Steve, Cornell experienced the greatest rise in Business Week's 1998 ratings. The school's dramatic rise is due to a lot of factors, but chief among them, we found, was the cooperative nature of the program. From the career services perspective, how has that cooperative feature of the program aided what you do?

We view the students here at the school not only as clients but as our partners, and we do an awful lot of things to make sure that we listen to those people and incorporate their views into what we're doing in career services, as well as other aspects of this school.

Cornell is a very interesting place in that all faculty, all staff -- including the career-services staff -- are incredibly accessible to just about everyone in the school. For example, every morning we have a community coffee at about 10 o'clock, which I attend religiously, where it's easy for anybody to come up and say, "Hey, we like this; we enjoy this; you should be doing this; here are some companies that we're really interested in..." So there's an open-door policy here in the school. All of the school administration is also accessible by E-mail.

In BW's 1998 rankings project, we found the administration's responsiveness, something that was roundly criticized two years ago, had drastically improved as it became much more accessible outside of the class. Does that also lend itself to the career services side of things?

Yes, I think so. Again, we're in one of the main parts of the building. We see people on a daily basis. We have the open-door policy. And, you know, I think we've become good listeners and we incorporate what our partners -- our students -- are saying. We try and incorporate that into the kind of services we provide to them.

The Johnson School has about 50 full-time faculty members. Are they integrated into the job-search process?

We ask faculty members to help out a lot. One of the things that differentiates the Johnson School, I think, from a lot of other business schools is the way that faculty members get involved outside of teaching and outside of research. There is a service component that faculty members must pay attention to, and we try and incorporate them into what we're doing here in career services.

One of the primary ways they're involved is: Every day, when employers are here, we have a luncheon and invite faculty members to come to that luncheon to talk about their teaching, their research, and also about what's going on at the school. When faculty members come to those luncheons and share their excitement about being here, it really has a wonderful effect on our corporate guests.

That's another bright spot that we've located: Recruiters were pleased with the product that Johnson has been churning out, lauding graduates' skills in operations, accounting, marketing, and global business. Meanwhile, over the past two years, Cornell's company base has grown by about 20% to 180 full-time, second-year, on-campus recruiters. Is that growth the result of an all-out marketing effort by your office?

The interesting thing is within the past year, the recruiting base has grown another 10%. This year, we have the most employers coming to campus for both permanent and summer hires in the history of this school. I think it's interesting to note that the majority of that activity happened before the Business Week rankings came out and before we moved into our new building (Sage Hall). So we're having just a great year in terms of employers coming to campus.

Now, in terms of how we went about doing that, we have a team effort that's in place in order to prospect employers. At present, I'm part of a corporate group that's headed by the Associate Dean for Corporate Relations. That group is made up of members from career services, admissions, and corporate relations, the Park Fellow Program director, and the director of Alumni Relations. What we're trying to do is put together a focused effort to not only attract employers to come to campus but also provide them with value-added kinds of services. [Thus,] they become not just a company that comes to recruit but a part of the Johnson School family.

What are some of those value-added services that you're talking about?

A number of company representatives come to campus to do workshops. Consulting companies, for example, come to campus to do case workshops with the students. And we always have a number of speakers in class. As a matter of fact, this past fall, we had Abby Cohen from Goldman Sachs here, who decided to come and do a rather impromptu talk for our students. Both recruiting companies and nonrecruiters come in as classroom speakers. That's one way that companies can develop broader and deeper relationships with the school and our students. Last year, there were approximately 100 senior corporate representatives who spoke in class or who were here as part of a lecture series. And that doesn't include speakers the various student clubs invited to campus.

We feel that if our key customers, our employers, are involved in the educational process, then they're going to be interested in the product of that process. So we try and incorporate as much contact with our corporations as we can. The most direct way corporations interact with us in career services is when they fill out individual evaluation sheets on all of the students that they interview. What that allows us to do is sit down with students and go over how they're doing in the interview process. We try to turn this whole on-campus process not only into a job search process but also an educational one. By going over an interviewer's feedback with a student, the student can gain insight into his or her own job search performance. That's value added, and that's a real way companies help our students directly.

There are also a couple of lecture series that employers come in to be a part of: The Durland Lecture Series, and the Hatfield Lectures. This year, Tom Jones from Salomon Smith Barney will be a speaker in one of the Durland Lectures.

So far this year, which employers do students want to see coming to campus to recruit them?

We're a school of general management, so it really is varied across the board. Of course, here, as well as at other top business schools, there's a big interest in investment banking and management consulting. So we keep getting suggestions from our students as to who we might add in that arena.

