Thursday, 20 December 2012
Parents Snared in College Debt Trap Risk Retirement
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Principals Go Back to School
Kim Lowry, principal of South Elementary, a 500-student school in rural Kennett, Mo., was wary when her superintendent enrolled her in a part-time, two-year business school program. Her school had failed to meet benchmarks under the federal No Child Left Behind law and faced a state takeover. Business classes were the last thing she wanted to do with the money earmarked for improving her school. Says Lowry: “I was very resistant.”
That changed in the summer of 2009, when she attended her first classes at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Under the guidance of professors there, she wrote a plan for transforming her school. That fall she formed teams of teachers that scrutinized student performance, hired consultants to help improve scores on standardized tests, and posted the results of every student in the staff lounge, making teachers publicly accountable for their classes. “I took the best business practices and translated those into education,” says Lowry, who completed the program in January. Her school now meets federal standards, and its test scores jumped by 26 percent in English and 29 percent in math while she was in the program.
The White House wants to help fix 5,000 underperforming schools, and the Education Dept. has distributed more than $4 billion in federal School Improvement Grants in the last few years. That has given school districts both the motivation and the funds to change, and many are turning to Darden for help. Over the last eight years, Darden has worked with nearly 200 schools in 12 states.
This year, 48 schools from Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico are among those enrolled in the program, and state education officials are participating alongside the principals. Those states want to “take [the UVA program] and create it in the Southwest” at a university in the region, says Paul Koehler, director of the Southwest Comprehensive Center, a nonprofit that advises states on how to fix troubled schools.
Some education professionals question whether the results are worth the $75,000-per-school price tag for the two-year program, in which principals attend classes at Darden for a total of 20 days, UVA staffers visit the districts, and participants are in frequent contact with professors. Grover Whitehurst, an education policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, says Darden’s offering needs to be more “rigorously evaluated” if other states are to clone the idea. “It is important, before we start trying to replicate this, that we are pretty confident the results would hold up,” he says. Frederick Hess, an education scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says the program may make administrators better managers, but it’s unclear whether they learn how to deal with the toughest challenges, such as negotiations with teachers’ unions.
The program, a collaboration between Darden and UVA’s Curry School of Education, helps principals and administrators approach troubled schools with the eye of a manager, says Executive Director LeAnn Buntrock. Participants examine case studies on companies such as General Electric (GE) and Walt Disney (DIS), study organizational behavior, and learn how to analyze data. “We’re not trying to make businesses out of school systems, but certainly a lot of leadership and business principles apply,” Buntrock says.
After the Cincinnati Public Schools began participating in the program in 2008, the district asked successful administrators and teachers to coach counterparts in struggling schools, and established a program that paired local business leaders with principals. Cincinnati saw 14 of its 16 underperforming schools meet No Child Left Behind standards after the program.
At the first 57 schools that completed the program, reading proficiency increased an average of 33 percent and math scores rose an average of 37 percent, Darden says. But schools in St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo., and on Indian reservations have seen mediocre or negative results, and a handful have withdrawn from the program after the first year.
This spring, Darden will add a “district boot camp” for superintendents and curriculum directors. They’ll attend the additional training session before principals take classes, with the idea that as soon as their schools start the program they’ll be able provide them with adequate support to make necessary changes. Says Buntrock: “This will give them more of a runway so they can hit the ground running.”
The bottom line: A $75,000 B-school program for principals has improved test scores, but some experts say it may do little to fix the toughest problems.
For U.S. MBAs, Going Global Has Never Been Easier
Ever since the U.S. economic crisis hit in 2008, business school insiders have speculated that increasing numbers of graduating MBAs would head overseas for jobs. This hasn’t happened. If anything, fewer graduates of top programs are heading overseas for work. At eight of Bloomberg Businessweek’s top 10 full-time programs, the percentage of graduates taking positions outside North America was down or flat in 2011, compared to 2008. The exceptions were Harvard Business School, from which 20 percent of graduates went overseas in 2011, up from 18 percent in 2008, and University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, at which 19 percent of graduates took overseas jobs in 2011, up from 12 percent in 2008.
While a greater number of MBA students from the U.S. show interest in emerging markets, they are not working overseas in larger numbers, despite double-digit growth in demand for MBA talent in India, China, Brazil, and Russia, say business school career-services directors. At University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, about 9 percent of American MBAs typically work abroad, a percentage that has remained consistent. “It’s always been just a fact of life around here that our MBAs work abroad,” says Maryellen Reilly Lamb, director of MBA career management at Wharton.
