After attack, will financial recruiting continue as usual?

BY JOSEPH LIGHT

It is at this time of year that advertisements soliciting seniors to work at the most prominent New York investment houses and financial institutions typically pepper campus publications. And despite last week's terrorist attacks that destroyed America's financial center, this year may be no different than years past, as interviews and deadlines for submitting resumés have for the most part continued as scheduled at Yale.

Still, some companies project they will be forced to lay off thousands of workers as a result of the tragedy. Even before the attack, the economy showed signs of slowing. Now, amid a serious market downturn and the added strain of emergency funding to rescucitate a battered airline industry, many Americans are beginning to worry about their own economic futures.

"It's too early to see the long-term effects of what happened last week," Philip Jones, director of Undergraduate Career Services, said. Financial companies who were headquartered in the World Trade Center have been scrambling to find new office space, and executives still are unsure if the physical and economic collapse will have an impact on their current or future workforce.

"Some firms had already decided not to hire as many people as they had in the past," Jones said. He did not foresee that the aftermath would necessarily have any direct effect on the number of job opportunities in the financial world. As far as recruiting at Yale goes, he confirmed that "there were many cancellations of information sessions, but no cancellations for interviews," suggesting that financial companies had not ruled out hiring of seniors as usual this year. "All [of the companies] are still planning to come [to Yale]," Jones said.

Many students interested in finance as a possible career path tend to share Jones' optimistic sentiments. When asked if he thought the attack would affect the number of jobs in the financial market, Dominic Matar, SY '02, an economics major, responded, "No, I don't think so. Not as a result of the attack."

Robert Quandt, BR '02, who is also majoring in economics, agreed: "I don't think anyone knows exactly what effects it will have on the market. Nothing like this has ever happened before. That's really not something I thought about when I heard about the tragedy."

One student's father, who insisted on anonymity, works for a company which owned office space in the World Trade Center. Although each of his 17 employees survived the attack, they are being relocated to another office in New Jersey.

"We will keep everyone. We need everyone to re-establish our Manhattan facility in the earliest future," he said. "Some of the 17 employees are not able to commute to New Jersey, however." The company's immediate future is still uncertain.

As of yet, no one really knows how the job market will be affected. Although most companies are trying to accommodate their current employees and relocate them, many will not have the financial capacity to re-establish an office in Manhattan.

Most likely, companies will wait until all the economic aftershocks of the attacks have diminished. "It's simply too early to tell," Jones said.

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