A dozen Wall Street men sat in a silent line staring only at their whiskies. After another bad August day in the markets, this time blamed on collapsing stock prices in China, only one of the drinkers was talking. Jack Harper, 22-year-old Cambridge classics graduate and hedge fund analyst was in an almost champagne mood, happy to chat.

Unlike the older men, he was doing much better than he had expected. His New York hedge fund had cut back brutally almost as soon as he had joined in August last year. But he had been the cheapest employee on the books and after a few months was now the only New York analyst left. It had been hard work, he said: “but not bad for someone who has only just graduated with a Classics degree”.

In any time of turmoil there are winners and losers. John Paulson, president of the New York-based hedge fund Paulson & Co., made $2 billion shorting the mortgage market in 2007 and banks in 2008. He was a big winner. New graduates like Jack Harper have needed to work out how to be some kind of winner too. In conversations in New York this summer, recent alumni recommended a range of ways to drive back the clouds of Cambridge gloom.

Keith Schnell graduated in 1997 with a economics degree and now manages investments for Praxis, a $9bn industrial gasses company. He believes the smart choice is in Venture Capital firms, many of which now have a glut of money from years of having nowhere to put it. “At the first sign of recovery they will need people to help them invest again.”

One of the biggest, 3i, has not made a single investment in seven months, the longest time in its history. Perhaps this spree is already starting to happen. The biggest venture capital firm BlackRock, after three consecutive years of falling investments, doubled its portfolio over the summer by acquiring Barclays Global Investors. “When the venture capitalists start buying like mad - which they will - they are going to be needing a lot of extra talent,” said Schnell. 

Winning tactics go beyond simply choosing an industry. Jenifer Delaney left Cambridge for UBS in New York in 2003, and argued that a great job abroad could in certain circumstances be easier to get when times were hard. “If you read that a British bank is using the recession to expand overseas, find out where and show an interest in that country.” The cunning graduate, with a willingness to work anywhere and good intelligence in every sense, can secure a foreign posting “more easily than you might think”.

She cited the acquisition of Lehman Brothers in 2008 that allowed many young British Barclays employees to have a chance in America. “One man’s failure, another’s success. So you might like to look at RBS, who are trying to increase their presence enormously in America and HSBC who – as they were relatively sheltered from the recession – are vying to have a presence all over the world.”

To find success in a recession painstaking research will not be enough. Cambridge graduates will also have to adjust their expectations, said Chesterman at the careers service: “We had a great job last year that just no one wanted. It had an impressive starting salary, great training on the job and loads of travel with expenses. The only problem was that it was for the world’s largest makers of toilet paper. No Cambridge graduate wanted to tell their friends they made toilet paper.”

Prospects overall may not seem as bad as many fear. Last year there was a ten per cent yearly increase in the number of companies with vacancies for Cambridge graduates. This is perhaps unsurprising after the plunge in demand the year before. The increase is set to be even greater next year according to last week’s report by the Association of Graduate Recruiters.

One Cambridge graduate in New York recommended using the recession as an excuse to show flexibility that in boom times might have seemed an indulgence. Mary Dewhurst, who graduated with an economics degree in 2002, has just left her job at Morgan Stanley to join an NGO called Voluntary Service Overseas. “Use the recession as an opportunity to do something cool and interesting,” she advised. “If you don’t get a ‘high flying’ traditional job now it will be more understandable as there are fewer out there. Future employers will not think you are stupid. There are not the same signaling effects as before.”

Meanwhile for those like former classicist Jack Harper in his Wall Street Bar there is already cause for careful celebration, a little champagne beside all those Jack Daniels on the rocks. He feels very overworked and a little underpaid. But, with flexibility and luck now, he is getting invaluable experience for the future.

Any graduate who does get a job in bad times is significantly more likely to keep it. Those hired in boom times find themselves quickly among competitors with the same level of skill level and become more easily disposable. But for recession successes, as Delaney put it: “When the economy picks up in a few years time, you will be one of the few in your age group qualified to do the job and therefore much more likely to survive”.