What is different, say the directors, is the desire by recruiters to hire people who are willing to go abroad in the future and who have the correct documentation such as work visas to do so—along with the willingness on the part of potential employees to do just about anything for the right job. “We encourage students to have an open mind,” says Marilyn Eckelman, director of graduate management career strategies at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. “MBAs are really re-starting their careers. The economy and job market over the last couple of years has persuaded students to be more open to geographic flexibility and mobility.”
MBA graduates will make concessions for the right opportunities. Ronald Rolph, a 2011 graduate of University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business who served in the military before attending business school, was looking forward to working stateside. Still, he turned down an offer for a position in the United States to work for the same private company in a preferred role that combines engineering, construction, and project management in the mining and metals industry in Santiago, Chile.
Rolph, who was not at liberty to identify his new employer, says his dream of working in the U.S. is far from dead. “Just because you go overseas initially does not mean you’re relegating yourself to working overseas for the rest of your career,” says Rolph.
Americans who opt to take overseas jobs after graduating from U.S. MBA programs account for only a portion of those pursuing careers on foreign soil. Many decide to pursue an international career before setting foot on campus, then choose an international program.
While two-thirds of London Business School graduates launch their post-MBA careers in London, only 20 percent of them are still working there five years later, says Fiona Sandford, director of career services at LBS. Many students, she adds, come to the program for its multicultural environment, hoping to create a resume that global companies will find appealing. While LBS grads also find work in emerging markets and others around the world, Sandford suggests that students stay abreast of immigration policies so they know exactly where they are eligible to work and are more likely to be hired.
A willingness to work overseas, while attractive to employers, will only get you so far. Having the right skills—from the ability to speak a foreign language to knowledge of a region’s economy and business practices—is equally important, says the Carroll School’s Eckelman. If the opportunity is right, she adds, graduates and employers can usually overcome those kinds of challenges.
“Explore all your options and don’t rule anything out,” Rolph advises. “Generally speaking, Americans have a U.S.-centric mindset and that’s an outdated point of view. Look globally. It’s the wave of the future.”
Join the discussion on the Bloomberg Businessweek Business School Forum, visit us on Facebook, and follow @BWbschools on Twitter.Q&A: Meet Adam Pervez, the Happy Nomad
Adam Pervez seemed to have it all when he graduated from Madrid’s IE Business School with an MBA in 2009. In a tough job market, he’d landed his dream job, a six-figure position in Denmark working for Siemens Wind Power (SI), helping the company develop capacity for offshore wind turbines. But Pervez soon found himself unsatisfied with the corporate lifestyle, even though he was working in a field he was passionate about. He’d focused on corporate social responsibility and sustainability while in business school and realized he wanted to have a direct impact on poor people in developing countries, rather than help the developed world become more energy efficient. So 10 months later, he did the unthinkable: He quit his job and launched what he has dubbed the Happy Nomad Tour and began traveling the world to put the theories behind corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship to the test.
In the past six months, Pervez—who has dubbed himself chief happiness officer—has traveled to 10 countries in Central America and South America, including Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama, living on just $10 a day. He spends his time volunteering, offering business advice to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), nonprofits, and family businesses and chronicling his journey on his website. His ultimate goal? He hopes to get the corporate world to think differently about its approach to corporate responsibility, start his own NGO, and inspire MBA students to use their education to help people in the developing world.
Bloomberg Businessweek’s Alison Damast recently spoke with Pervez, 29, who just finished a volunteering stint in Colombia, about how he came up with the idea for the Happy Nomad Tour and his future travel and career plans. Here is an edited transcript of their conversation:
What were your career goals when you started out in business school and how have you deviated from them?
It is really funny, because when I look back at the essay I wrote for business school, I mentioned that I wanted to work for a sovereign wealth fund, in the Middle East, Norway, or Singapore. I saw myself doing finance, or something like that. When I got to Madrid, the business school was having a corporate social responsibility forum. I went there, and it was life changing. It really showed me that business can be a source of good and gave a lot of examples of people out there doing amazing things. So I decided that while I was at IE I was going to focus on this and not do something in consulting or finance when I got out.
What was it that initially attracted you to social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility while you were an MBA student?
