Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

All of Mason Quintero's Comments + Replies

College Public Service Pipeline
Mason Quintero2y1
0
0

I would totally agree and that's why we're trying to push more people towards it. I think all of the concerns you bring up are entirely valid but I think one huge piece of why people don't go into public service after college is visibility of these jobs. Private sector companies advertise all of their internships and jobs super well whereas non profits don't nearly as well. There is also the clear recruiting timeline for finance and consulting that takes advantage of college student's general lack of information on future opportunities.

Reply
College Public Service Pipeline
Mason Quintero2y2
0
0

I'd been looking into Teach for America a little but I'm looking into Venture for America now and it is super interesting thank you!

Reply
College Public Service Pipeline
Mason Quintero2y2
0
0

We're still trying to figure out exactly what roles we want to center which is part of why I wrote here. We've mostly figured out the suggestions we're going to make to the school in terms of trying to generally change the culture. Part of it will be brining nonprofits and NGOs on to campus the same way we do banks and consulting firms. 

I will say that part of the issue is non profits and NGOs not doing a good job of advertising internships and entry-level jobs whereas everyone can easily find out how the recruiting cycles work for finance and consult... (read more)

Reply
1
HStencil
2y
[To clarify in case this was unclear: I am just a random outsider and have no association with this Amherst student group.] I’m a bit skeptical that just trying to get more nonprofits to recruit on campus is a winning strategy here. Among other things, the vast majority of nonprofits don’t have dedicated recruiting staff, and the people responsible for hiring don’t have the time to travel to college campuses to recruit for entry-level positions. The same is going to be true of most public sector openings at the entry level, too. (I do think there are exceptions to this — you might be able to get some of the RA programs run by the Federal Reserve System to recruit on campus, which I think would be awesome.) Regardless of whether or not you get these organizations to come to your campus, though, I think you face the even more significant obstacle of many students believing it just isn’t a good career move to take a job in public service straight out of college. I’m not sure getting these jobs more visibility changes that. My sense in college was not that the people entering finance or consulting would instead have gone into government if they’d been aware of the availability of government jobs. I think that to make a difference here you have to change the way people think about the opportunities presented by analyst programs at consulting and financial services firms. You have to show people that these aren’t the best things they could do out of college, given basically any set of public service career objectives. As I see it, this pitch might look something like this (obviously, the details would vary based on the individual in question’s career goals, but for the sake of argument…):  The rejoinder here, I imagine, is: “What if you don’t have any idea at all what you want to do? At the very least, an MBB consulting job won’t close any doors.” I definitely believed this argument when I was a senior in college, but in the years since I graduated, I’ve come to think
College Public Service Pipeline
Mason Quintero2y1
0
0

I think it's more a matter of bad marketing more than anything. There are definitely prestigious public service opportunities but part of it is also that many schools make consulting/ finance the default option.

Reply