Brown students have been successful in securing jobs at top companies in the technology and finance sectors, according to data from LinkedIn.
The three companies with the most Brown alums employed based on a survey of LinkedIn profiles are Google, Microsoft and Goldman Sachs, with 386, 167 and 148 alums, respectively.
Other top companies alums reported working at include Pfizer, Stanford University, IBM, Harvard, Morgan Stanley, New York University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
The list “speaks well to the intelligence and competitiveness of our students on the job market,” said Matt Donato, director of CareerLAB.
According to data from CareerLAB, 15 percent of students in the class of 2014 entered the technology industry immediately after graduation, while 13 percent went into education and 9 percent work at consulting companies.
“We try to target really high-quality opportunities and high-quality organizations for our students. That being said, a lot of the banks, a lot of consulting firms already have Brown on their list of recruiting schools,” Donato said.
But CareerLAB is not the only group at Brown that works to connect students with job opportunities, especially for positions in technology fields.
Parielle Lacy ’15 said she used the Department of Computer Science’s Industry Partners Program to get her job at Google as a software engineer. Many top technology companies have a strong on-campus recruiting presence, Lacy said, adding that she had completed the process by October of her senior year.
Wendy Ginsberg ’15, an associate product manager at Google, had a similar experience, noting that Google recruits heavily for software programming at Brown.
While she knew some Brown students and alums who worked at Google, she did not know the company had so many alums on its roster, Lacy said.
The Industry Partners Program is meant to facilitate research collaboration between technology companies and the Department of Computer Science, but it also encourages the recruitment and hiring of Brown students, according to the program’s webpage.
While CareerLAB also hosts career fairs that can help students learn more about potential employers, few job opportunities are available through career fairs, Donato said. Most hiring opportunities are done through on-campus recruiting, he added.
“The vast majority of students get information and advice and leads on employers through the networking process and through working on identifying and pursuing targets,” Donato said.
While pursuing her job at Google, Lacy networked and got a recommendation from a classmate who had already received a job offer from Google, she said. Google is a popular post-graduation destination for Brown alums partially because the atmosphere and attitude present in the company’s corporate structure is very similar to that of Brown, Lacy added.
Donato said that he hopes to keep improving CareerLAB services to maintain existing job pathways and better prepare students for their job hunt. Much of this revolves around continuing to expand BrownConnect, a website where alums can post internships, and Project 2019, a new program designed to engage first-year students, he said.
Though CareerLAB works to improve job opportunities available for students after graduation, Donato said students should focus on the bigger picture. “Look for something you want to do when you graduate, but your first job is not going to be your last.”