I studied electrical engineering in college and before I did my MBA, I worked in the Middle East for an oil services company in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, in their oil rigs offshore. To help make the wells more efficient, I set up explosions inside them so oil and gas would start flowing inside when they were freshly drilled. So I’m the guy who did the explosions in the oil wells. I was harming the environment and harming the earth. I had a big debt to society and I had a lot of amends to make. I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing something positive.
After business school, you found what seemed like an ideal job in the corporate social responsibility arena, working for Siemens Wind Power. Why did you decide to leave the company after 10 months?
It was the perfect post-MBA job and exactly what I wanted. I was living the dream, and I was making $105,000 a year. But after three months I got a feeling in my stomach, and I asked myself, “What now, what is the next step?” I’d achieved everything I wanted, but I didn’t feel good about it. I thought, “What is wrong with me?” I did my own happiness plunge and tried to find out what my passions are and what my ideal life would be. I knew I wanted to travel, volunteer, write my blog, learn something new every day, and tell stories, so that’s how I came up with the Happy Nomad Tour. I wanted to use my education to be an ambassador and an advocate—and give back.
You’ve visited 10 countries since starting the Happy Nomad Tour last August, and you’ve been able to put the ideas behind corporate social responsibility and social responsibility to the test. What are examples of projects where you used your business skills to improve peoples’ lives?
I started out volunteering and cleaning cages at a dog shelter in Mexico, so initially I was applying zero of my MBA. But as time has gone on, that has changed. I’ve volunteered at a co-op of Mayan women in Honduras and built them a website where they can sell their work to a wider audience. The only electricity they had came from car batteries, so I installed solar panels in the village, using my electrical engineering background and Siemens Wind Power skills. In El Salvador, I worked with an NGO that is only a year old. They’re trying to construct very low-cost housing and rural libraries for people in villages but were having funding problems. I helped them develop a more sustainable funding model so they would have more money coming in and not be so reliant on donations. I stay at a lot of hostels that are often small, family-run places, and I often find myself doing marketing and strategy and helping them build their small businesses. For example, in Panama, I stayed with a family trying to offer their home as an eco-tourism hotel and helped them with their advertising and publicity campaign.
You’ll still be on the road with the Happy Nomad Tour for at least another year or two visiting Asia and the Middle East, but what do you see as your long-term goal when you’ve completed the journey?
I’m learning new things every day, and it is definitely snowballing into something. I could see myself starting an NGO based on a model that is financially sustainable through creating local employment, like the organization I helped in El Salvador. I don’t think I could see myself returning to the corporate world, but I’d like to share my ideas with executives about how they can be part of the solution. And last, I’d love to speak to MBA student to inspire them to think differently about their education—as in how to apply it to solving the many problems that exist in the world today. I’d like to show them via my example that one need not pursue finance or consulting post-MBA. There is a world of opportunities available to MBA graduates, literally.
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I have now completed the first of five terms at INSEAD. So far it has been exhilarating. In addition to the curriculum, there were so many people to meet and so many events and parties to attend. My days were jammed full of things to do from the moment I woke up to the moment I stumbled into bed late at night. INSEAD is demanding, especially considering that the contents of a two-year MBA program are crammed into one. But this is what I had been craving.
This term has been mostly about getting acquainted with my classmates, coming to grips with life in France, studying for the first time in four years, and enjoying the student lifestyle. It’s also been about exploring my dream job. Many go to business school with entrepreneurial ambitions and attempt to launch a startup at some point after graduation. I’m no exception. While everything I experienced was important, the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp stood out from the rest, making me grateful I enrolled at INSEAD.
I was lucky to be among 34 students who attended the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp weekend, a workshop/competition run by startup guru Paul Kewene-Hite, an INSEAD professor with years of experience. The aim of the bootcamp was to transform our ideas into viable business models and pitch them to a panel of angel investors and venture capital firms. In real-life ventures, entrepreneurs can spend months getting ready to make a pitch. In true INSEAD style we operated at a much faster pace with only 48 hours to prepare. Despite this, many of the ideas at past bootcamps have gone on to become successful businesses.
On a Friday evening after class, we set off for bootcamp. As soon as we got there we launched into our ideas, and each person stood up to share. (We were told not to prepare any business plans beforehand, but to come with ideas and let them blossom.) Then, after some discussion, we formed teams to move our idea forward. Most of the initial proposals sounded feasible, although a few wacky ones came about, including aluminum underwear to protect the male genitalia from cell phone radiation. My teammates—David and Aliyah—and I got together to pursue an idea we had come up with earlier in the week: smart (data gathering) clothing. Noticing a gap in the market, we had a vision. We believed we had an innovative solution (one that doesn’t require customers dressing up like Power Rangers or Tron characters).
