Letter to the Editor

This is in response to the recent opinion piece written by Asher Ailey entitled “Top companies are recruiting, just not at Temple.”

I would like to take issue with Ailey’s statement that the problem is the “lack of effort by CDS.”

In spite of college recruiting being down 37% nationally this past year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, we still managed to get 236 employers to recruit at our Career Fairs.

In addition we had 89 individual recruiting schedules (I should also add that the two CSPD’s, as well as a host of professional/student organizations schedule 100s of interviews a year for students).

We also had almost 20,000 jobs posted throughout the year from over 5500 employers.

This fall, despite the limited recruiting activity, we still managed to get 110 employers to come to our Career Fair, largely due to the follow up efforts of the CDS staff (we invited almost 2000 employers to recruit at Temple).

We also conduct a Senior Survey each year indicating where our graduates are working and I can assure you Temple graduates are everywhere.

But make no mistake about it, CDS didn’t place one single graduate–they placed themselves, we merely assisted in the process.

However, all that being said, in spite of the fact that we have developed an Outreach Task Force to encourage more organizations to recruit here and have hired a new On Campus Recruiting Coordinator to spearhead that effort, I implore all Temple students to not depend solely on On-Campus Recruiting to create opportunities, particularly in this uncertain job market.

The research indicates that all of the ways to create job opportunities for college graduates combined don’t add up to the effectiveness of networking and doing a targeted search.

To that end we not only developed a workshop addressing how you can be more proactive in the job search that we present regularly (and I would encourage all you job seekers to attend) but we also encourage students to make individual appointments with a Career Counselor to develop a customized strategy (last year we met with over 1400 students).

And in addition to our weekly career-related workshops, we did over 100 classroom presentations last year-all designed to educate our students regarding the career development/job search process, which I believe is the most valuable service we can provide, we’re giving students the tools to last a lifetime.

Of course none of this would matter if it wasn’t done professionally and with a competent, compassionate staff who genuinely care about the well being of our students, and I can assure you the CDS staff is all of those things.

But then maybe students should visit us to find out for themselves just how we can work together in these challenging times.

Dr. Chet Rispoli
Director
Career Development Services