Carole Michelucci: Job finder

Carole Michelucci knows what it feels like to have completed a university degree and to be unsure of what to do next.

When the new director of the University's Career and Placement Service (CAPS) graduated from McGill with a BA in 1991 in Industrial Relations, she "looked for employment for five or six months and ended up in graduate school at Queen's within eight months."

But she says she has no regrets about graduating into a difficult employment market. "My challenges turned into opportunities."

And Michelucci, now 31, shares her optimism with the 7,000 students and young alumni who use her service each year.

"We try to be there from the beginning of the process to the end," she says. "If students are very nervous before an interview, we're there to calm them down. We sit them down, tell them to take a breath and remind them that they have the qualifications."

She says the most satisfying moment in her work comes "seeing a student who just got a job after an interview."

Prospects for graduating students are brighter than they have been in recent years, according to Michelucci. In some fields, especially computer science and computer engineering, demand is so high that graduates must often choose between three or four offers.

And arts graduates, who often have the hardest time finding work, are becoming more attractive to hiring departments. "There has been a realization on the part of employers that students who have a well-rounded education have valuable skills, even if they don't have a professional degree." For some management trainee positions, for example, where employers once asked for students with specific management backgrounds, they are now widening their search to traditional liberal arts disciplines.

Michelucci says one of her principal goals is to increase the visibility of CAPS. And she wants students to begin thinking about their career search long before graduation. "Students in non-professional programs should come in as soon as their first year," she says. "It helps if we identify what interests them early on."

CAPS helps students with summer jobs as well as with career placement after graduation and Michelucci stresses the importance of making sure part-time work is career-related.

This year was a good one for summer employment, she says, and there are already indications there will be good opportunities next summer as well. And even though warmer months seem a long way away, it's not too early to start looking for summer employment now. Michelucci says many students found their summer work in January.

Before taking over at CAPS, Michelucci worked in Human Resources departments, including McGill's. "I started out in business management," she says, "so I was on the hiring end." She also taught part-time in the Faculty of Management, and if time allows, she hopes to return to teaching courses in the future. But for now she's happy learning the ropes of her new job.

"If I didn't enjoy students I wouldn't do this at all," she says. "I'm getting a real look at what university life is all about."

Eric Smith

Medical research has become a victim of budget cuts. And the ramifications are far greater than for roads and sewers. How do you ever get back the talent that decides to leave the country? Scientists need to attract young people to do the work, and we have to pay them. If we don't, they'll go elsewhere. That's the reality.


Dr. Richard Murphy, director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and a member of the McGill-based NeuroScience Network, in an interview with The Gazette. The selection committee of the Networks of Centres of Excellence Program decided that the McGill network should stop receiving funding, which will result in a 12% cut in funding for neuroscience research in Canada.

Want to know what an investment banker's life is like? Or how an art director spends her days? A new CD-ROM co-created by McGill law student Angus McMurtry is giving students and job hunters the chance to see what hundreds of different occupations are all about from the points of view of the people holding down those jobs.

McMurtry says his CD-ROM, called Career Cruising, differs from similar products in at least two important ways. It's distinctly Canadian (most career counselling software originates from the U.S.) and it's fun to use.

"Most of the software out there is really boring. They're all text-based and you don't get any real flavour of the different occupations at all."

Career Crusing spices its approach with video clips and audio segments. It eschews stale dictionary-type descriptions of the jobs in favour of a "from the horse's mouth" approach featuring hundreds of interviews. Workers toiling in a wide range of careers talk about how they found their position, what its pluses and minuses are and what a typical day on the job is like.

For McMurtry and his partner Matt McQuillen, a typical day spent putting Career Cruising together might have involved visits to a military base, a hospital, a daycare centre and a stock exchange to talk to people in various lines of work.

So far, McMurtry and McQuillen have sold 400 copies to universities, high schools and adult employment centres in Ontario and they're just beginning to market their product outside that province.

"The big challenge is just to get people to look at it. Once they do, they enjoy using it."

I've complained about traditional MBAs for years. The main thing I'm opposed to is that they give people the impression that they've been trained as managers. They graduate and they think they're qualified to lead companies. That's a joke. You don't create managers in the classroom.


Management professor Henry Mintzberg on why he created an international executive management program for seasoned managers instead of working within a traditional MBA program. Mintzberg was interviewed by The Globe and Mail.

Former American president George Bush has popped back into the news this month. Two weeks ago, his presidential library was inaugurated with some fanfare at the University of Texas. Since then he has appeared frequently in the media urging a tough stand against old foe Saddam Hussein.

And he has also been at the centre of a verbal shoving match at the University of Toronto, which erupted when president Robert Prichard announced in September that the University would award Bush an honorary degree. Members of the campus community split on the question and a recent issue of the University of Toronto Bulletin published a point-counterpoint commentary by PhD student Jack Cunningham  who is in favour of the award  and history professor David Raby.

Cunningham sees "nothing egregious" in bestowing the award on Bush and defends his foreign policy record. He calls the invasion of Panama "a swift, relatively bloodless operation" that was approved, "according to a CBS post-invasion poll, by 92% of the Panamanian population." He lauds Bush's "skilful crafting of an inclusive diplomatic and military coalition" in the Gulf War and his role in the peaceful disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Raby on the other hand sees the former president's career as having been dedicated "to conservative interests at home and to the overt and often aggressive assertion of U.S. power abroad with a complacent indifference to the fate of those who suffered as a result." Raby contends that overwhelming force was used in Desert Storm, causing tens of thousands of needless Iraqi deaths. He adds, "To give an honorary degree to Bush is to permanently besmirch the university's reputation among all those concerned with human rights and an equitable system of international relations."