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JUNE 7, 2000 B-SCHOOL Q&A: PLACEMENT Meet Texas-Austin's Placement Director "I'm not so sure that coming to town is that critical any more, because students can go to visit the companies. We redefined what it means to have a relationship or even to be successful with a company."
Q: Sharon, your office serves 750 full-time students that need to be placed into internships and full-time jobs. Increasingly, more companies are coming to campus. What's your role in all this mayhem? A: I am externally focused and deal primarily with companies. I ensure that the relationships we establish and maintain with the companies are strong and healthy, and that we continue to strengthen them. My other key objective is management and administrative. The career services office is fairly large with about 24 full-time people to handle the large-volume operation when you throw in the undergraduates as well. It keeps me hopping just to ensure that we manage our processes as efficiently as we can, that we bring technology to the forefront, and stay on budget. Q: In 1996, the office got poor reviews from students. In 1998, things looked up. The career services office got a new home complete with new interview rooms, and you added staff. What's happened since 1998? A: We've focused on technology to improve the technological interface for students and employers, because we needed to upgrade that. I've been able to continue to garner student support so that we can utilize the student fees we collect from students to increase salaries [in the office] to recruit and retain highly qualified personnel in the office. This office is almost completely supported by student fees that are allocated specifically to this office [through tuition fees]. The state of Texas pays nothing for the graduate career services that are offered out of this office. Student fees pay salary and benefits, operating overhead, and everything that is included in all the programming that is delivered to the graduate students. Q: What kind of personnel has the office recruited? A: I haven't created any new positions, but we were having a problem with considerable turnover over the last 18 months. A lot of that was due to the fact that university salary structure wasn't competitive with the industry and certainly not the market in Austin. We've been able to raise the salaries here so that I can recruit qualified people into the office to fill positions and to keep them here. I have a great counseling staff that probably totals an average of 15 years of experience. Their schedules are full all the time, so there are always students waiting to see them. Q: You mentioned technology earlier. How is it helping you manage, build, and keep that high-tech relationship with the 750 students that your office has to help out? A: We contracted with a company just over a year ago to develop a new application for on-campus recruiting over two years. Students have been involved in testing this product and in focus groups to help ensure that we incorporate the features and the aspects to the system that are important to them. We hope that the first phase will be ready this year. And a lot of what's going to be incorporated into it is push technology, so that the students will be incorporated into the business school platform. The MBAs all have laptops, and a certain platform, e-mail, etc. This application incorporates appointments, and sends reminders for company receptions or interviews, etc. The system will incorporate these appointments into their calendars on their laptops and they'll get e-mail reminders and things like that. The system will almost serve as an administrative assistant for the MBAs. It can keep them abreast and not let them forget about things they've committed to.
Q: What does the office do to connect its first- and second-year MBAs with high-tech, high-growth companies worldwide? A: That is a new challenge. Some of this has been caused by the students' energy and a lot of students have gotten involved in the effort. We've worked with the MBAs for a Seattle trek with a reception in the Seattle area. We also participated in a West Coast recruiting forum. We brought students to the West Coast and invited employers in the San Jose area [to meet the students]. In Austin, we've done some small-group meetings with these types of employers. We've had panel discussions with the employers, and invite them to come to the classroom and make themselves available [to students]. These employers may not want to participate in the traditional recruiting channels yet. They want a personal touch, such as the formats I mentioned. Q: Are connections being made between students and employers at the career fairs? A: Absolutely. Connections are also being made through the student organizations. Austin has particularly active student organizations, one being the Entrepreneurs Society. The Information Management Assn. has also been active with these types of companies. Q: UT-Austin has attracted nearly 150 extra MBA recruiters since 1998, reporting in 1999 that 543 companies came to campus. What companies do students still say the office is lacking? A: We'd like to see some of the new big companies, such as Amazon.com. Maybe even Nike, since we deal with them on a correspondence basis. But they haven't made a big push to come to town. I'm not so sure that coming to town is that critical any more, because students can go to visit the companies. We redefined what it means to have a relationship or even to be successful with a company. If the company is receptive, willing to accept resume referrals from us, wants to go to visit students, and is willing to host the student and bring them in for some introduction and discussion, then that's a huge success. That's the start of a relationship that we can build upon. Q: Establishing a corporate relationship is key to lure recruiters back year after year. What's the trick? A: We have an ambassador program that I manage. I select students who are interested in dedicating time over the holidays wherever they are for the breaks to calls on select companies in that area. That's been a successful program. We send the product-the MBA-out as free samples to introduce employers in the area to the UT-Austin MBA program. Or it's to follow up with them to let them know we're glad to have their business. There are all sorts of ways to initiate discussion with a company and the market is such now that companies are receptive, because they find it challenging to compete and are receptive to finding new ways to identify talent. Q: Silicon Valley gets press for attracting MBAs, as does the Austin area. Have you felt competitive pressure from other B-schools that brings their MBAs on tours to your backyard? A: We hear about it, and it always makes me smile because it certainly didn't used to be that way. Our students can compete with the best and the brightest, so it hasn't impacted us in