We've made great progress in terms of getting the investment banks and the consulting firms to come to campus. There are some that are still not partners of the school, however, so we're going to be working hard to try and get those people on board ... the same goes with the top tier, prestigious consulting firms, as well. We'd love to get Booz Allen and Boston Consulting Group to come recruit here regularly. And on the I-banking side, we'd like to attract Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan to name a couple.

Do you feel that you need to also increase the school's number of on-campus internship recruiters? (Editor's note: In 1998, the Johnson School accommodated 112 first year recruiters.)

Yes. I mean, when I think about internship recruiting and I look into my crystal ball, I'm assuming that five years from now our corporate customers will tell us to do internship recruiting in the fall because that will become the most important way of identifying good talent. Then we'll do permanent hiring in the spring for them to catch up on people they may not have found during summer internship recruiting. (Editor's note: Currently, the bulk of internship hiring occurs during the spring, while most permanent hiring happens during the fall.)

So you envision a complete shift in the way the internship search process is done, today?

Yes, and I believe that will be driven by companies -- we won't decide to do that just on our own. But if companies will be asking us to do that, we will certainly accommodate them.

That scenario really is a testament to how important the internship has become in today's MBA job placement...

Exactly. This past year, about 70% of our students received offers from their summer internships. The internship has just become a very important part of the career development of students in industries across the board. Any time we talk to an employer who's thinking about coming to campus, we spend as much if not more time talking about what it takes to develop and design a great summer internship and the importance that has for students. The reason: Students who come back from their summer internships and have great things to say about their experience are going to tell their friends and will become that company's missionaries here on campus.

Steve, you and your office must now be in the throes of internship recruiting. What type of programming have you recently implemented to help students bag the almighty internship?

Most of our activities, whether it be for summer internships or permanent hires, really surround the employment interview. If it doesn't happen [for a student] in the employment interview, it just doesn't happen. So during the fall, in November, we've run large and comprehensive programs to prepare our first-year students on how to interview. In fact, we bring consultants in and students go through kind of a theory and practice session with the consultants where they learn the theoretical aspects of what makes a good interview.

As part of this program, most of our first-year students go through two mock interviews that are videotaped. And like most of the things that happen in the Johnson School, we do it in a team framework so that the first-year students get feedback not only from the consultant, but they get feedback from the five or six peers that are in their groups. We've found that this four-year old program is so successful that it is now mandatory for any first-year student who is going to go through the on-campus interview.

Do the consultants cover case and information interviewing -- the whole gamut?

The program where we bring in the consultants mostly handles employment interviewing. We bring three to four consulting companies in to do workshops on case interviewing. Plus, we have a partnership with a lot of the student clubs. For instance, the Consulting Club has also scheduled activities to help people in the club do better at the case interview method. On top of that, there's a fair amount of one-on-one counseling that we do with the students in this office.

Cornell's Johnson School enrolls about 580 students in its MBA program. How many people do you have in your office to service those students?

Let me tell you a little bit about how we're organized. In addition to the overall responsibility for running the office, a lot of my responsibilities are centered on the marketing the school to our corporate customers. In addition, I will see a full complement of students.

I think that it's very important to have as many people available to speak with students as we possibly can. I have a whole team of people who are responsible for the logistics, making sure that we're providing the right kind of service both to students and to employers in the campus recruiting process. And I also have two staff members who are specifically dedicated to dealing with student issues, self-assessment issues of how do I figure out what it is I want to do, and help with negotiating, and so forth.

How many people in your office actually counsel students?

There are three of us, including myself.

Steve, earlier you were talking about the school's open-door policy. Can students just drop by to talk things over with you or another member of the career-services staff? Or do they have to set up an appointment to see you?

Well, again, we're getting back to the culture of this place. We do a number of counseling sessions by appointment. But, as soon as I leave my office and walk downstairs into the atrium, I will constantly get: "Gee, do you have a minute for this question; do you have a minute for that question..." I think we're pretty accessible. Depending upon the time of the year, it can take an hour or more for me to get to the other side of the building!

Can three counselors adequately satisfy the needs of a 580-person class?

I think that's adequate for the size of the student body we have. I'm really satisfied with number of people in the office. And again, when we're not in office, we do many, many informal meetings throughout the building where folks with short questions get a chance to talk with us.

Our counseling, both formal and informal, basically helps people figure out what their interests and skills are, what types of people they like to be with, and the relationships they like to have. It also delves a little bit into geography and the part that issue plays in the decision-making process.

Does the counseling your office provides differ markedly for first and second years?

It's pretty much the same. For the first years, we're a little more general. They may or may not have a concise idea of what it is that they want to do, so we try to help them narrow down where their career interests lie. Meanwhile, all of our second years have had a summer internship and been able to test something out. So when we counsel them, we tend to fine tune with them what parts of their summer internship experience they enjoyed. Also, with second years, we do a lot of counseling around negotiating offers and making good decisions.

