I think, given the student body, we really do have a challenge. My goal primarily is to provide a topnotch career-resource center that partners with students to assist them in discovering, developing, and achieving their career goals. What we do is take a look at each of the populations and at the specific needs that they have. We've realized that the needs of the part-time MBA student, or the executive MBA student may be a little bit different from the full-time MBA student. And, as a result, we work with student teams in developing customized services for each of the programs. While we all know that eventually the outcome they're looking for is to advance their career and gain new employment, the way they go about it may be a little bit different.

With our full-time program, because the students are unemployed as a result of going to school full time, they're looking for internships in the first year and for full-time jobs in the second year. And so their job-search process starts a lot earlier. In fact, it starts during orientation. A lot of those students are career changers. As a result, the need for more structured programming to enhance their career awareness is very important.

On the other hand, the students in our part-time population tend to be a little bit older and tend to be more "career enhancers" than career changers. They need to better understand the strategy for approaching the market to enhance their career. And, as a result, we do workshops in a slightly different mode. We generally counsel our part-time students on a just-in-time basis that is laid out over the three years that they're with us. We start advising full-timers right at the get-go, at the start of orientation. But we don't approach the part-timers really until their last year here.

It sounds like your office services two distinct student populations. Does that mean your part-time placement is done separately from the full-time program?

What we do on the career management and career advising side is done separately. With regard to employment opportunities, with career awareness events, corporate receptions, information sessions, or what have you, those are typically done jointly.

Who is your office's primary customer? Is it the student or the recruiter? A blend of the two?

We view our students as partners in the process.... We look at all of our students and provide them with the greatest amount of services that we can in partnering with them and understanding their needs.

The employer is ultimately the customer because the employer is the person who's hiring our student. The students understand that they're marketing themselves as a product to the employers. We understand that we need to partner with the students to make sure that they're prepared the best that they can be to take advantage of those opportunities.

What kinds of partnerships has your office formed with the students to increase their opportunities?

We, for example, work very closely with the functional student clubs on campus to conduct what we would call "industry nights," which bring a lot of corporate representatives from around the country [here to] network and meet our students. Some of the functional clubs that conduct industry nights include consulting; finance; marketing; venture capital; our international students do one which spans a variety of topics; GIZMO (which is our operations and information systems club); entertainment; and our new media/technology club.

Industry nights occur primarily in the fall, but depending upon the industry, like entertainment and new media, they can happen in the spring as well. And they also run the gamut -- an industry night can be as robust as having panelists and then a roundtable for networking, or it could be as simple as just a cocktail reception. Students are the ones really taking care of this. We work with them to help them structure the event, but they wind up essentially making it happen. And to date, they've been a success. They've been going on for about four to five years and are a good way for students to meet employers and for employers to see the school.

We also work with various student groups to attend conferences throughout the country, put together targeted resume books, and set up information sessions at company sites.

Our philosophy is to have the students get very involved. We're doing a lot of marketing and a lot of outreach. But the bottom line is that if the student does not have that exposure and that face-to-face contact with the employer, what we're doing ultimately isn't going to benefit them. So we want the students to take leadership roles and have leadership opportunities in dealing with employers.

Has that perspective changed at all over the course of your six years at USC's career center?

We've really developed that philosophy in the last two years. We were a relatively small program when I began. In fact, when I first came on, our full-time program was graduating less than 200 students. Accordingly, we had a relatively small staff at the time. And we were very "student is the customer, the career center is the service supplier."

What we have found over the years is that if we don't have the student involvement and participation, we're not going to be successful. So we've adopted that philosophy, incorporated a lot of student involvement, not only in the market outreaching that we're doing, but also in the development of the career-management training sessions that we do. One example is getting the second-year students involved in mentoring functions with the first-year students. Every second-year student is given a first-year student as a mentee. And this is something that's run through the student government association. We've also developed a program through the career center of peer advisors, where we're working with about 11 students right now who are providing that service.

