Clarkson University Placement Program
Following the mandatory career services meeting for the 2005 class of Clarkson University on Monday, August 30, I discovered that the vehicle behind the matriculation and employment of graduates is operating with spectacular efficiency. I was pleased to see the grandeur of orthodoxy so elegantly embodied in the myriad services geared toward promoting my professional career. How lucky I am to have these services--these experienced professionals--working for me. From resume workshops to career fairs to standard office hours and discussion times, the masterful scheduling powers of the Career Center have my entire process worked out. Following the processing, I foresee a happy, corporate life where the skills I developed with the guidance of the Career Center mirrored the skills I will use daily.
So where in this grand vehicle, may I ask, is the steering wheel?
Pardon my presumptions about free will, but as soon as I am told what words I must, or even “should” use, an alarm sounds in the back of my mind. Free speech includes poor word choice and ignorant usage, and while I do not advocate either as an alternative to using orthodox words that have been proven “efficient,” I would rather see a weak, unorthodox resume written in words of a person’s own choosing than a sleek, orthodox, efficient resume fabricated with pre-approved words.
“We would like you to ask the
candidate a question.”
”Oh, okay. Sure.”
”No, we would like you to ask this question.”
The fact is that I am being imposed upon by the Career Center that claims to serve me. Following every highlight of the best methods to get job is a warning that the job market is hard. Following every speech about what companies are interested in is a threat against earning their scorn by refusing to genuflect before their corporate presence. The most attractive prospect about the meeting was intended as the ugliest: that if I in any way angered a company invited to the job fair this fall (specifically by signing up for an interview and then not showing up without calling in) that the Career Center would cast me from their graces; would throw me from their vehicle. Maybe then I would have a chance to prove that I am more than a set of key words, more than a bulleted list of skills, more than a resume in a suit. After all, Clarkson has worked hard to get these companies to come here and recruit from our cesspool of graduates. We all want our owners to be pleased with us.
The missing piece that, because of absence, turns a philanthropic endeavor into an apocryphal machine is a trust in the very education and experience that the Career Center is trying to get me to sell to companies. I am both offended and wounded. The approach taken by the Career Center places me in the position of a moron. I don’t know which words to use because my education up to now has been a steaming pile. All the rhetoric I have learned, all the language skills, and all the abilities to construct expository essays to establish a position have been worthless, so says the Career Center, so now they are going to give me the “real” tactics to convince an employer to hire me.
What possible reason could a Career Center have for doubting my education? Certainly that they even exist should be testament to the fact that someone at the university trusts in my education. If the Career Center focused on assessing my talents and desires and exposing me to the options in the real job market based on both, there would be no machine. We soon to be graduates would not be herded into job fairs, or told what words to use, or subjected to the notion that there is one way of finding the right job, and the whole schedule of how and when it’s going down has been worked out scientifically already.
I want there to be a Career Center. I want every Clarkson student to be able to look to the future without any fear. I want every Clarkson education to be worthy of eminence. I want to attend a school where all the faculty members believe in the veracity of my education. I want trust, but not only the trust of the Career Center in me, but of the school in itself. If the current system presented to me by the Career Center in the meeting is unchallengeable, then the college does not trust its own education process, and knowingly sends hundreds of graduates every year into the fold knowing they are unqualified. What greater offense to companies could their possibly be?