Guided by Paul in a step-by-step method to develop our ideas, we started with such basics as creating a mission statement, market visualization, and customer acquisition. We moved on to such advanced topics as financial projections, a development timeline, and raising capital. With each step, Paul talked about best practices, mixing in his own real-life experiences. Seeking more feedback, we also presented our work to our peers, and the ideas started evolving into workable concepts. We were able to visualize more and more how each group’s venture was going to work, as well as which issues needed to be addressed.
Passions ran high. Some truly innovative ventures were discussed, many of which had high earning potential and also could change society for the better. By Saturday night everyone was buzzing with excitement for the final pitch on Sunday afternoon. I stayed up until 3 a.m. with David and Aliyah, and we finalized our market research and financial projections.
Not everything went smoothly, and not every idea survived. One group changed its business from a tech venture to salmon farming in Mexico. (Salmon demand is increasing in Mexico, yet there are no native salmon, so they have to be imported. This creates an opportunity for domestic fish farming.)
We also hit roadblocks on our journey. In the wee hours of Sunday morning we discovered that a product similar to ours had already appeared on the market, and the company had established relationships with some of our target customers. Our concept still had several advantages, and we gained courage from this. Customer analysis was good: We identified contacts in our network we could rely on for introductions to customers. And our financial projections and timeline looked realistic. The hard work continued on Sunday as we continued to prepare for the pitch. At that point every team was in a competitive position, and there was no certainty about whose idea was going to win.
Against some outstanding competition, it was a tough fight to impress the judges, but we pitched well and handled the Q&A competently. However, we didn’t win. The winning proposal was a career counseling service to help Indian students realize their potential. It was delivered emotionally and passionately by V, one of our classmates. V comes from a traditional Indian family who had dictated his career path in information technology for him. He studied the subject and worked for four years before realizing his true passion of teaching. V wanted to help other students and their families discover what they want to do in life and how to achieve it. There are currently no services like this in India, and it could bring enormous benefits. We all believe in V and expect great things from his venture.
The weekend wasn’t all about winning a pitch, though; it was more about realizing our potential. I went into the bootcamp with slight fears about being an entrepreneur—trading a stable income for a high-risk project, working without structure, and potentially being consumed by the 24/7 job. Yet I came out of this weekend with an even greater hunger to pursue a business of my own. While David, Aliyah, and I didn’t win, we found a connection and trust in each other and wouldn’t hesitate to pursue another venture together (O.K., radiation-proof underwear might make me think a bit longer before committing). I guess one of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur is getting over your initial fear of failure, uncertainty, and hard work. From this weekend, however, I got a taste of entrepreneurship, and the nectar was sweet.
Between journal entries, you can keep track of Joshua’s business school adventures at the Business Schools Facebook page. Follow the Bloomberg Businessweek B-Schools team on Twitter.
Joshua Jian is a first-year MBA student at INSEAD in Fontainbleau, France. Having always planned on earning an MBA, Jian worked for J.P. Morgan in Hong Kong before enrolling in business school. He says business school will be a journey of self-discovery, during which he will learn what he would like to do besides finance.An MBA Alternative: MIT Sloan's Master of Finance Program
For years, MIT’s Sloan School of Management offered no degree to rival the master of finance programs at Princeton, Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon. That changed in 2008, when the university made finance its first new one-year master’s program in more than 25 years. (It previously offered a finance certificate.) “MIT produces new degrees very rarely,” says Andrew Lo, the director of Sloan’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering.
Enrollment in the MFin program will increase to 120 students for the class of 2013, up from 57 for the class of 2010. Despite this growing popularity, however, administrators face a number of industry challenges, including how Wall Street’s troubles have begun to take a toll on graduates’ career prospects.
The program reported 92 percent of its 2011 class had job offers three months after graduation, down from 100 percent for the class of 2010. More than 220,000 job cuts are expected in the global financial-services industry this year, eclipsing 174,000 dismissals in 2009, Bloomberg data show. And in a fluid regulatory environment, teaching finance grows more complex. The so-called Volcker rule proposes to separate the investment banking, private equity, and hedge fund businesses of banks from their consumer lending units.