One of the things unearthed by Business Week's 1998 rankings project was that the Marshall School garnered a tremendous amount of graduate satisfaction. But the disparity between student satisfaction (placing 18th out of 61 schools evaluated) and corporate satisfaction (ranked 55th out of 61 school evaluated) was quite large. What is Marshall doing on the employer side of the equation to be more accommodating to recruiters?

I think probably the reason why you see that disparity there is because, in some areas of the country, we don't have an established reputation. The companies that we work with really love us and get very involved in a lot of functions here on campus -- from sending representatives to be involved in mock interviews and participating in all the corporate receptions and events that go on campus, to helping us conduct seminars on areas like investment banking, consulting, marketing, and brand management.

I think our role in this office is to continue to do a better job in marketing the school and marketing the program in areas of the country where that awareness may not exist. I think we've come a long way in the time that I've been here. But until we have graduates taking opportunities in the various parts of the country where our reputation is not as established, that awareness isn't going to be as strong.

Which areas in industry do you feel that that awareness needs to be propped up?

I think as far as industries go, we've been spending a lot of time doing outreach to New York and specifically the investment banking community. We've had some recent luck over the past couple of years in getting more grads placed on Wall Street. Now, given our location and being 3,000 miles away, I don't think we're ever going to be the school of choice for those firms as far as on-campus recruiting goes. But I think if we continue to get -- like we did last year -- three people at Bear Stearns and two people at Merrill Lynch and three people at Citibank and a few people at Lehman Brothers, we're going to start developing a strong reputation.

I would imagine, given your West Coast location, that USC's strongest presence is in the technology sector.

You know, I think that technology and technology companies play a big role in recruiting here. But when you take a look at the diversity of industries that recruit here, I can't say that we're really niched into one particular industry. Last year, for instance, the high-technology companies accounted for about 19% of the employment that happened here. And that's a combination of software, computer hardware, and communications companies. Meanwhile financial services and investment banking made up 19% of the recruiting here, and consulting comprised about 25% of last year's placement.

Where we're seeing growth, though, is in consumer products -- the food and beverage type companies. We had about 10% who went to those firms last year. But this year, we've had phenomenal results in employment with our students there. We've got four people who were extended offers from Procter & Gamble, five from General Mills, and two from Kraft.

During the 1997/1998 academic year, Marshall accommodated a total of about 165 second-year, on-campus recruiters. That's up from 153 from the year before. Are you seeing company demand continue to increase this time around?

We're up 6%, so far this year -- that's specifically for second years. We're just getting into the first-year recruiting right now, and that's up slightly as well -- by 2% or 3%. But, you know, we're at the time of year where we're continuing to add schedules. We have a marketplace here that [has] a lot of mid-size and smaller-size companies, and they typically don't do their internship recruiting until later in the spring. So my projection is that we'll probably see about a 6% to 8% increase on the first-year recruiting as well.

So far this year, what types of new companies have you wooed into the on-campus recruiting fold?

This year we have added almost 21 new companies. Some of our new on-campus recruiters include: America West Airlines, A.T. Kearney, Charles Schwab, Dell Computer, General Electric, J & J Life Scan, and Neutrogena.

How about on the flip side of the coin? Have you lost a couple of companies?

Sure. You know, given what the economy has been like and all the mergers and acquisitions, we have seen some fall-off. I think this year one of our biggest disappointments was to see Arco move away from our recruiting program. We've had a very strong, ongoing relationship with them, but they cut 50% of their staff this year. They've gone through some hard times.

We've also seen the effect of M&A on some of the West Coast financial services. At one time we had NationsBank, Montgomery Securities, Bank of America, Robertson Stephens, and Security Pacific all coming on campus to recruit separately. Well, this year, they're all the same company. And they've gone through a lot of restructuring, and unfortunately none of them, with the exception of B of A, did on-campus recruiting this year.

