Well, I'm going to be holding the fort while the national search is being carried out to find a director. I am not a candidate myself for the directorship. I think after I finish these responsibilities, I would like to go back to my previous responsibilities as the associate director, working with the undergraduate students. I am currently replacing Patricia Masadonski, who resigned and accepted a job with St. Louis University to head up their new full-time MBA program.

How long do you see yourself holding this position?

Well, we are looking at candidates as we speak. We have one in today interviewing for the position, and there's another one scheduled at the end of the week. I don't know that anybody has a crystal ball about how soon this chair will be permanently filled.... Our interests are in getting the very best qualified candidate that we can, the sooner the better.

Would it not surprise you if you rode out this recruitment cycle, and the official appointment occurred over the summer?

I guess it wouldn't surprise me, but I don't really anticipate that. The ideal thing would be to get the person in the fold this year so that they could get some exposure to what goes on here, get to know the students, and have perhaps the summer to get themselves up to speed with everything else. That way they'd be ready to go in the fall.

So far, do you feel you've had to handle more responsibilities in the graduate-placement environment than in the undergraduate placement arena?

I think there's a lot more, obviously, but our programs for undergrads and MBAs are actually fairly similar.

Are they separate and apart from one another?

They are in that we have had an associate director who was in charge of the MBA program and another person in charge of the undergraduate program. So all of the workshops and programming activities and things like that are separate, but the recruiting efforts are not. The campus interviewing program is done out of one office.

In its current form, how is your office serving it's 740-student constituency (320 full-timers and 420 part-timers)?

I think we're servicing them in exactly the same ways that we always have -- by partnering with them in their job searches, and conducting career education programs to help them prepare for and be competitive in their job searches. In addition, we're partnering with them just to help them learn about the resources available to them. Lastly, we're educating them about the companies that are coming to campus and those that are not, and how they can get in touch with them.

We offer workshops, seminars, and counseling on these topics throughout the course of the entire year on an ongoing basis. We start working with the first-year MBA's over the summer by sending an introductory mailing to them. Then we begin working with them in person in late August, at orientation, prior to the first day of classes. Our part in the orientation is more of just an introduction, a "this is who we are, this is what we do, and this is our plan for the year for you" type of thing.

Then in September, we start with what's called the Career Management Series, which is a series of workshops on a variety of topics that starts in September, and it goes through the beginning of the spring semester. Within the Career Management Series, we run a mini-class on self-assessment called the Professional Development Program (PDP) which runs over a 6 to 10 week period of time. During PDP, we use the Career Leader (a self-assessment instrument) to lead students through the process of identifying their competencies, their interests, and their values. Once we've identified their skills, we translate them to the areas in business where those skills are applicable.

Is the self-assessment workshop aimed primarily at just the full-time population?

It's aimed at anyone who is within the graduating year. For instance, anyone in the part-time program who is going to be graduating in May, 2000, would participate in that.

Are the agendas that your office has for full-timers and part-timers in some way intertwined? Or are they separate entities?

They are definitely separate entities. We work on an official basis with the part-time students only when they are within two years of graduation. Otherwise, there are some services for part-timers, but they're not extensive.

Returning to the PDP and the Career Management Series, what sorts of topics are broached by Career Management Series workshops?

The Career Management Series is a body of workshops aimed at the first-year class on the nuts and bolts of the job search. So there are workshops on resume writing, cover-letter writing, networking, salary negotiations, and interviewing.

[They're taught] by the associate director of MBA advising, who runs some of the workshops herself. The workshops also bring in guest speakers and other experts in the field to, for example, run the workshops on interviewing, salary negotiation techniques, or networking. The program also involves a bunch of career panels with professionals working in specific fields like investment banking, marketing, or corporate planning, where four to six panelists do a presentation and then have Q&A sessions afterwards. Some of the companies that have participated as panelists include: Citicorp, Lehman Brothers, McKinsey, A.G. Edwards, Anheuser-Busch, Deloitte & Touche, Procter & Gamble, Hallmark, Ralston, and Emerson Electric. It's a very diverse group.

