Finding jobs for college grads is a professional obsession for Dr. Patricia Imbimbo, director of the College’s award-winning Starr Career Development Center (SCDC). Imbimbo can easily recount Horatio Alger–like stories of Baruch students who began as bellmen, cab drivers, street vendors, even one who handed out leaflets, who now hold executive-level positions and have salaries to match. But that’s not her focus, which she makes clear by quickly shifting the conversation from individual success stories to a discussion of the Starr Center’s mission. “All our graduates need jobs,” she says, and measures the center’s success accordingly, on the broadest possible scale.
A Detroit native and the daughter of blue-collar parents, Imbimbo has a modest professional “origin story” herself. Her first job was flipping burgers at a bowling alley. The biggest perk: “Free eats. I think I ate more than I sold,” she laughs. Imbimbo later worked with her mother in a hospital kitchen, setting up and busing patients’ trays. It wasn’t until she became a camp counselor at age 18 that her calling became clearer and she realized that educating young people was her passion. Imbimbo attended college thinking she would be a teacher and upon graduation joined the Peace Corps, working for two years in India in a poultry and nutrition project. Upon her return, she did indeed pursue teaching, later becoming the director of an early childhood center and, in 1985, established the Career Counseling Center for the CUNY Italian-American Institute. Imbimbo has worked at Baruch College since 1987 and was named career center director in 1997.
SCDC 101
How does the Starr Career Development Center help Baruch students prepare for the professional world? Through the center, students have access to individual career counseling, vocational testing, career-related workshops, part- and full-time job postings, internships, resume reviews, video-recorded mock interviews, on-campus recruiting, and Career Days and Internship Fairs. Many students are introduced to the center’s resources through large-scale introductory sessions given by Imbimbo and her staff. “Career Services is one of the most important offices on campus,” says the director, and she wants students to realize that. Active programming begins at the sophomore level—Imbimbo insists that freshmen should focus on the transition to college life before embracing the pre-professional development journey that the Starr Center guides.
And that journey has evolved in the almost three decades that Imbimbo has worked in the field. Shifts in the national dialog about higher education have put collegiate career services in the spotlight.
Jobs the Focus of the Higher Ed Dialog
There’s no denying that today’s graduates face enormous challenges. “There were far fewer college grads in the 1970s and ’80s, so competition for those jobs was less fierce,” Imbimbo explains. “And now companies are replacing fewer departing workers, and jobs are not paying as much as they used to.” One of the most startling consequences of these changes: fewer opportunities for young professionals to rise through organizational ranks. “That ladder has disappeared in many cases, and students will need to constantly upgrade their skills and take control of their own careers,” Imbimbo says. The bottom line: “Today the first job out of college is more important than ever.”
So how do students secure a great first job that will lead to a successful, happy future?
Special Programs Make a Difference
Part of that answer is offering students tiered and tailored programs for professional and leadership development.
The Rising Starr Sophomore Program (RSSP) and the Peers for Careers Program are two examples of the SCDC’s innovative, interventionist career programming. Both programs were recognized with the Alva C. Cooper Award in 2013.
The Peers for Careers Program, the oldest “special” program at the Starr Career Development Center, provides intensive training for undergraduates in resume writing, mock interviewing, and presentation skills. Undergraduates who participate in the program as leaders (aka “Peers”) learn important skills for their own job search as well as how to assist their fellow students.
The Rising Starr Sophomore Program, begun in 2010, encourages students from all majors to get a head start in their career development. The program reflects a current trend among employers. “Major firms are digging deeper into the student pool, offering leadership programs for freshmen and sophomores,” says Imbimbo. Why? “Because hiring is costly on their side. It’s advantageous to identify star students early on,” she explains. Through Rising Starr, sophomores participate in a portfolio-building program of customized activities and events. Those who successfully complete the yearlong program earn a certificate and are fast-tracked for upperclass opportunities in their fields of interest.
Past RSSP participants have landed internships with employers such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the American Cancer Society, and the U.S. District Attorney’s Office. The program has also expanded to meet students’ and employers’ needs. For example, in 2013 Rising Starr added an “accounting track” called Passport to Partnership.
For Imbimbo RSSP is best measured by what students gain: “They learn how to present themselves, to make themselves their own brand, to network. That’s what impresses me, because contact points really help. It’s not just about resumes.”
Arguably the College’s most elite and successful undergraduate career program has been the Financial Leadership Program (FLP), which focuses on providing intensive training in technical, leadership, and professional skills to a select group of top-performing juniors. Twenty to 30 juniors are handpicked each year: applicants must have a minimum GPA of 3.5 and demonstrate leadership potential through extracurricular activities and internships. In 2006, the program’s first year, six FLP “graduates” were hired for prestigious front-office jobs in top financial services firms. By 2011 that number had increased eleven-fold, to 66.
The Internship Controversy
No overview of collegiate career services would be complete without a look at the phenomenon of the internship. For better or worse, student’s internship experience(s) may constitute what years ago might have been an entry-level job out of college. Are internships exploitation or a win-win situation? Where does Dr. Imbimbo stand?
First, she’d like us to understand the debate’s parameters. The internship was markedly different before 2008. In those days, companies recruited college juniors and usually offered pay. Since the economic downturn, more and more profit-making companies began to recruit unpaid interns even graduating seniors. “Some of these internships were more like part-time and full-time jobs,” says Imbimbo. Then the U.S. Department of Labor established six criteria for unpaid internships, trying to ensure that they are truly educational experiences for the intern. Further emphasizing the importance of value to the intern was a class-action lawsuit brought against Hearst Corporation in 2012. Companies—now liable if unpaid internships are found in violation of federal guidelines—responded by offering pay and ratcheting up requirements. “Kids need to know those six criteria,” states Imbimbo, who wants Baruch students to get all the benefits they deserve from these experiences. Complicating matters more is whether an internship qualifies for college credit.
In spite of the complexities, Imbimbo is decidedly pro internship for Baruch students: “An internship is a ‘guaranteed look’ for our students and a way to become highly marketable job candidates.”
5,000+ Internships Annually
Baruch’s undergraduates have access to thousands of employment opportunities. The SCDC alone posts 10,000 jobs and internships each year, and students are encouraged to begin interning early in their college career (facilitating that is business’s willingness to take on younger interns). Imbimbo is proud that the SCDC offers a Baruch-only job board, where students have much more success than they would on big, open-access job boards.
Interning especially makes more sense when one considers internship-versus-job availability. Based on six years of data derived from the STARR Search career board, Imbimbo has charted a game-changing shift in the ratio of internships to jobs. In 2005–2006, the ratio was roughly 2:3; in 2012–13, the ratio flipped to 3:2. Imbimbo responds to this data as a realist: Internships are where the current action is. Neither does she discount internships for recent graduates as a way to keep their skills and their resumes current.
Her Biggest No-No
So if, according to Imbimbo, paid and unpaid internships have their place, what doesn’t have a place in a student’s professional career development? The answer will probably shock graduates from an earlier era: it’s the 4.0 GPA, when that perfect academic record comes at the price of all else.
Students with a 3.0+ GPA and a robust preprofessional “resume” have better employment outcomes than their counterparts with a 3.5 or even 3.9 GPA without experience, she explains. “The differentiating factor now is how involved students are in their job search,” says the Starr Career Development Center director. “The sooner they get started the more likely they are to be employed when they graduate. So we need to catch them early.”
—Diane Harrigan
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