Job seekers, start your engines

For the Class of 2007, the official recruiting season for summer internships kicked off this past week. On Monday, the Office of Career Services held a workshop for first years on how to network. The presenter told us that judging from how eager and willing companies are willing to come to campus, this year is turning out to be the best recruiting year in four years.

Not only are companies willing and eager to come to recruit, they are doing it earlier in the school year. The company visits began this past week. At 5pm on Wednesday night, about one hundred of my classmates showed up at the Carolina Inn for a presentation by a firm that is considered a titan on Wall Street (I won't identify it by name but it's the "Microsoft" of the financial world). This firm's investment banking division has a history of hiring only one intern and one full time associate from Kenan-Flagler every year. "Microsoft" was immediately followed by another event the same night by another firm. This second firm brought with it an army of about fifteen investment bankers, all recent Kenan-Flagler graduates. The presentation was given by the head of the investment banking division. It's not surprising that this particular firm made such an investment in the event, I've heard that they hire the most number of MBAs every year from Kenan-Flagler. After the two presentations, both firms held competing happy hours at different bars at opposite ends of West Franklin Street.

Yesterday was a repeat of Wednesday when a small firm from Virginia came down for recruiting. I was pretty impressed with this particular firm but I think part of my bias may be that I would much rather work in Virginia than in New York City. Unfortunately, given the small size of this firm, I cannot imagine they would hire more than one intern from Kenan-Flagler this year.

Today was our annual Securities Industry Day, an event held for first year students interested in learning more about the financial industry and to begin networking with representatives from firms all over. We had representatives from nineteen firms participating and this year's event was the biggest in about ten years. Our keynote speaker was Tucker York, Goldman, Sachs' head of private wealth management for the Americas. The rest of the afternoon featured different sessions devoted to different aspects of financial industry such as investment banking,sales and trading,private wealth management, and hedge funds.

At the investment banking session, an associate from a firm in New York City was quite bullish on his company's hiring strategy for this year. His firm plans to hire 50-60 associates for 2006 compared to 28 in 2003. I am beginning to think this is shaping up to be one heck of a recruiting year.