How exactly does your office service both the graduates and companies? First of all, how many people work in Olin's Career Services Center?

We have five people who are full-time, year-round. And we have six people who are part-timers, some of whom are full-time during the school year and part-time during the summer. So we have a mixed bag there.

Do a majority of these people provide one-on-one counseling to the students?

Primarily, the people who do one-on-one advising with the students are the advisers -- the two associate directors, the international advisor, and the alumni adviser -- who will also talk to the part-time MBA's as well. Otherwise, I think everybody from the career resources librarian, to the office manager, to the recruiting supervisor, to the administrative secretary, do some type of advising. That type of advising may not delve deeply into career issues, but at least they're working with students directly.

One of the things uncovered by Business Week's 1998 rankings project was that Olin's faculty proved to be extremely accessible outside of the classroom. Students were really happy about that. What is the extent of faculty involvement assisting your office with the job search?

I think that is probably done on a very individual basis. There are some faculty who are more active than others, obviously. But I think that the students go to them with questions that relate to their areas of expertise, and we certainly refer students to different faculty people who have expertise in a specific area that a student is looking to pursue after graduation. Sometimes, we might even suggest that a student do an informational interview or a practice interview with a specific faculty member.

But that, as you stated, is done on more of an ad hoc basis. Further involving faculty into the career services function is not a school initiative?

That's right.

Do a high percentage of the faculty help out by sharing their expertise about a specific industry or subject matter?

I would say a fair percentage do because they're very accessible. I think that they always get involved in those kinds of things if they come up in conversation with the students.

Do you feel that there needs to be more involvement on their end, as the recruiting environment becomes more and more competitive? Nearly every placement director that I've spoken with has intimated that their programming needs to be that much more succinct and organized because companies are pushing to get on campus earlier...

Yes, I think I would like to see probably a little more involvement and a little more structure to that involvement with the faculty because I think they have an awful lot of wisdom to share. Sharing their wisdom could be done in perhaps a more organized way among the group of students rather than one-on-one. The one-on-one I think is very important, however. To students, that makes them feel special, and it helps them develop a relationship with a faculty person that they feel comfortable with. I think that's very important, and perhaps there could be more of that.

How about the students? Does you office really try to get them involved in the process, by say, having them participate in some sort of peer counseling or student-club programming?

We do. Many of the clubs have career-oriented programs and individually market themselves to specific sectors of the market to bring in speakers and up their networking possibilities. (Editor's note: Olin supports 15 individual clubs under the umbrella of the Graduate Business Student Association.)

In addition, there is a peer-advisor group with about a dozen second years, who help first years with their resume review in the fall when deadlines are very tight and getting all of their registration information in. There's also a group here that we call the MBA Task Force that has 13 to 15 representatives from the second year, and then we bring on new people about this time of year from the first-year class. The task force is kind of an advisory group to our office that helps us evaluate the programs that we do. It really acts as a conduit between the students and us.

Business Week's 1998 rankings study found that 15% of Olin's Class of 1998 was unemployed by graduation -- the highest in BW's Top 25. However, on average, each student received about 3.4 job offers. What's going on here? Does that perhaps mean that students were unhappy with their offers or the companies recruiting?

Well, to say 15% were unemployed disregards the 85% that were placed. I don't know how many of those 15% had offers that either were not what they wanted or not competitive offers or whatever.

I'm not belittling the school's 85% placement rate. But, at a top business school, 15% is fairly large.

Right. Well, I think part of that is due to our size and the critical mass of students that we have to offer a company. We don't have large numbers of students that we can say will interview with a particular company if they come to campus. Where some of the schools may be able to have two or three schedules, we may be able to fill one with the same company. So that's probably a part of it. Also, some of our students just have very specific career goals that are perhaps not represented in the on-campus program, and maybe those students haven't been as successful in their independent searches by that time.

About 160 second years had access to 95 on-campus recruiting firms, and about the same number of students in the first-year class had 37 on-campus recruiters to choose from. Relatively speaking, that's a fairly small on-campus recruiting base. Is the school making a concerted effort to increase those numbers?

