By Jacey Wilkins

WASHINGTON—Eleven a.m.  Twenty one year old Kevin Leonard (MSB ’09) stands in a line of grey t-shirts, sunglasses and to-go coffee cups that wraps around the tennis courts like a coiled boa constrictor waiting to strike its prey.  The energy builds as wide-eyed freshmen and eye-rubbing seniors alike stare with growing impatience at the fleet of keg-bearing trucks parked in a circle like tribal shaman outside of McDonough gymnasium.  It is Georgetown Homecoming, and 5000 or so students and alumni have dragged themselves from their beds to begin the process of “the rally.”  If “rallying” means drinking Bud Light, dancing to Journey, and wolfing hamburgers all before noon, so be it, for nothing can stop them from “bleeding Hoya blue.”

For Georgetown seniors like Leonard, this scene of jovial and blithe twenty-somethings soon fades to memory and the harsh reality of senior year hits them like a hangover. Homecoming weekend is over, and they must venture out to answer the horrifying Thanksgiving dinner question: “what are you going to do next year?” 

Five a.m. It is the Monday after his fourth homecoming, and Leonard is in his townhouse rummaging through a pile of Georgetown jerseys for a pair of dress socks.  He finds a pair nestled among the weekend’s collateral damage of empty take-out containers and bottles, and slips them on before heading down the shadowy streets of Georgetown to the awaiting company town car.  The morning newspapers have yet to arrive, but Leonard is on his way to New York, trying to score a job for after he graduates in May.  After reviewing his resume back in early September, the financial services firm Perella Weinberg Partners invited him to their New York office for an interview.  It was his 10th interview this school year, and the early mornings, late-night preparations, and missed classes were beginning to dampen his senior year spirits.  “To be honest, there were a lot of places I applied and expected to get interviews, but didn’t,” Leonard said.  “But in this market, beggars can’t be choosers.” 

The Finance major and History minor, who has an exceptional transcript, could not be more correct.  With the financial industry suffering in the wake of the tempestuous economic climate, companies are putting new hiring on the back burner.  Many companies are deferring any new hiring because they are laying off a significant portion of their employees in order to compensate for serious capital losses.  According to a Bloomberg report, John Thain, chief executive officer at Merrill Lynch & Co., said that he expects thousands of job cuts by the end of the year following Bank of America's acquisition of the firm.  Some companies like Wachovia, which was recently bought out by Citigroup, are not hiring at all. Jeremy Menkhaus, a senior at Georgetown with a job offer at Wachovia, calls his future boss religiously every day.

“Do I still have my job?” he asks, clenching the phone.
“So far,” his boss replies.
His anxiety is hardly placated.  Worried, but not alone, Menkhaus has been going around on other interviews just in case he gets the call that has been the dreaded fate of all too many Wall Street employees.

Still, perhaps one tenuous job offer is better than none at all.  While Perella Weinberg arranged and paid for Leonard’s travel expenses from Washington to New York, sending him the town car that early morning, the gesture gave him no guarantee of an actual job offer—or even a serious chance of one.  Leonard revealed that what is most disconcerting about the job-finding process is the fact that many companies are interviewing as many people as in previous years, but hiring many fewer.  “It seems as though you’re making progress with getting all of the interview spots, but you’re really not,” he said, recalling the nights he stayed up awaiting the coveted emails from companies like Credit Suisse and Royal Bank of Scotland inviting a select group of applicants in for a first-round interview.

Like many of his classmates searching for positions in finance, Leonard has filled out nearly fifty applications at the advice of Georgetown’s MBNA Career Education Center.  Since early September, Leonard has made the Career Center’s navy carpet and neurotic white walls a home away from home, attending countless information sessions and resume-building workshops.  Mike Schaub, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist and executive director of the Career Center, understands the plight many Georgetown seniors are facing.  “The most immediate impact of the Wall Street crisis on the Career Center is the decrease in the number of hires for full-time finance positions,” he said of this year’s on-campus recruiting.  In addition, many employers have cancelled their on-campus recruiting schedules, the primary means of contact students have with the employers.  Schaub is finding his job harder than ever, because he must now seek other ways for Georgetown and its students to maintain their relationship with these employers who are no longer coming to campus. 

Schaub anticipated the most competitive recruiting year yet and encouraged seniors to broaden their job search to encompass career paths they would not normally consider.  For Finance majors, like Leonard and his roommate, Tim O’Reilly (MSB ’09), non-business career options go against the grains of their academic work of the past four years at Georgetown.  A job in public relations or marketing, where the industry seems fairly stable, is just not the pot of gold they were looking for.  “They want us to look outside the box?  Well, Kevin and I have always joked about opening a chocolate-covered pretzel store,” O’Reilly said, rolling his eyes.

Lounging languidly like al dente spaghetti noodles around their Georgetown townhouse’s kitchen table, Leonard and O’Reilly perk up at the sound of cheering coming from the TV.  Brad Lidge has just produced a popup to secure the NLCS win for the Philadelphia Phillies over the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Both dyed-in-the-wool Phillies fans, they leap from their seats and start jumping around like over-stimulated firing neurons.  They may not be able to answer Uncle Jim’s “what are you doing next year? Now please pass the gravy,” but the Phillies are going to the World Series for the first time since they were in the first grade, and that is a success story that trumps a call from the Trump himself.  They, like many of their classmates, grasp for optimism in this increasingly dismal job climate.