Unraveling of college job hunting (and internships too)

Businessweek reports on the recruiting of undergrads, particularly undergrad business majors:

A Speedier Timetable for the College Job Hunt

"It used to be that undergraduate students could wait until winter or spring to conduct job searches. Students who plan to do that during the present school year may find that they’re out of luck.

"As the job market has improved, a growing number of employers are shifting most of their college recruiting to the fall. This year, employers said they planned to conduct about two-thirds, or 68 percent, of their college recruiting in the fall, up from 60 percent in the 2010-11 academic year, according to the National Association of Colleges & Employers’ Job Outlook 2013 report.

"The trend is more pronounced at undergraduate business schools, where recruiters from Fortune 500 companies, banks, and consulting firms are racing onto campuses to get access to top student talent as early as possible. Some are showing up as early as the end of August or September to talk to students, say college career services directors.
...
"The timetable for internship recruiting also has been pushed up to the fall over the last year or two, meaning that juniors must be ready to apply for internships almost as soon as they get on campus, say career services directors at business schools. At the Carlson School, the number of companies recruiting interns at the same time jumped 11 percent this fall over last, Kinross-Wright says.

"Steve Canale, manager of global recruiting and staffing services for General Electric (GE), says his company hires nearly all its full-time hires and about 75 percent of its interns in the fall. The company used to do more intern recruiting in the spring, but has shifted course in the last few years, he says.

“We do our internship hiring in the fall now because it is so darn competitive,” he says. “Once one company started doing it, we had to do it, too, because the good students go quickly.”