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JUNE 22, 2000 B-SCHOOL Q&A: PLACEMENT Meet Chicago's Placement Director "I think [New Economy businesses] present a more attractive opportunity for today's MBA graduates. The chance to be part of the New Economy, and what is perceived as the forefront of the changing economic scene, has a lot of appeal to students."
Q: What made this year's recruiting season different from year's past? A: Students are looking at a much wider breadth of opportunities than ever before. They're expecting schools to help them [connect] with those opportunities. We're ready to help, but it changes a lot of things. Our recruiting doesn't end in Feb. anymore. Now it goes until June. Dot-com companies work off of a different [recruiting] calendar. And, their recruiting contacts are different. We've had to think of other alternatives, such as our West Quest in Dec. At the same time, we can't abandon the programs that we've started. Q: No doubt, with more recruiters coming to campus and fewer walking away with hiring goals met, you've a new responsibility: keeping everyone happy enough to return again in 2001 to try all over again. A: It's not easy. When you see students [in general] accepting jobs at a 10% level at traditional companies, it becomes hard. In the past, 30% of our students would have pursued jobs in a particular area. So we try to remind the recruiters that employment trends are cyclical. Our account management structure is playing a role so that we don't forget Old Economy employers. That gives the recruiter a single point of contact within the career services office. Each account manager is responsive to the [recruiter's] service needs, and acts as a consultant. Q: Glenn, we know that the preferences of the typical MBA have changed dramatically. The class of 2000 was the first class to demonstrate those characteristics - with an interest in taking on risk, and reconsidering structure. How does the class of 2001 fit that description? A: The difference is less distinct. The class of 1999 looked more similar to the class of 1998, than it did to this year's graduating class. The [class of 2000] will look similar to the class of 2001. One difference from the [class of 2001] is that the career changers are interested in using the summer internship to learn from a firm that has more stability. They recognize the value in that. It's important who you're learning from. Some lose sight of that, and replace it with the chance to be part of something that's headline grabbing. But startups aren't right for everyone. Q: Yet there are those students that do hunt down startups. What's Chicago doing for the independent job searcher? A: We created job search discussion groups. Those are places to report your progress, while a career services mentor sits in. In the second-year group, we have 10 people. For our first-year group, we have 20 to 25 student participants. To me it's an underutilized service. When you go, you can share your issues, and get the benefit of brainstorming of resolution to issues. It also helps with networking because [the students] share their contact lists. It's easy to not manage your time well when doing an independent job search because you're only answering to yourself. So the third benefit is the discipline of having a goal-driven job search. Our new venture challenge and business plan competitions are good places to make connections with panels of experts, too. This year, we have 2,000 job postings - double what we had in 1999. That fits very well in a startup world. We can broadcast job postings to our students, and also match their job postings with student resumes. Q: What's going to change in 2000? A: We're going to expand our support for the off-campus treks. A winter event is good to lay the groundwork of networking, but we learned you need a spring event to follow up. There are lots of tech opportunities in Chicago, so we don't have to trek anywhere. We're looking to do an event on campus to bring in local employers. We continue to remember in our programming to use words, and think of the market in a much different way than we have. We need to remember the tools that we've always talked about apply in a stronger sense when you're looking at job search that's away from campus. We're expanding our staff resources. We've developed over 100 new relationships [with companies] in the 1999 to 2000 academic year. But we find that we need more. We'll need someone on the road, representing our students to a vast employer base that we don't have recruiter relationships with. We recruit our alumni, too, because our agenda should be on their agendas.