Oh, sure. I think we're always trying to increase those numbers, and actually the numbers have remained fairly steady. But I think our focus has been more on upgrading the quality of the companies that are both coming to campus and those that hire our students, rather than just the number. If our students aren't interested in a certain company, then that company isn't going to come back anyway because they're not going to be successful. I think we have been making progress toward improving the quality of the companies that are both coming in and also hiring our students.

What types of companies are you especially proud of for having brought to campus recently?

This year, 3M is a new company. Also, Citicorp, Janssen Pharmaceutical, Northwest Airlines, Oracle Consulting, The Limited, and United Airlines were new on campus this year.

How about on the other side of the equation? Are you bothered by a particular company removing itself from the on-campus recruiting loop?

I think there have been a few that we're sorry to see are not coming back this year. Most of that seems to be because of restructuring or hiring freezes, however. It has been those kinds of things rather than a dissatisfaction with their experience here or with the hires that they have made that has been the impetus behind their dropping out of the on-campus recruiting program.

So far this recruiting season, have you see more employers coming to campus or more people leaving the recruitment fold?

So far this year? Let's see, we have about 13 new companies, and for the MBA's, we've had only five companies cancel. Some folks have relocated, such as Jefferson Smurfit, while others have hiring freezes or restructuring going on. Then some of them that were here last year that haven't come back yet may still, because they may have real specific, one-time/one-hire kind of needs.

Would you say the majority of students who get jobs at Olin get them through the on-campus recruitment program or on their own, doing an independent job search?

Typically, our statistics show that about a third of the student body gets their jobs through the on-campus interviewing program, a third get placed through their own search, and about a third through our job postings.

Does the relatively small recruiter base put the onus on students to do an independent job search?

Well, I guess you could say that, but I think that onus is on students anywhere, regardless of how many companies are interviewing on campus. Proportionately, it may be just as difficult for students at Wharton to get on schedules as it is for our students here because of the numbers, and particularly with companies that students want to pursue the most.

Some of the companies that have hired our students off-campus include: Goldman Sachs, Booz Allen, A.T. Kearney, McKinsey, and some of the larger consulting firms and I-banks. So the job search is certainly not confined to campus. That's our mantra: We're one resource among many. We can't provide everything to everyone, and students need to have an individual job-search strategy. That's part of the value behind doing PDP. Once you've evaluated yourself and identified the kinds of things that you want to do, then you meet with a career advisor to plot out a strategy. That strategy basically sets down a month-by-month timeline covering what one should be doing careerwise. And all of that stresses the importance of doing an individual job search and letting us know about what companies you're interested in so that we can do some research and marketing with you.

Which area have you seen growth in, percentage-wise, in terms of students being placed? Has it been on-campus recruiting, the independent job search, or through correspondence?

It's stayed pretty stable at about a third a piece ... somewhere in that neighborhood.

Does your office provide any specific programming for students to learn the best techniques behind an independent search?

Yes, we do some workshops and events on that. For instance, we do an alumni networking reception called "Lunch With A Pro." And for the first time this year, the Dean and Deborah Booker, the director of external relations, traveled to San Francisco with about a dozen students to attend the reception, to give students a chance to network and meet people in that area of the country. We also do the Lunch With A Pro event here at school, with local people, year round.

There aren't really recruiters that attend these events. Instead, there are companies represented by a number of our alums in the area who participate. Some of the companies that attended our San Francisco event this year were: Barclay's Global Investors, Austin Hayne, Berkeley Capital Management, Deloitte & Touche, Omega Corporation, Java Soft/Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard. And yes, just like in the consortium events that we participate in, companies generally warm to our students.

"Lunch With A Pro" has been so successful, that we're seriously considering expanding the event to other parts of the country.

Do consortia play a large role in your philosophy to get your students in front of employers?

I don't think they play a large role. Rather, they're just one piece of the puzzle. There are several consortia that we participate in, and we typically will have job offers and acceptances that come out of those events. But I don't know that it's any more important than anything else.

Are there any consortia events that you are particularly fond of?

