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StumbleuponOpportunities for business majors could be limited
Tough economy means students should embrace job flexibility and internship possibilities.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
DAYTON — University of Dayton senior Joe Recker planned to narrow his job search to the New York City and Chicago financial centers before the economic crisis.
Now the Ottawa, Ohio, native is keeping his options open. "I'm flexible to anywhere I can go to get a good job," he said.
Recker, who will graduate in May with a dual major in finance and accounting, has the credentials to land a top job. He is manager of UD's Davis Center for Portfolio Management, an investment technology classroom, and he interned last summer at J.P. Morgan in New York. "It's going to be possible to pull off a nice job, but it's definitely going to be harder than in years past," Recker said.
There is "a general consensus of anxiety" among UD business students about their job prospects, Recker said.
Jason Eckert, director of UD Career Services, noted a change this fall in campus recruitment from financial employers as the Wall Street markets plummeted.
Three financial institutions that had registered for a September career fair did not show up, Eckert said. An employer that was bringing eight UD students back for a second round of interviews instead notified the students that its management training program had been put on hold, pending a recovery with the economy.
UD has approximately 1,600 business students, about 400 of which are finance majors, said Matt Shank, dean of the School of Business Administration. Typically, more than half of UD's finance graduates take jobs in New York and Chicago, Shank said.
Shank has heard "relatively positive" things about the job prospects for his students. " 'Positive' may be a stretch, but I would say it's business as usual for our students in terms of being placed in jobs and in internships," Shank said.
Shank attributed that outlook to the Davis Center, which is both an introduction to real-world portfolio management tools and a leadership development program, as well as to UD's new Hanley Group Derivatives Trading Center, a hands-on financial learning center.
"Those things I think differentiate our students from the pack and the masses, if you will," Shank said. "So they're still able to secure jobs, even in this tough market."
Wright State University has about 1,300 junior and senior business students, plus another 500 freshmen and sophomores waiting to get into the business school, said Berkwood Farmer, dean of the Raj Soin of College of Business. Wright State has 180 finance majors, Farmer said.
"Most of my students that come here, particularly in accounting and finance, come from probably a 75-mile radius of Dayton," Farmer said. "The vast majority of them go to work here."
That's an advantage given the turmoil in major financial centers. "With the exception of a few situations, the financial institutions here in the Dayton area are not in trouble like many of the others are," Farmer said.
Wright State students benefit from the MTC Technologies Trading Center, which Business Week magazine in 2006 named as one of the Top 10 trading rooms in the nation. The trading center has made Wright State more visible to recruiters, because hiring students with trading room experience cuts down on training.
Enrollment in both UD and Wright State's finance programs remains strong, said Shank and Farmer respectively.
Farmer suggested that students follow Recker's lead by applying for internships before graduation and being flexible in their job search.
"A lot of employers view college interns as inexpensive labor, and as a great training ground for recruiting for full-time," UD's Eckert said. "It costs employers less to convert an intern to a full-time employee than it does for them to recruit from scratch for the same position."
Many finance majors appear to be taking a broader view of their options when entering the job market, Eckert said.
"As opposed to looking solely at traditional financial institutions, they're opening up their search to a wider variety of employers, perhaps including sectors of the economy that are still doing well that also require finance majors," he said.
