Students get interviews in Bard’s new jobs program
By J.p. Lawrence
At 7:30 a.m., Bard student Juan Bages woke up, put on his suit and got on the subway toward the building on 48th and Broadway in which he hoped to find his future. He took the elevator to the eighth floor, got out, and took the stairs to the ninth. His suit was dark grey lined with navy blue. His tie was slim and purple over his white undershirt. He carried ten fresh copies of his resume.
At 9:25 a.m., Bages sat nervous in an empty waiting room, empty of people but filled with chairs: fifteen of them in a row with the names of large companies above them. At 9:30 a.m., Bages heard his name, saw two suits walking toward him, and shook hands with the people he was supposed to impress.
Bages, a senior and an Economics major, knew full well how unforgiving the job market is for a student just out of college. He knew that a great interview with one of those fifteen companies could land him a job before he even finishes his senior year. He knew that the Fall Recruiting Consortium offered him a chance. That’s why he signed up for the program one month earlier.
Bages learned about the consortium at an event hosted by the college’s Career Development Office, which assists students and alumni with career planning. The Fall Recruiting Consortium consists of six liberal arts colleges. Each year, these colleges work together to bring employers to one big interview extravaganza. These employers can then interview the seniors from each school for a paying job starting in the summer.
For students, the FRC offers a better chance of snagging an interview than going in alone. “When you send in your resume blind to a company, you are up against hundreds of applications,” April Kinser, CDO director said. “But with this, you have a chance of actually getting face-to-face time with the recruiter from a company that’s hiring.”
Kinser has been trying to get Bard into the club for eight years. There are only two or three top consortiums, Kinser said, and Bard was only able to get in this year after Middlebury dropped out. This year, Bard’s first in the program, twenty-six Bard seniors trekked to Manhattan for interviews.
Students began the process by looking at the jobs listed on the FRC website. Then they applied for interviews, with the CDO helping them with their resumes, cover letters and wardrobe. The CDO also conducted mock interviews to help students with the standard questions. Why are you interested in this company? What are you studying? How do you work in groups?
Questions like these echoed in Bages’ head as he left his interview at approximately 10:00 a.m. Immediately, he began reliving it in his mind. The nervousness he felt. The cheap, plastic folding table. The two suits playing good cop, bad cop. The way it was like a game. How good it felt to really nail that question where they asked what he knew about the company. The confusion he felt about that question that he answered in circles. “You tend to focus on the bad,” he said.
His next interview went more smoothly. The interviewer belonged to a small startup company. Her enthusiasm and friendliness had an affect on his interview.
“I was like, ‘Wow, words are coming out the way they should be coming out,’” Bages said. “I think maybe because it was a startup company, maybe they didn’t know how to be mean yet.”
The interview was short: fifteen minutes or so. “Pumped,” Bages left the interview carrying a case study, homework he was supposed to prepare in case he advanced to the second round of interviews. All that was left to do was wait for a response.
“It’s just very exciting that 26 seniors got invited for interviews, because even if they didn’t get a job offer right now, they have a chance to interview and meet a recruiter,” Kinser said. “And maybe that will pay off down the road.”
According to Kinser, the first consortium was a success and hopes to bring more employers to the party in the future.
“I think it’s good that Bard did FRC,” Bages said. “It’s going to give a lot of opportunities to Bard students in general. It’s a good experience. At least you can say you tried.”
It’s always a good time to invest in one’s future, and Bages said he got a lot from the experience. In fact, one week later, the company from his second interview invited Bages to a second round of interviews: one more time to break out the suit.