Well, I actually haven't been involved too much on a personal level with these. But we participate in the international consortia in Orlando and Miami. I think that's a big help for our international students. We also belong to a group of schools that has a combined consortium called The MBA Consortium that has events in Atlanta and New York. And of course, we belong to the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, and Crimson & Brown ... things like that.

Do you think that these types of events have as much luster as they once did?

From the feedback that I've gotten, they may not have the luster that they did in the days when there was such a tight recruiting budget with companies...when firms couldn't afford to recruit at as many schools. So I think those benefited companies a lot. But in the kind of job market we have now, I think companies still really like consortia because they give them one more chance to get at the students that they are going after. I think companies always seem to like consortia events and career fairs because they get more bang for their buck than a visit to campus.

Do you primarily see international students as the main constituency that takes advantage of the consortia?

No, I don't think so. With the exception of the international consortia, they don't seem to be.

Does the school cover any of the air fare or expenses surrounding the consortium events?

No, we don't. We encourage the students to kind of work together on that. We give them information about hotels that are offering special rates or something like that, but we don't assume any of the expense.

Last year, according to our records, the typical Olin MBA student, collected an average total pay package worth $97,250. That's pretty hefty, though it ranked second-lowest in Business Week's Top 25 group. On a positive note, however, '98 grads experienced an average 97% increase in their postgraduate base salaries -- from about $33,000 to $66,000 -- over their pre-enrollment levels. Do you think the school's relatively low total comp. figure is due to geography ... a result of the majority of Olin grads being placed in the Midwest? Or is it due to some other factor?

I think it's probably due to our ongoing efforts to get the more premiere companies on campus. And I think three years ago, the base salaries were in the high 40s, for our graduates. So we have shown a good increase every year. We have enough people going to different parts of the country and making very competitive salaries that it doesn't necessarily relate to the cost of living or the companies in the Midwest.

Where are the majority of Olin's grads being placed?

Probably about 50% of them do stay in the Midwest, working in firms across industry: consulting, corporate finance ... all of the big companies in town. Chicago is included in the Midwest, and we have quite a few people who locate there.

Is there a particular industry that you're seeing a large number of Olin grads gravitate toward this placement season?

Like everyone else, I guess the consulting industry. I'm sure I'm not the first one you've heard that from!

It seems like MBAs today are looking either towards consulting at founding a startup company. Does that hold true at Washington University?

Well, I'm not sure how many of the MBAs are really looking at starting up a company right out of school. I think a lot of them have that long-term goal perhaps. But getting out there and getting the good experience and exposure with the consulting firms is very attractive for them.

Not to mention, the consulting firms tend to throw the most lucrative perks into their pay packages.

Oh, absolutely.

Like everybody else, a number of '98 Olin grads received tuition reimbursement, stock options, rooming expenses, paid-for housing, signing bonuses, and yearend bonuses as part of their comp. packages. Are you seeing more of that this time around? Are any new types of perks showing up on the radar screen?

I haven't noticed anything new. I do think, however, that more companies are offering perks to students as part of their packages. They're putting a few more incentives in the packages, including signing or guaranteed bonuses, company cars, and sometimes tuition reimbursement, to [get a student to] make a decision earlier. The consulting firms in particular, like to try to get students committed to them early -- usually by January.

I understand how pressured today's MBA hiring environment is. Does your school enforce a certain moratorium, a period of time that gives grads, say, at least two weeks before they have to commit to an offer?

No, we have never imposed any kind of rules or regulations on the companies or the students in that regard. But we frequently will counsel the students about how to handle that because it's becoming more and more of an issue. Students are not able to look at all of the opportunities that are at their fingertips because of having to make an early decision in some areas -- primarily in the consulting area. That's too bad, because a lot of the top students will end up with multiple offers, and they can only take one. So they have to go back up, re-evaluate, and start all over again. I'm sure that [the prospect of competing offers] is one of the reasons that employers are trying to do things quicker.