MIT expects students who aim to work in finance, and who may have opted for an MBA in the past, to gravitate toward an MFin in the future. Sloan MFin students are younger than MBAs on average (71 percent of the 2011 class had work experience of six months or less, vs. an average of five years for MBAs). And the MFin student body is predominately international, with about 78 percent of the 2011 class coming from outside the U.S. The median salary for 2011 MFin graduates was $82,000, and BlackRock, Cambridge Associates, Citigroup, Deloitte, and Morgan Stanley were the class’s top hirers.
Lo spoke with Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Erin Zlomek about the program. Here is an edited transcript of their conversation:
With so many cuts in the financial industry, how are your graduates finding jobs, and what opportunities are they taking?
The international focus is a strength of our program and is partly dictated by our diverse class. These students are eclectic in the kinds of positions they want and the cities they want to interview in. We have a variety of small and large firms that recruit with us. Students also go on international job treks. (A recent trip was to Banco Santander.)
Students who are passionate about finance are likely interested in the notion of risk and reward and how different resources are channeled through different securities markets. When this is true, careers can develop across many industries, even outside of finance. Take health care. One of the most challenging aspects in health care is figuring out how to finance innovation–it is very expensive and risky. An industry as far removed from finance as health care requires financial innovation, and with the right kind of vehicles, tremendous innovation can occur.
Also, I think our students recognize that when an industry is in flux, those are the times when the most opportunities are being created.
What skills do graduates of the MFin program tend to have?
Our grads understand particular programming languages–namely, Matlab, which is common in the financial world. Our students are trained in areas like risk management and derivatives, and they know how to deal with financial data. They’ve been exposed to different trading strategies. They also know how trading systems can fail and cause significant loss if not properly managed.
How does the application process compare with that of the MBA?
The applications are quite similar. Where it differs are the essays: We want the applicant to be specific about why they are interested in finance. We want applicants to have a good appreciation for different career paths in the industry. In this program, we are not trying to turn out a better day trader–we are trying to turn out responsible financial innovators.
Describe your curriculum.
We start all of our students with a rigorous introduction into financial theory and cover the basic capital markets, corporate finance, and accounting. This gives them a solid foundation of the mathematics and economics of these markets. Students can then take electives on topics such as investments, risk management, and fixed income. There are also action learning courses, such as a seminar in financial engineering, where they get to work on actual problems posed by financial institutions. There is also an externship, where students spend two to four weeks also working on actual projects.
How did the 2008 financial crisis influence your curriculum?
We decided to give our students broad exposure across various sectors of the finance industry. Regulatory change introduces new wrinkles–our students understand financial theory so they can practice within these structures and help institutions deal with the coming changes. The Volcker rule will be quite sweeping in its changes. Lots of derivative trading is leaving banks and being set up separately as hedge funds.
Is there an ethics component to the program?
This is an important issue. We introduce ethics modules in each part of class. For example, there is a case study about a financial institution that engaged in quantitative models, and there was a mistake in the model. After the mistake was discovered by senior quants at the firm, they decided not to disclose it to investors, nor did they fix it. That situation is not typical at financial institutions, but it involves ethics and disclosure, and those lessons are taught in tandem with other things in class. We did not relegate our ethics training to a lecture about being honest and moral. We felt ethics components had to be incorporated in the material we are covering.
Join the discussion on the Bloomberg Businessweek Business School Forum, visit us on Facebook, and follow @BWbschools on Twitter.MBA Essay Questions That Put Applicants in the Spotlight
In an effort to better determine which applicants will best fit in on campus, business schools are turning to nontraditional MBA admissions essay questions. The purpose is to garner information beyond the usual resume, work experience, and leadership potential featured in the rest of the application. And it doesn’t hurt that these more personal questions call for more interesting and creative responses that capture the attention of the admissions committee members reading them.
Ultimately, schools want to enroll students who are a good fit for their offerings and culture, and this is one of the ways they are attempting to find their perfect matches. Each business school has crafted its own unique question—from the Columbia Business School option of writing about an outrageous business plan to the New York University’s Stern School of Business “personal expression” question, which has applicants sharing their passions about everything from music CDs to recipes. The majority of these nontraditional essay questions are meant to unearth personal characteristics, style, and attitude as a means of understanding the type of contribution an applicant would make to his or her class and the campus community as a whole.
Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business asks applicants to share either something that is surprising about them or their proudest moment. Although the last application cycle was the first time these two options were offered, a similar question has been around for about three years. One of the most memorable responses came from someone who participated in the Warrior Dash, an extreme 5K run that has participants crawling through mud and leaping over fire, says James Frick, director of MBA admissions at Tepper. Many others, he adds, used these essays to discuss family, often to convey their gratitude to their parents for helping them grow into the person they are today.
Applicants to the UCLA Anderson School of Management must answer a direct question about the people and events that have shaped their character. For the past couple of years, this question has replaced other more roundabout questions attempting to get at the same information, says Craig Hubbell, associate director of MBA admissions at UCLA Anderson. One applicant wrote about what he learned working on his grandparents’ farm, including how he will incorporate these skills into his future career and pay particular attention to work/life balance in an attempt to avoid working himself to death as his grandparents did. Someone else wrote about being homeless as a child, and another shared the story of her life in a polygamous family. “It’s interesting when you are reading essay after essay late at night,” says Hubbell. “[It] grabs your attention.”
The admissions committee at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business keeps its interest piqued with a question asking applicants to describe themselves to future classmates in 100 words or less. “We want to see how people present themselves in a quick snapshot,” says Soojin Kwon Koh, director of admissions at Ross. A successful response was one in which the applicant defined himself as though he were an entry in the dictionary. “I really like this question,” she adds. “When I’m doing a final review of applications, this is the one I turn to because it gives you a sense of how applicants view themselves.”
Asking a specific question about life—what brings you the greatest joy—is how the admissions committee at the UC, Berkeley Haas School of Business seeks to understand the personality of applicants better. In its first year, this question has acquired mixed responses, says Stephanie Fujii, director of admissions at Haas. The most successful applicants, she adds, share their authentic selves through the essay. “Embrace this as an opportunity to tell us something that’s not easily translated from your resume,” says Fujii. Some of the best responses, she adds, focused on why an applicant chose a particular subject as their joy or passion.
Passions are a common theme for business schools seeking students who will make the best fit. More than 10 years ago, NYU Stern began asking applicants to describe themselves using any method they would like. People have shared collages, mocked-up guitars, personalized board games, View Masters with little pictures depicting their life, statues, even menus. Last year, the school updated the question to allow for USB, DVD, and CD submissions, too, says Isser Gallogly, assistant dean of MBA admissions at Stern. The possibilities seem almost endless.
While many applicants feel overwhelmed by these kinds of unexpected and nontraditional essay questions, administrators say there are benefits for the applicants, as well. “Embrace it,” says Gallogly. “Applicants often feel as though their profile is typical. They worry how they’re going to stand out, and questions like this help them set themselves apart.”
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Internship hunting season is in full swing on most MBA campuses, with students looking to secure the coveted summer internship they hope will lead to a full-time job. Although it is still early, all indicators point to a healthy hiring season, both for MBA internships and full-time hires. According to the latest Graduate Management Admission Council’s corporate recruiters survey, 74 percent of companies polled plan to hire MBAs in 2012, up from 57 percent last year, and more than 20 percent of companies plan to increase the number of internships they offer this year over last.
At Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, those predictions are proving true thus far. Recruiting activity is up 5 percent to 11 percent in most industries, according to preliminary data, with such fields as consulting and technology proving to be especially robust, says Sheryle Dirks, who is associate dean for career management. Even though hiring is on the uptick, the way companies are hiring MBA students is starting to shift, Dirks says. In addition to the traditional on-campus interviewing process, companies are seeking to diversify how they identify and hire talent, she says. For example, she explains, many are now looking to hire B-school students through job postings, company events, or larger school job fairs or conferences. In an increasingly competitive MBA job market, she feels this can make the job search a bit more challenging for students.
Bloomberg Businessweek’s Alison Damast recently spoke with Dirks about how students still looking for jobs and internships should approach their job hunts and how the recruiting season is shaping up on campus. Here is an edited transcript of their conversation:
The buzz on most business school campuses this year is that things continue to look good on the job front. How would you describe overall recruiting activity this year compared with last year’s?
It was a busy fall. I would definitely say activity is up at this time compared with last year, but it is still a moderate increase, and I think that is actually a good thing. That is quite honestly the kind of increase we are looking for, because sometimes when there is an enormous spike in activity, it is not sustainable over time.