Is recruiter demand forcing your office to change at all, grow its staff? Let's talk a little bit about how your office is structured.

We have continually had to add staff. When I first started in '93, we had a total of four people working in the office. That was two professional and two clerical. This year, we've got 14, and that's nine professional and five clerical. We're forecasted to add another person this June.

How do you distribute your office's responsibilities?

We've got a person who is an associate director in charge of the training and advising function, and that person has five career advisors that report to her. They work primarily in that area, but everybody is involved in corporate relations management responsibilities. So when we have employers on campus, the career advisors will go to lunch with them to be able to speak more eloquently about the candidates that the interviewers are seeing and for them to get better first-hand knowledge of what's going on in the companies.

We also have an associate director in charge of employer relations and marketing, and reporting to her is our recruiting coordinator and administrative assistant who deals with corporate relations and alumni relations.

Is Marshall's career staff divided up to serve the two student classes separately?

No, the career advisors see both first and second years.

You were mentioning earlier that you are currently in the throes of first-year recruiting. What is your office doing to service first-year students during what must rank among the most stressful times in their lives?

We understand the stress generated by the change that they're going through, and so we actually start working with the students before they even come on campus. We send them out an informational packet in June which provides them with an overview of our services. But we also give them a guide that we put together called "Fitting the Pieces Together," which walks them through the entire career-management and job-search process.

We're using BCII, which is an assessment tool that was developed by Harvard in their business school, to help students become a little bit more focused. During the summer we send them that packet which includes a URL address where students can complete the BCII instrument over the Web and get results. Then, when orientation starts, we discuss their assessment results, and afterwards, each student meets one-on-one with a career advisor to further explore career options

Then, in September, we provide students with a career-management training program which goes over the topics of positioning yourself in the market and market research, self assessment, resume development, and interviewing. And then we do ongoing interviewing workshops.

Are students required to take the career-management training program?

It's what I would call a "mandatory option." We strongly encourage students to participate in it, and we have about a 90% compliance in that.

Right now, what we're doing with the students is continuing with their interview preparation. We have videotaped mock interview and critique sessions where alums and corporate folks come in to do the interview, and then our career services advisors sit down and play back those tapes and provide constructive criticism. That happens during December and January.

Then we also have put together something called success teams, which are groups of students who have career goals in like functional areas who meet with a career advisor on a weekly basis to strategize and then to implement their marketing plans. The success teams also serve as support systems.

All of this prep work really underscores the importance the summer internship now commands in today's MBA recruitment arena. Why is this part of the recruitment process becoming so important today?

Well, for people in a full-time program, because the majority of them are career changers, the internship provides them with the opportunity to gain experience and insight into their area of focus. And with organizations having gone through the restructuring and downsizing over the years that they have, they want people with experience. Companies are using the internships as a way to screen potential full-time candidates. For specific industries like investment banking and people who hire in consumer-product brand management, a majority of the people they hire are from their internship program.

The average Marshall student is about 28 years of age, with about four years of prior work experience. Both of those figures have risen over the past couple of years. Is that a reflection of the Marshall School's effort to satisfy employers' desire to hire more experienced MBAs?

Yeah. I think our figures reflect the demand in the marketplace. We've hovered in that four to five years of work experience and age [range]. But I think it does reflect the demand out there in the marketplace.

If you had your druthers, would you like to see older incoming classes?

What I would like to see is a class of very high-quality, high-caliber, focused people who are competitive out there in the marketplace. And, for me, it wouldn't make a difference if they had two years or ten years of work experience. Employers want people who are focused and motivated and bring some good skill sets. I think our four- to five-year work experience range is about what they're looking for.

You guys are now approaching the end of mock interviewing, and pretty soon, first years will be vying for interview schedules. Are most of the schedules open or closed?

