Have Business Cards, Will Travel

Fletcher students arrived en masse in New York City during the first truly cold week in November, armed for this year’s first “career trip” with newly-minted business cards and resumes. Classes were cancelled for two days to remind even the most gung-ho students that as a professional school, Fletcher aims to prepare students for careers in the global marketplace.

Tamara Golden of the Office of Career Services (OCS), who organized the annual trip, cautioned all prospective attendees that “the trip should not be viewed as a recruiting event, but rather as an information-gathering and networking opportunity.”

Students attended a series of sector-specific panels over the November 6-7 period. The panelists included Fletcher alumni and friends who shared their professional experiences and the paths they took to get there. Frequently urging current students to contact and even pester them for internship and job opportunities, the alumni appeared pleased to offer any advice they could. Golden and her OCS colleagues ensured that panel topics covered all fields of interest to Fletcher students, and ran the gamut from the more traditional UN Panel to Public Relations and Media, and Risk Management and Analysis panels. The schedule also included a site visit to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a session with the Acumen Fund, a non-profit “global venture” firm.

Attendance at some of the events, like the popular UNDP panel, was restricted, due to space constraints. “I was thrilled to be able to attend the UNDP Panel,” said MALD ’05 student Elizabeth Buckius. “I realized that [UNDP] and other multilaterals provide great and stable opportunities to do development work, alternatives to having to work for the government or other bilaterals.”

Many other students expressed concern at the state of the job market in international affairs. While those interested in the financial sector remained confident that the poor market conditions would clear up by graduation, many in the nonprofit world bemoaned the lack of promise for secure, interesting work. Some even mused that additional graduate degrees, like an MBA or JD, might give a student an advantage in fields like microfinance or human rights.

For the majority of students, the highlight was being in New York itself. “Being away from school really contextualizes everything we’re studying,” said MALD ’05 student Sarah Titus. “The opportunity to learn about the work of the Fletcher ‘mafia’ is both inspiring and reassuring—I feel pretty good about the alumni network working for me.”

For other students, the trip highlight was an alumni-student reception hosted by the Republic of Korea’s Permanent Mission to the UN. Providing an opportunity for current students to mingle with alumni in a more relaxed setting, many students remarked that alumni seemed equally excited to meet the current Fletcher crop.

The OCS, building on the continued success of both the yearly New York and Washington DC trips, has planned an additional career trip for the 2003-04 academic year: a new European Career Collaborative in London and Brussels in late January ’04. Presented in conjunction with the London School of Economics and Sciences-Po in Paris, more information on the trip can be found on the European Career Collaborative web page at
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/ocs/careertrip-europe/.