Q: What can a small business do today to recruit students with MBAs from high-caliber business schools? A: One way is to start working with the talent while they are still students. Small businesses have tons of needs, and there are students who need part-time work while they are here. Small-business consulting groups, for example, can offer part-time experience in a major metropolitan area like Chicago. Students could do market assessments and research; they can do financial analysis or strategic analysis. Q: What are other things small businesses can do? A: Working with the school's entrepreneurship program, making sure alumni are involved, and attending alumni activities. Students look to those activities to meet alumni and to network. This fall, we had an entrepreneurship venture-capital conference, and there were 350 attendees. It was a great place for entrepreneurs to go, but also to meet students who are attending. Volunteering to speak is another way to do it. Q: How do small businesses approach you to interview students? A: There is a scheduling process. Usually, it occurs in the spring. Our date is March 31, when we actually will begin to take room and date reservations for recruiting activity. [Sometimes] this model does not work too well for a small business -- it may not be planning in March of 2000 for hiring in June of 2001 -- so we try to be flexible in terms of always having space available. We have the flexibility to do things "off-process" and at off-times. We also offer alternatives like a job bank. This year we will have about 2000 jobs posted to that, and that is another way for a small business to find talent. Q: Do New Economy businesses -- the dot-coms or high-tech businesses -- have a better chance of hiring MBA students now? A: I think they present a more attractive opportunity for today's MBA graduates. The chance to be part of the New Economy, and what is perceived as the forefront of the changing economic scene, has a lot of appeal to students. They feel like this is their opportunity to be part of something that is new and revolutionary, and a small business operating in that arena offers somebody that. Q: What about Old Economy small businesses? Do they have a chance? A: Firms in [more established industries] can offer better learning opportunities. They can present themselves as having more stability, and that is a good thing for some students who want stability and security. Q: What are some of the compensation incentives that new-economy businesses are offering? A: Their compensation packages tend to be multi-pronged. They include salaries and sign-on bonuses, and sometimes a guaranteed year-end bonus. Newer startups are offering stock options as an incentive, sometimes to balance a lower-than-expected salary. Depending where the startup is in its stage of funding, it can also offer a very competitive salary. They are offering the options as a way to balance the risk. Q: What do some typical starting salaries look like, at startups versus bigger businesses? A: I think that gap is closing. Our median salary, taking all offers into consideration, is about $80,000 to start out. Q: What are average signing bonuses and average guaranteed bonuses? A:The median sign-on bonus around here is probably around $25,000. Our median guaranteed bonus is going to be around $30,000 this year. Q: What kind of jobs are students finding at small businesses? A: They are finding jobs like business development -- selling the business to strategic partners. That is definitely the big one in terms of interest from the companies, as well as on the student side. Also strategic-planning jobs. And there are opportunities for chief financial officers -- depending on the size of the business and whether someone graduating as a 28-year-old has the kind of experience they need. Q: What about for big business? What are the typical jobs MBA students find there? What is the difference? A: Medium or big-sized businesses offer a much more structured starting point. Often there are tracks: "You will be in the training program for three months, and then we are going to put you out here, and you will stay at this associate's level for two years, and we will put you onto the next level." There is a lot more definition over the length of time you will be in a career; what you are going to be doing while you are there; and what the company is doing for you while you are in that position. It is hard for a smaller company to [define a career path]. It is much more fluid. It's an important question for students to ask when they are thinking about entering the startup world. What is their tolerance for ambiguity and flexibility, to know that when you come in that morning, you may not know what you are going to be doing that day? Q: What's the attitude of students today? Do they want to work in a non-traditional, small-business environment? A:We do a quarterly survey of students. We ask how many are doing primarily an off-campus, non-traditional search -- and that comes out to 15 to 20 percent. About 50 percent say they are primarily doing on-campus [traditional] searches. That leaves about 30 percent who say they are doing both. Q: How has the boom economy changed MBA students' expectations in the last five years? A: They expect schools to be putting a lot of effort into developing new relationships with new-economy businesses in addition to relationships with traditional businesses like investment banks, management consultants, and manufacturing businesses. MBA students [want] the school to stay relevant in the job marketplace. They expect us to have information resources that support a wider breadth of career opportunities. I think they also expect schools to have expanded expertise available [to help analyze] compensation packages, which are much more complex than they used to be. Q: Do more MBAs typically want to start their own businesses? A:You hear so many business-school students talk about wanting to start their own businesses. They have a two- to three-year horizon: "I am going to do this as my first job out of business school, and then I want to start my own business. They expect schools to provide them some sort of foundation, and also the chance to network." Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. 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MBA Insider![Meet Chicago's Placement Director^"I think [New Economy businesses] present a more attractive opportunity for today's MBA graduates. The chance to be part of the New Economy, and what is perceived as the forefront of the changing economic scene, has a lot of appeal to students."^^^](http://www.businessweek.com:/bschools/images/sykes_118x158.jpg)
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