Healthy Job Prospects

Recruiting prospects for ILR School seniors remain strong, despite a sharp hiring downtown in some quarters nationally.

"Student anxiety is high, but we still have a healthy" job search market, said Regina Duffey Moravek, director of the ILR Office of Career Services.

Career opportunities in financial services might have dropped in recent months, but demand continues for human resources, consulting, labor relations, labor management and other skills with which ILR students graduate, she said.

"It's one of the benefits of a broad-based degree" – ILR graduates are qualified to compete in variety of fields, Duffey Moravek said. "Employers continue to tell me that ILR students have a perspective they can’t find anywhere else."

Forty employers – most of them corporate -- sent recruiters to ILR's career fair Oct. 21, she said.  That’s a 15 percent drop from the 47 employers represented a year ago. 

Non-profit and government employers typically do most of their hiring during the spring semester, said Duffey Moravek, who is also director of the ILR masters’ degree program.

Teach for America and the Peace Corps attended ILR's fall fair and received heavy student traffic, she said.

Anasstassia Baichorova, Teach for America recruitment director, said the economic slowdown will probably help her attract up to 80 Cornell seniors for two-year stints teaching inner-city students.

Forty-four May Cornell graduates signed on in 2008, she said. Despite the economy, corporations and graduate schools continue to offer two-year placeholders to Teach for America volunteers, she said.

Some attending the October career fair said recruitment by Fortune 500 corporations did not appear impacted by weakened hiring trends in some factors.

Many corporate employers’ strategies are to continue college recruiting in anticipation of baby boomer retirements in coming years, Duffey Moravek said.

Barbara Si, who received a master’s degree from ILR in May, returned to campus in October to recruit at ILR for her employer, Terex Corp., an international equipment manufacturer based in Connecticut.

Lauren Wein, ILR’09, said some students are skeptical about job offers extended during these tense economic times.  Some wonder, she said, “Is it going to be there in May?”

"There is," she said, referring to students who have received jobs offers, "that uncertainty."

Duffey Moravek noted that policies written by Cornell Career Services and followed by the ILR Office of Career Services "help ensure employers will not rescind" and include penalties for rescinding offers to students.