It’s getting to be that time of year again. For me, this time of year is not associated with holiday spirit but with the inevitable fight to find a summer internship or, this year, a job. This task always starts out very well and with high hopes. You find 10 possibilities at great organizations where your r‚sum‚ and experience match exactly the type of person they’re looking for. And then you, a rising senior, do not even get an interview. And why is it, you might ask, that a qualified applicant at one of the best universities in the nation gets totally shot down? You don’t have any connections.
Connections are everything in the world of job hunting. “It’s not who you are; it’s who you know” holds heartbreakingly true. Family connections are what help Bob, the incoming freshman, get that prestigious internship with the stock exchange that you failed to land an interview for, despite your superior qualifications. His uncle happens to know the guy who rings the bell to open the stock exchange. He is hired without an interview.
And this year for the Class of 2006, the stakes go up another notch. Unless you are one of the lucky ones who knows exactly what you are doing with the next 24 years of your life and are interviewing for medical schools or sending out scores to law schools, you are now in the job pool. And if you are even luckier, you are within the padded confines of the business school application process, where you have already been hired. Ten months in advance. For the rest of us poor souls, job applications are not even available for another few months.
Okay. Let’s look at this positively. There are a few people who are hired on their own merits – very few. And they do just as well as people who are hired through the other process of “networking.” It’s just that first step of getting your foot in the door. Whether it’s for an internship or a real-life job, employers are just looking for an easy way to whittle down their applicant pool. And really, can you blame them? Well, yes – but in their defense, connections are a quick, painless way to pick an intern. And they already have an added reference.
Rather than just spend half a page complaining about it, is there any way to break this cycle? After talking to friends, bosses and my parents, the consensus is no. If you want to get hired quickly and painlessly, it helps to know someone. And having the title CEO follow their name would be particularly helpful. The Career Center even admits to this unfortunate part of getting your foot into the door of the real world by arranging many “networking” opportunities for internship and job seekers. In my opinion, these networking events are very helpful, because the school is basically saying, “We know you can’t get a job on your own, but we have a huge amount of alumni who might know someone who knows someone in a field that you’re interested in. Please yak it up with them.”
So what am I going to do about it? Apply to hundreds, possibly thousands of jobs. Maybe look into finding the address of the Speaker of the House. And start walking his dog. And maybe I’ll have a job by the time my roommates graduate from Harvard Medical School.
Dara is a senior in Arts & Sciences.