We work with employers in how they want the schedule set. Ninety-nine percent of our employers want closed schedules. They want the opportunity to prescreen resumes and select the people for the schedules. So we work out what we call the prescreened or closed method.

You leave the scheduling up to the employer and do not require them to have half of their schedules open and half of them closed?

That's correct.

How does the interview process work as far as bidding dollars? Does the school utilize some kind of high-tech placement service?

All of our recruiting is managed through a Web-based, password protected system named the "Sign-Up System." (Editor's Note: For limited access, prospective applicants can log on to the system as a guest by going to: www.marshall.usc.edu/career and clicking on the "sign-up" link located in the lefthand column.) But because we're working primarily with a prescreen methodology, a bid system isn't necessary. So what students will do is click into the Web and take a look at all of the companies and the schedules that are available to them, read the descriptions of the positions the companies are recruiting for, and then electronically indicate their interest. At the closing date of the schedule, the system automatically batches all the resumes of the people who had indicated an interest. At that point, we get the resumes out to the employers and they determine who they want to interview and then get a list back to us, and the students sign up for the available times after that.

Are most students happy with that system?

Our campus recruiting traditionally services about 35% to 40% of the population. So is it fair and equitable? I think for those 30% to 40% of the people, sure, it is.

So 60% to 70% do their job search away from the school?

Well, no. What I'm saying is that 35% to 40% of the students will accept jobs as a result of the on-campus recruiting process. We also do a tremendous number of job postings for interviews at employers' sites (Editor's Note: In 1998, Marshall posted 1,500 job opportunities via the Internet or e-mail). It's called our Employers' Site Program. And we typically have about another 20% to 25% of the student population who find an internship through that process.That percentage is higher if you look at just the full-time program -- it's about 35% to 40%. So last year, we had about 72% of the full-time population find their employment opportunities through either our job posting or campus recruiting system, and about 55% of those looking for internships found them through our office.

So far this year, which industries do you see most students targeting for their postgraduate employment?

Primarily, we're seeing consulting, financial services, the consumer-product companies, and then the high-tech firms.

How about geographically? Do most folks want to stay in the California area after graduation? Or is there a branching out to the East Coast -- your ultimate goal for building the school's reputation?

We've seen a greater branching out over the last few years, and that has to do with the strategy that we've developed on the admissions process trying to enroll more East Coast students. We had about 10% of the class go to the Northeast last year; about 3% go to the Mid-Atlantic; 5% to the South and Southwest; and about 11% international. Northern California then took about 19% of our folks. So while a majority of our people do stay in our region of the country, we have seen a number of people who have moved away. And I don't think our figures are all that different from other schools across the country.

According to Business Week's records, USC's Class of '98 walked away with average pay packages worth about $120,900 and average base salaries of about $71,500 -- a 77% increase over pre-enrollment levels (which were an average of $40,350). Though it's still early on in the recruiting season, do you see employers putting comparable pay packages on the table?

We do. In fact, what we've been seeing this year is an increase of about 6% to 7% in base salaries. We're seeing about that same percentage, or a little higher, in bonuses. And we're also seeing greater incidences this year of second-year tuition being paid.

Indeed, competitive job perks are starting to play a more central role in an MBA's decision to accept or decline an offer. In a competitive environment, you're naturally going to see recruiters throwing more things on the table to lure top talent. Fifty percent of last year's Marshall class received stock options on top of their salaries. And over 30% earned a yearend bonus. Are those things still holding up?

They sure are. In fact, we're seeing greater incidences of those...especially the yearend bonus.

Are any new perks surfacing that have previously not been seen before?

One of the newer ones for our campus is the tuition remission, the tuition payback. And we're seeing that start to happen in more than just consulting and the investment banking industry.

Where is it starting to pop up besides those two powerhouse industries?

We've seen it with some of the high-tech firms, and one consumer product company has also thrown it out this year.

This year's market fluctuations and the specter of an economic downturn on the horizon have more than a few people wondering whether the MBA degree will be able to continue to command such rich total compensation packages. What's your take from the career-services perch over at USC?

