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JUNE 19, 2000 B-SCHOOL Q&A: PLACEMENT Meet Columbia's Placement Director "Opportunity often poses challenges to students. How do you navigate through these options? How do you make the choice that's right for you?"
Q: Regina, you came to Columbia after the graduating MBAs ranked the school 21st among Business Week's top B-Schools in 1998. Success in the career placement office is a common strategy among B-schools to keep students happy. What's Columbia's? A: The students are looking for diversity of choice, so we've done outreach [to attract new recruiters]. We meet with a variety of companies around the world to tell them about the quality of our students. Fortunately, the reputation of the school is strong, and it wasn't a hard sell. Q: What firms did Columbia Business School lack? A: We had many students interested in media and entertainment since we have a concentration on that, so we reached out to new technology firms emerging on the West Coast. We're fortunate to have a lot of alumni at terrific startups in Silicon Alley. Q: Did the office's daily functions change? A: We instituted a career services course. The course covers the gamut of issues related to career management. We want to take a long-range view to a student managing a career, and give them practical tools for their first job [after] business school. We talk about the nature of the MBA marketplace, the importance of self-assessment, resume writing, and cover letters. We also talk about interviewing and managing the offer process. We also have a management communications program where students learn interview skills and get individual coaching. Q: What companies did Columbia MBAs prefer this year? A: There's a bit of a shift. The traditional firms continue to do well. Wall Street still has a lot of allure and has done aggressive and smart recruiting on campus. Consulting also holds a great deal of appeal. We've seen more consulting firms than ever on campus, including Internet strategy and implementation firms. In addition, many students are interested in entrepreneurship and are starting their own companies or working with startups. They go globally and they go typically to major money centers. There are also a lot of students interested in London and Latin America, Asia — you name it, our students are going there. Q: Landing a good job is a dream that's front and center for many MBAs. Does it get too much attention and force MBAs to overlook some of the academic lessons? A: We encourage students to take a long view of their career. Self-assessment is critical. At the first course session, we counsel them on the importance of taking a look at what matters to them. Ultimately, the first job they take, they're going to be at the job without the [support] network they have at Columbia. It's worthwhile to consider where this first step might lead. Opportunity often poses challenges to students. How do you navigate through these options? How do you make the choice that's right for you? Our goal is to continue to work with them, and to help them identify the opportunities that meet with their goals and objectives. Q: How have Old Economy companies become savvier recruiters? A: They've always been strong and savvy recruiters. They've been nimble to respond to the market, and they've listened to students. Some of them even conduct focus groups on campus to better understand student interests. Our students have an opportunity within "traditional" companies, to have functional positions [at those companies] that focus on New Economy companies or issues. Q: In 1999, 11% of Columbia's B-School grads found jobs with companies with fewer than 100 employees. What's going to happen in 2000? A: That percentage will go up. There's a lot of enthusiasm on campus [regarding small companies]. We have an incubator where students can have their [business] plans tested [before they leave school]. I can't tell you specifically how much. Q: Columbia's placement stats for the class of 2000 haven't been released yet. Off the top of your head, what percent of your students are placed? A: Most people have offers at this point. But some are waiting to move to the West Coast to make a decision. They may not be jumping so quickly at the offers that they have in hand. Others are starting their own businesses. Q: In 1998, the average MBA grad had three job offers. Last year, that figure spiked to five without much change in the number of interviews conducted or the number of companies on campus. Why the difference? A: It's a testament to the robustness of the economy and Columbia's business students. Q: At the same time, Columbia grads got a $5,000 jump in average starting salaries between 1998 and 1999. A: That may go up again this year. Compensation is obviously a factor in trying to obtain the top talent. Companies recognize that there can be some value in enriching the package. Q: Funny how Columbia's new Career Online Information Network is tagged COIN. A: We did have some fun with that. They can put it in the bank when they graduate, because we have something called the BANC system for alumni, which is the Business Alumni Network Community. We're creative here. Q: Tell us more about the COIN system. A: The Web page has become increasingly important. And we've always put a lot of attention on what we're offering to the students virtually. Giving students an opportunity to have individual counseling is important, too. But increasingly, students want and expect to see information available online. We link to specific company sites, and also to job sites that are valuable for our students to look at. In terms of on-campus recruiting at the school, we want students to be fully informed of when companies are coming for pre-recruiting, and recruiting. Our Web-based sign-up system lets them set schedules, too. Q: With 1,256 full-time students among the first and second years, how does Columbia keep the job managment process personal? A: We always have a feedback mechanism within the department to hear from students and recruiters. The students are assigned to clusters when they come to school of about 60 students. Each cluster elects a career services representative, and we have a round table with students once a month to discuss issues related to the job search. We have up to 125 one-on-one sessions a week. Q: Where do international students fall in that equation? A: There's always a concern about visa issues and work authorization. One thing we also try to do online for the students is to let them know up-front, before the process begins, which companies have indicated that they require work authorization, and what that work authorization is. Or will they look at everyone's resume? And we encourage companies to look at everyone. International markets have rebounded and Asia is offering lots of opportunities. We're fortunate that many companies that come to campus work with our [international] students to place them either in a home country, in the U.S., or even in a third country. The [investment] banks and consulting firms have more flexibility with that. Q: How have new recruiting trends, including West treks, job fairs, and the use of electronic job boards changed Columbia's career management operations? A: The idea of on-campus versus off-campus recruiting is blended now. We have formal on-campus recruiting, but we also do outreach and virtual resume collections for companies that will post for a specified period of time and collect resumes and cover letters from students. We also have over 3,000 job postings a year from companies. We provide most of that [online] to the students. We have recruiters' breakfasts, alumni networking events, and site visits to companies. In mid-March, we held Networking 2000, where we invited over 40 companies to campus in the new media space. Q: Recruiting offices got more publicity this year than ever before. What did you learn over the past year? What will you do differently in the fall of 2000? A: We need to continue to get feedback from students and recruiters to try to optimize our services. We need to be vigilant to offer a variety of venues for our students to meet and to help recruiting firms with tailored strategies for on-campus recruiting. One size doesn't fit all. 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. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | JUNE Learn about your online education options |
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