Despite having a 96 percent post-graduation placement rate for the class of 2015, Hillsdale College students face tough competition once they leave campus. Christian Tracy ’99 said he wants to help.
Tracy works in corporate development and strategy at chemical company LyondellBasell Industries and has helped economics, finance, and accounting Hillsdale students improve their resumes this year. He is also looking for possible intern applicants for his company in Houston, Texas, to give Hillsdale students an advantage.
“I want to make people aware of what their options are because I didn’t feel like I had a great sense of that when I came out of school,” Tracy said. “As alumni, it’s something that we can do to help the current students, especially those of us that have worked in big companies that are constantly looking for good people.”
Tracy contacted Assistant Director of Career Services John Quint earlier this semester, offering to help students with their resumes and provide advice. Quint reached out to economics, finance, and accounting students with GPAs of 3.5 or higher to let them know.
“I was ecstatic to have him reach out to us,” Quint said. “It was completely unsolicited, and that really sums up the type of energy that we have out there with the alumni base.”
Tracy said he has learned from personal experience that Hillsdale students may not have as many opportunities leading up to graduation to find jobs as students at other schools.
“They found themselves at the end of graduation having to really work extra hard to try to compete against students from other schools that had internships over the summer,” Tracy said. “We need to get ahead of that. They need to have internships, certainly in their junior year, but even something analytical and quantitative during their sophomore year.”
LyondellBasell tends to recruit talent from big colleges around Houston like Texas A&M University and the University of Texas, but Tracy presented a few resumes of qualified Hillsdale students to LyondellBasell’s hiring department for potential internships.
“It’s hard for a little school like Hillsdale to get into that mix, so it’s really up to people like me who have a relationship with the school to put qualified students forward,” Tracy said.
But even then, Hillsdale students can be at a disadvantage, he said.
“It’s still extremely difficult, because you do get a lot of students from Texas A&M who have had one or two years of internships already, are very focused on accounting or finance, and have a lot of training in those areas because they don’t have quite the core requirements that Hillsdale does,” Tracy said. “That’s still really tough to sell to management.”
For those reasons, students said they appreciate Tracy’s help.
“He really wants to help Hillsdale students out to the best of his ability,” senior Mackenzie Dickhudt said. “I really appreciated his earnestness about the job search. He encouraged me that it was never too early to start looking for a job.”
Tracy has spoken with Quint about improving Hillsdale’s support network.
“A lot of people give money to the school because of the ideology, and if those people are willing to give their money and a lot of those guys are business owners, my guess is they’re going to be very willing to help the students out to find employment,” Tracy said. “That’s my grand vision and something that I hope that I can help with in the future.”