Each year that we see things go up, I think we all say, "No, at some point this is going to have to break, it's going to fall back." I've been in this business for 14 years, and I've seen a couple of pretty serious recessions. But I've never seen a drop back in salaries or in bonuses, or what have you. Economically, it just doesn't make any sense. I think it'll continue to be competitive out there. In fact, if we do go into an economic downturn, I think it'll be more competitive. But I would have to believe that employers are still going to pay a very thorough wage for top talent. The top people are always going to go out at a higher rate.

Has your office put more emphasis on certain types of workshops or counseling to help students negotiate lucrative deals?

We've been fortunate in some of the hiring that we did here over the years in our career advising staff, and we've got very qualified people who are recruiting directors and have MBAs. We focus very early on salary negotiation and offer negotiation and assessment. We've been doing that for about four years.

Is there anything new that you've developed to cater to a continually changing business landscape?

I think we've just been trying to better evaluate what the stock bonus is and get a look at how to take all of those other perks that aren't necessarily cash-based initially and compare those to the traditional sign-on bonus and base salary, so that students can see better in the long run what those types of perks are going to mean to them.

You were mentioning earlier the role that alumni play along with current students on the career-services front. What types of things, on top of the mock interviewing, are alumni plugged into?

I'm very fortunate to have a very involved and supportive alumni group here. One of the best ways to demonstrate their involvement is through a program that we started about two years ago to hold alumni receptions in various parts of the country where we're trying to develop greater penetration. For example, we've been working with our alumni association in New York to hold each fall a networking event where students who are interested in getting employment in that area fly out to meet alums. We've been doing this for a few years in the Bay area, as well. Typically we'll have as many as 150 alums show up and have about an equal number of students who will go up to network and learn more about opportunities and meet some folks who may be able to open some doors for them. We expanded that out in San Diego last year and have been doing outreach to Chicago.

Also, our alums have been hosting corporate site visits at their companies, getting involved in an executive/alumni mentor program where MBA alums who are at a higher level in their careers are giving back by taking on one or two MBA students and helping to guide them through their careers.

A lot of people would also argue that the greatest value of an MBA degree lies in the alumni network that comes along with it. What types of resources does an alum of Marshall gain after graduation? Do they receive any services from your office after they've graduated?

Alums out of our MBA program have lifetime career assistance. What I mean by that is they're welcome at any time to come back and meet with a career advisor to help strategize on their next move. That's free of charge. We also maintain a password-protected Web-based alumni job database that alums can tap into at any time. In addition, we work with our alumni association in putting out career-management training seminars in the spring and in the summer that our alums can participate in to help them get focused.

The Trojan [the common name for USC grads -- it's the school's sports mascot] family is huge. As a result, the networking opportunities that are developed by the alumni association in our office allow people to stay networked and connected. One of the things that we preach very strongly here is keeping that network alive, being involved, and being an active member of the network so that employment opportunities are presented to you, instead of having to go out there and search for things. While I'd like to be ideal in my thinking and say, well, everybody -- all the 40,000 people from the Marshall School -- are actively involved in that program...I'd say, probably 400 to 500 of our alums are really active in employment events with our office. But we also get hundreds phone calls from alums who want to post job leads weekly.

International students have always faced more challenges in the job search. Can you give me an idea of some of the added hurdles that they face and some of the things that your office does to assist them in finding, let's say, a job in the U.S. on Wall Street?

One hurdle that everyone is aware of is work authorization. Getting sponsorship to stay within the United States is a big issue. We have a very large alumni base in Asia and a strong presence in Asia that we tap into to assist our students overseas. But we also have an equally large number of alums who are working in the United States willing to help out those who are looking to stay within the U.S. after graduation.

