Monday, December 1st, 2008

Companies clamor to employ graduating Bruins

Like many graduating seniors, Kellie Corcoran has yet to finalize her post-graduation plans.

Unlike some, though, she has enlisted the help of the UCLA Career Center in her employment search as many companies use that facility to interview and hire students.

Corcoran, a fourth-year psychobiology student, said she was contacted by several companies recruiting on campus, including Teach for America.

“Recruiters are serious about hiring UCLA students,” she said.

Employers from Robinsons-May to the U.S. Department of State have conducted individual interviews with UCLA students this year for a total of about 6,000 interviews, said Kathy Sims, director of the UCLA Career Center.

Sims said defense contractors and business-related companies recruit most often on campus, but said there has been a recent increase in the number of security and intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, looking to hire students.

Susie Arellano-Reed, college relations manager for Enterprise Rent-A-Car, said the company consistently recruits on the UCLA campus.

“We are happy with the caliber of students that come out of UCLA,” she said.

Sims said employers hold on-campus information sessions and interviews, and post job opportunities on the UCLA Career Center’s search engine, BruinView, which currently has about 9,000 job postings for UCLA students.

Will Koai, a third-year mathematics and applied science student who attended two on-campus information sessions for the consulting company Deloitte this year, said he found the sessions helpful because they introduced him to new career opportunities that he otherwise might not have discovered.

“There’s no way that on my own initiative I would have researched consulting,” Koai said.

Though engineering or business-related degrees often attract employers’ attention, Sims said both North and South campus majors tend to receive the same amount of recruiter interest.

She said firms most often put down “any” when asked which majors they are looking for in UCLA students.

But some UCLA graduates seek out recruiters, rather than waiting for recruiters to contact them because they said it is easier to pursue their future plans outside of the UCLA Career Center through online career resources.

Still, Sims said many companies are actively pursuing UCLA students.

“This is a good time to be a (graduating) student,” she said.