We address those offer assessment and related issues in the salary negotiations workshops that happen in the fall, during September and October. Then beyond that, we do a lot of one-on-one counseling to address unique, individual situations. For example, perhaps we'll coach a student on how to negotiate an extension on their decision deadline, or how to leverage an offer that they are holding to get another company to make a decision or an offer sooner. Those types of issues are usually dealt with one-on-one because you can't cover all of those sorts of circumstances in one workshop.

Are you also seeing some perks that were initially developed within the consulting or investment banking arenas start to pop up in other areas, such as manufacturing and the service sector?

Not so much, no. I think corporate salary structures just don't allow that as much. They don't have the flexibility. They perhaps are coming up with other perks besides salaries because they don't generally have that flexibility. Perhaps they'll assist with a trailing spouse, help them relocate, maybe give them more vacation days or put them on a faster track, or give them more flexibility in working...but nothing solid, nothing concrete that you can put in dollars and cents.

Have all of the new factors that MBAs now must evaluate in their pay packages made your office continually redefine and massage the type of counseling and negotiation techniques that you impart to students?

Well, I think just the availability of counseling on those kinds of things has increased. Also, the PDP class really helps students look at and evaluate offers in a lot of different perspectives beyond the dollars. It seems as if I've heard more students say, "Well, I'm turning down that offer because it's not the kind of lifestyle I want. I'm married, I have children, I don't want to deal with x." Meanwhile, some students have turned down higher salary offers in consulting, for instance, to accept a position that's more in line with their interests -- perhaps finance or marketing, or to be in a smaller organization, or because of quality of life issues (i.e., too much travel).

Given that trend, do you provide specific counseling or resources to students looking for opportunities with family friendly firms?

There's information in the library on companies that have been ranked for that and that's probably what most of the individual counseling entails -- referring to that information or relating others' experiences working for a particular firm. 3M, Ralston, and Procter & Gamble are three companies that rate high in caring about their employees.

Olin is slowly developing its alumni base into a powerhouse network. At this point, it is 4,000-strong. At the top of our conversation we talked about integrating faculty and students into the career-services programming. Do alumni also play a fairly large role in career-services offerings?

They certainly do. Yes, we rely on our alumni a lot, and they are, for the most part, very supportive. They will participate in career panels, workshops, informational interviews, and practice interviews. For example, we have an alumni database that we call the ASK FILE -- The Alumni Sharing Knowledge file, an extensive alumni database for students to tap into. That's made accessible to students so that if they are, for instance, interviewing with an investment banking firm or a marketing firm, they can go to the database, do a search, find out what alums we have that are working in those areas, and talk to them ahead of time...get some tips on how to approach the industry and that kind of thing.

Has the school tried to bring alumni closer to the school?

Yes, I think so. We do quite a bit of mail solicitation of alums and send out information and magazines to keep them up to date with what's going on at Olin. In addition, we are currently trying to build an international database of alums who are working in international positions that would be easily accessible and searchable for our students to identify those people.

Once I become an alum, what types of services, if any, can I expect from your office?

The services that we provide alums are pretty much what we provide students, except for the on-campus interviewing program, which usually is not appropriate for alums anyway. Two years ago, we hired an alumni advisor who works with alums on job strategies, resumes, cover letters, approaches, contacts, and things like that. We also have online job postings that are password-protected for alums. And we have other links to resources that can be helpful to alumni if they're changing jobs or changing careers.

For example, one thing that alums can do at a reduced cost is the Career Leader Interest Inventory. We also have links from our alumni page to our own job postings housed in a protected site, and alumni also have access to our alumni sharing database. Also, we provide links to a lot of the handouts that we use in workshops on networking techniques, evaluating job offers, etc. And, there's also a link to our library page that lists all of the available books and binders that we have there. Lastly we provide Web links to Career Central and Enterprise in International Recruitment (two online career-matching vendors).

Everything I've just described is free.

If I am contemplating going to the Olin School to get my MBA, what industry or industries would I have the greatest entree to?

Right now, I would say probably consulting and finance are the two general areas. Outside of that, I think the opportunities are not as great in number.

Linda, thanks much for filling me in on the Olin School's career-services function.