Typically, companies begin hiring summer interns when students return from winter break, but it seems like some companies are trying to get a head start on internship hiring. Are you seeing more of them deviate from the traditional recruiting schedule?
In some sectors, certain companies are looking to lock down students early. Some companies do things like boot camps before business school even starts in the fall and are really proactively recruiting at affinity conferences. So yes, some companies are getting out there earlier than ever before and looking to manage their yield on students, and certainly that is a good indicator. We have compared notes with others at top business schools and have seen a number of situations where companies are trying to get out of the gate as early as possible, and many of them have made a good number of internship offers.
Should students be concerned if they are still in the process of interviewing for internships and haven’t yet received an offer?
We have had fewer than two weeks of interviews, and students are already saying, “Oh well, a lot of my classmates have jobs.” It is a very visible process, and it feels a little bit like a fishbowl. It is sometimes easy to look around at things and say, “Everyone has a job.” The reality is year in and year out, March and April seem to be the months most students receive and accept offers. So yes, there is some very visible early activity, but the reality is that the process continues for many students well into the spring, and for some, even into the summer.
A few schools we spoke with a few weeks ago, including the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, said investment banking recruiting is slowing down this year. Is this something you’re seeing on your campus?
Investment banking is down, and the number of students who went to work on Wall Street this year was down slightly. Typically, we have 75 to 100 students attend our Week on Wall Street event. This year, it was more like 65, and those slightly smaller numbers have followed through. I think the message from the banking world is really clear. The spots are limited, and for those not really 100 percent convinced up front that they want [a career in investment banking], it looks like a very small pool to swim in. We’ve also seen this on the internship side. The number of students who submitted a resume to be considered for investment banks is down 15 percent to 20 percent.
On the flip side, what are some of the industries experiencing growth and hiring more students this year?
Consulting is really active at Fuqua right now, and that is one area in particular where there are just an awful lot of students at any given consulting-focused activity or event. Another one that is up for us is technology, and we’ve had a number of students going to larger premium technology companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. Those kinds of companies have higher numbers than we’ve had in years. We have seen, not a huge spike, but a spike in interest in corporate-focused finance roles, and that is great. I remember days when companies hiring for corporate finance positions were kind of a fallback position to investment banking. I think because of the environment, folks are seeing more of the viability of the corporate finance path.
Any advice you can offer second-year students who weren’t able to land a job this fall and are still looking?
The first thing I would say is to try to relax. I know it is a hard thing to do and is easier said than done, but there are good jobs out there. At Fuqua, for example, we participate in five to six different events in the spring that are genuinely multi-school events. We partner together with other schools, and they all have full-time job opportunities in those spring events. They should also leverage the alumni networks, go out and do professional activities that allow you to meet with people beyond our own alumni, and keep in touch with people you knew and had relationships with before you came to business school. Most importantly, they need to keep in mind there is no magic bell that goes off just because you graduated. It is far more important to find a good job–and a good job that is right for you–than to say, “I have a job,” and then, in three or six months, be looking to make another transition because it was a bad fit or you got laid off.
Join the discussion on the Bloomberg Businessweek Business School Forum, visit us on Facebook, and follow @BWbschools on Twitter.Tyra Banks Talks About Attending Harvard Business School
What has this done for your company?
After my first term, I came back and killed a whole bunch of businesses we were going into. We have to say no more often than we say yes, no matter how much money people put on that goddamned table. Harvard is all about innovation and being first to market. It’s something I’m constantly bringing back to my team.
Were any of the courses ho-hum?
I wouldn’t say any of them were ho-hum. Some of them were intimidating. For me, finance is intimidating. When the chalkboard starts to look like Einstein’s chalkboard, I’m like, “whoa!”
Did any subject come more naturally?
In second term we talked about a tactic that’s highly risky—you take such a leap forward in one direction that you burn the bridge to go backwards. I thought, “Oh my gosh, is that what I did when I retired from modeling and walked off the Victoria’s Secret runway and told the entire world, ‘I am retired!’ before I even had my talk show renewed?” My marketing professor, Rohit Deshpande, is now doing a case study on my business, so I’m going to be part of the curriculum.
Does that make you a little worried?
Of course you’ve got to be worried because these guys are going to come and tear apart your company. As the protagonist of the case, I am welcome to be in the classroom when they present it. So it is like free advice—free, harsh, honest, unfiltered advice. I just have to put on my armor to go there.
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