any way that's been obvious, that's for sure. There are more jobs here than there ever were before. So far it seems to me that there's plenty to go around. We can't meet all of the needs of employers in the local area, so it's great that other schools are beginning to take notice and come to town. And it's even good for our students to know that there's competition in the neighborhood. It makes them sharper and better. Q: In past years at UT-Austin, three-quarters of your MBA graduates took jobs in the South. In 1998, only 50% did. Will the downward trend continue? A: It's a little too early to tell. The timing this year is a little bit skewed because of the technological slant. Students are waiting longer to decide [which job offers to accept]. The market seems to be very healthy, so I would imagine that students can go just about wherever they want to go based on lifestyle preference. Generally speaking, they're inclined to the milder climates, so I would imagine that we'll see a nice distribution across the West, Midwest, and Southwest. Q: For first-year interns, do their job preferences point them in a different direction that the class of 2000 has taken? A: The biggest difference is that we'll see more interns going to startups in high-tech, smaller companies. I feel sure of it. One thing's for sure, they will be a little more risky than their predecessors because they feel like they can be for their internships. Q: At the end of the first year of the UT-Austin MBA, what skills can the MBAs say they bring to companies after a year of core courses and a few electives? A: They probably haven't had enough coursework in their concentrations to bring a lot of value to that [company], but they've probably gotten enough of a broad stroke that they feel like they could offer the general management aspect. And that is what a lot of smaller companies are looking for with summer interns. Q: A number of schools tout networking as the be-all, end-all for getting a job in the New Economy. What's the atmosphere like at Austin with its Graduate Business Network? A: Networking is always valuable. The graduate school here is very entrepreneurial. We have a number of adjunct faculty members who are from businesses here in town, so many bring corporate representatives from the local economy. There's tremendous exposure to the students. There are a couple of venture capital firms that provide amazing opportunities for the students in town. For example, the UT-Austin's Moot Corp. Competition happens in the spring. Schools from all over the world come to present their business plans to judges from venture capital firms, attorneys, CEOs, investment bankers, and others. The governor (George W. Bush) is hosting the initial reception. Q: You've got a perspective unlike some of your other colleagues in that you've been in the same office for 15 years. Could you paint a picture of the differences between the MBA class of 2000 and the one you first met in the mid-1980s? A: When I arrived, MBA students were virtually rollover bachelor's-level students. They had very little industry experience, if any, and were naïve about the world. The market was quite a different place. The University of Texas was struggling at that time to establish a national reputation, and in the mid-1980s was seen as a regional school. Students who came from out-of-state struggled to find opportunities beyond Dallas or Houston. Today, the MBAs out of this program can go anywhere geographically that they want to. We have employers coming here from all over the place. And even if somebody wasn't coming here from Poughkeepsie, and that's where a student wanted to go, I would be willing to bet that with one or maybe two phone calls we could make the connection. Students who come here are amazing, as with any of the top 20 schools, and the backgrounds that they bring are phenomenal. They've had all sorts of work experience, all sorts of life experiences that are interesting. Q: Indeed, it seems that there's much more crossover now between career services and admissions to ensure that the front-end product will be marketable on the back end. If you had your druthers, what experience would the MBAs have before arriving? A: I don't know that there's one ideal student because there are so many different industries and cultures of companies that recruit here. One thing I can safely say is that people coming into an MBA program now have familiarity with technology. It's very difficult for them if they don't, just because of the way we all do business. And those students that come in from strictly a liberal arts background or maybe an environment that didn't use technology so much struggle to catch up. That is the one thing that is more important than it was two or three years ago. Q: When recruiters do come to campus for UT students, what's the flagship skill the students leverage? What are UT students known for having? A: We have established a nice reputation for a technical bent. I don't now that all students coming to the program bring it on their own, but we have a strict curriculum design within the program that will compliment a student's background in that way. One of the strongest attributes to a UT MBA is still a work ethic and a commitment to doing what needs to be done to get the job done — a novel approach for some MBAs. MBAs have sometimes had this reputation that they're above it all. And we hold onto a culture that says we are "roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, get in there and make it work" MBAs. Employers like that. Q: 1999-2000 was a rough academic year for recruiters. They've had to make many changes to their marketing pitches to students, and they've had to adjust their schedules to be more competitive. Will more walk away empty-handed this year from Austin, and will that hinder their intent to return in the future? A: It's certainly true that it's been a very competitive year. I don't know how many will walk away empty-handed, but they aren't getting the yield rates that they would like. They're seeing that across the nation. So employers have to rethink their strategies. They want to be viewed as an attractive alternative to these sexy, trendy, Internet companies. Q: Susan, is there anything you want to add? A: One thing that we have learned in trying to manage these new sets of expectations and new demands on our office is that we've had to work very hard to give companies and students more personal attention. That has helped us maintain and strengthen some of the corporate relationships, particularly with the companies who are feeling disappointed that they didn't compete better in this economy. It's important for us to let them know that we do care about them. We will hold their hands to ensure that they make the right contacts, and work with the right student organizations and with the right faculty members. That's one of the lessons for next year. 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