" panels as evidence of the greater variety.

But Ian T. Simmons '00, who attended last night's panel on Social Enterprise, said that while he appreciates efforts to include more opportunities, he thinks organizers can do better.

"It seems like the College is trying to make some incremental changes to provide students with more opportunities to learn about public service," Simmons said. "But the College is still vastly under-serving and vastly under-challenging its students."

According to Judy Murray, Recruiting Program Director for OCS, the Career Forum will be more diverse than in past years, but not as varied as she had hoped.

In order to increase the number of opportunities available this year, Murray sent out letters to 70 different new companies inviting them to the forum, but only two responded.

Instead of having 20 to 30 new companies present as she had hoped, the forum will feature five to 10 additions. The forum will feature over 140 companies, and is expected to draw over 2,000 students

But Murray added that she has seen an increase in government job recruiters coming back to campus, and that the number of computer science and Internet companies represented has doubled this year.

According to Mark G. Heiman '00, President of the Harvard Investment Association, the forum is "a pretty good section of what the real world is like and what people from Harvard will end up doing."