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BUSINESS. In the recent recession, large manufacturers were the first to cut back their college recruiting. This year, the businesses that have been hiring the most students are accounting firms, insurance companies, public utilities and oil. A.T. & T. plans to hire about 3,500 graduates this year; the accounting firm of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. will take on more than 1,000 for its 105 offices across the country; and the Prudential Insurance Co. will hire 500 (the same number as General Motors). Qualified graduates will find a number of openings in banking, construction, building-materials manufacturing and retailing. The firms that have cut back the most on their student hiring this year are electronics, chemicals, drugs and of course aerospace, where the only new opportunity these days, it is said, lies in becoming a sky marshal.
Despite all the talk about the environment, the ecology movement has produced comparatively few new kinds of jobs in either business or Government, although there are some openings for engineers working in water or heat pollution and the like. However, the situation is expected to improve. Melissa Parsons, 23, a 1970 engineering graduate of Stanford, has begun the kind of career that others may eventually follow. She is a member of an "environmental systems group" that does regional planning for the Bechtel Corp., one of the nation's leading design-construction firms. She finds no incongruity between her sex and her job. "Girls make very good engineers," she insists. "There is no manual labor, and they can keep ideas straight."
Girls, as many companies have discovered, also make very good computer technologists. Currently the market for programmers and systems analysts is down slightly, but that too will improve. At Manufacturers Hanover Trust, computer operations are headed by Geri Riegger, a systems engineer who was recently named the bank's first female vice president. About half of the bank's 350 data processors are women earning from $12,000 to $25,000 a year.
Despite the job shortage, many of this year's applicants for corporate jobs are very independent, both in their styles of clothing and dress and their attitudes toward companies. They are not afraid to inquire about a prospective employer's stance on pollution, civil rights and open housing. They are also not keen about make-work jobs. "You just can't get by these days with putting a graduate design engineer on the drawing boards and having him put threads on bolts for two years," says one recruiter for a major chemical firm. Other businessmen agree that industry must invent challenging, decision-making jobs for its bright young recruits. "And we must give young executives time off to become involved in the church, politics and social causes—and back them," says William D. Eberle, board chairman of American Standard. Because of the economic slump, it may be easier to hire top ranking students today, Eberle notes, but he believes that companies must work hard to counter young people's antipathy toward business. "The problem is more widespread than