We have a focus on international employment within our office. In fact there is someone who works here who is dedicated to doing career advising and career-management training specifically for international students. He happens to be an MBA from Columbia who has worked extensively abroad and really understands the overseas marketplace. We also have someone who's responsible for doing marketing and outreach to companies for international opportunities.

Would you say that the majority of Marshall's international students want to work in the U.S. after graduation?

I think that a lot of the students would like to get a few years of work experience here. I mean, depending upon what country they come from, they may be looking to go back and rejoin families and family businesses or be entrepreneurs in the countries where they came from.

What's the success rate, roughly, for placing internationals in the domestic setting?

Well, it's still challenging. But we had 80% of our international students receive an offer by graduation. Of that 80%, about half of them had received offers in the United States. When you take a look at the three-month after-graduation figure, the percentage of international students with a job offer jumps to 87%. Of that 87%, about 50% get offers that reside in the U.S.

Do you feel that international students typically have to work harder to secure job offers than their domestic peers?

Absolutely, just as our domestic students who want to work overseas have to work extra hard.

So it's not that your office provides the counseling and different programming. In the long run, it's the students' initiative that really spells success.

Absolutely. We can coach people through the process; we can do the outreach and the marketing; but if a person isn't driven to do it, it's not going to happen. And that's the same for anyone who enters the MBA program.

I understand that there is quite a lot of excitement on the Marshall campus, as construction on the $25 million Popovitch Hall approaches completion. Will your office be relocating?

We sure will. The building is designed specifically for the graduate business programs at Marshall. It is very much a student and classroom facility. So, in that building, you'll have our office, the Career Center, which will take up a very large part of the third floor, I'm happy to say. The building will also house the admissions offices, case rooms, and the International Business Education and Research Program (IBEAR) which is a one-year intensive MBA that we offer. There will not be any faculty offices or, for the most part, administrative offices in the building.

Will Popovitch Hall help to spread out recruiter and student meetings and decrease congestion?

It sure will. In fact, our spaces are doubling from what we have right now. And we'll be doubling the number of recruiting rooms that we have now to twelve.

Are there any other amenities that will be featured in the new building?

The entire building is wired, and so students will be able to plug laptops...into the network inside the building. Also, all of the case rooms have stadium seating, are beautifully tiered, and will also have audio/video teleconferencing capability, so we'll be able to broadcast into the case rooms. All of the breakout rooms, work rooms, and even the patio on the outside will have ports for computers. We're really looking forward to that move in June.

Tom, let's finish on a lighthearted note. If I'm not mistaken, you've been at the helm of USC's career center for the past six years, which means you've probably seen a little bit of everything. What's one of the more wacky placement situations you've been faced with, and what kind of advice did you bestow, whether it was to a student or to a recruiter?

There was an incident that happened a couple of years ago where we had a student who was an avid golfer. In fact, he lived and breathed golf to the point that we thought this guy should be on track to get on the PGA and not even be in the MBA program. He completed the program and had two outstanding offers from consulting firms, both extending very high packages. He also got an offer that was somewhat mediocre but was a good opportunity in managing a golf course.

So he comes in to my office and he sits down to discuss how to approach the situation. "On the one hand," he reasoned, "I can go out with a six-figure package or, on the other hand, I can take this position, which is about half as much, but really take an avocation and make it a vocation." We talked about it, and he ended up choosing the golf offer. He's actually very happy to this day.

And what was your advice?

My advice was follow your passion. And he chose to do that. I think that MBAs today are concerned about balance-of-life issues. I have to say, however, that regardless of what industry they're going to go into, if we take a look at our jobs and what a 40-hour work week is, we soon find that it doesn't exist. But we do see students looking at more of a balance of life. And we hope that, through the assessment processes that they go through and the advising that they go through, that they really are looking at what's going to make them happy in their life and challenge them in their career.

And that's going to wrap it up. Tom, I appreciate your talking with me today, and I wish you nothing but the best of luck with this year's recruitment cycle.