Your office recently moved into revamped Sage Hall, a beautiful, not to mention functional, building. How does the building lend itself to your office running more smoothly and efficiently?

Sage Hall is the most wonderful facility that you can ever imagine. I have to be concerned about the functional piece to make sure that we have the right kinds of rooms, the right kinds of facilities, and the ability to provide the kinds of amenities that we want to, to make sure that employers feel particularly welcome. I think Sage Hall does just that. We have a spacious office, so that recruiters feel welcome when they walk in. We have a recruiter's lounge where people can use a fax machine, telephones, plug in their PCs to stay in touch with their offices, or watch television. We provide lunch in what's known as the Ramin Room, a Victorian parlor room. Meanwhile, each individual interview room has a telephone and PC modem port. We just couldn't provide all of these things in the old building, it was a crowded situation and impossible to do.

All of our systems are networked so, every first-year student has to have a laptop or a PC. If a student wants to find out who's coming to interview, when a company presentation is, or how to bid for slots on an open interview, they can do that from wherever they are in the school and from home as well.

Does Sage Hall also have video conferencing capability for interviewing?

Yeah, we've done some of that. Video conferencing for interviews has sort of gone in and out of vogue over the last ten years, and it's generally driven by employers. This year we'll probably do three or four of those. The demand has not been significant at this point.

At the top of our conversation, you were talking about the influx of recruiters that are now coming to Ithaca to recruit Johnson students. Does Sage Hall have the capacity to house that many people?

Not if they all come at once! We can accommodate approximately 20 different interviewers per day. We anticipate that there's going to be growth in that, though. We're also lucky to have the Statler Hotel, a first-class hotel right across the street if we need to move and take auxiliary quarters.

How many Johnson students take advantage of the school's on-campus recruiting program?

If I take a look at all of the different services, whether it's advising, workshops, or on-campus recruiting, I would say we have contact with probably about 99% of the students here. But while on-campus recruiting is the main way that most of our students find jobs, there's also a contingent of people who are going to be looking at industries or firms that are not represented in on-campus recruiting.

Is there an increasing number of students who are looking to get into different sectors of the marketplace that aren't currently represented in Johnson's on-campus recruiting program?

My sense is it's held pretty much consistent over the last few years. We encourage everyone, whether they participate in on-campus recruiting or not, to do an independent job search. Anywhere from 25% to 30% of our students are going to find positions using our resources but doing it as part of an independent job search.

We have a strong alumni network that helps many of the students with their independent search. There are about 800 Johnson School alums who have already agreed to be part of a network, and these are folks who are accessible to our MBA students and to other alumni and have agreed to give informational interviews, advice, share leads, and give information about school systems in a particular area.

Hand-in-hand with the rising alumni participation, has the school implemented a greater amount of independent job-search programming over the last couple of years?

Yeah. We bring people in to talk specifically about how to do informational interviewing and, again, on how to do employment interviewing. In addition, the management library has a wonderful collection of software that helps students in doing an independent job search, such as Career Search, Lexis-Nexis, Dow Jones Interactive, First Call/Research Direct, Bloomberg, Global Access, Proquest Direct. We partner with the management library, and they also give instruction along those lines. We need to support students who are going to be looking for work outside of on-campus recruiting, and so we fully support that activity.

Let's jump into the lucrative pay packages MBA grads expect. Last year, the average comp. package a Johnson grad walked away with was worth about $132,000. Meanwhile, a member of the Class of 1998 experienced an average 72% increase in base salary over his or her pre-enrollment levels. Forty-five percent of the class received yearend bonuses, about 20% of the class received paid-for housing, some got stock options, and still others negotiated tuition reimbursement. Translation: Johnson's '98 grads cleaned up. Some career services directors consider 1998 to be the pinnacle of MBA placements. How is it holding up so far this year?

As I mentioned before, we've had more employers coming to campus this year than ever before in the history of this school. But what I've noticed is that companies are perhaps a little more conservative this year in terms of the number of people that they're inviting back [for a second interview]. But the economy is still strong, and we have more employers coming to campus, which spells more opportunities for our students.

I anticipate that the average starting salary will go up between 4% to 8% this year, and we'll see another increase in the signing bonuses and other forms of remuneration. So, in terms of the dollar amounts, I think we're going to have another exceptional year. [Dollar amounts] are one way that we measure the success of the program in career services and the success of the school, but equally as important to us is our students' degree of satisfaction with the jobs that they take. Each year we ask them on a one-to-ten scale -- one being low, ten being high -- how satisfied they are with the jobs that they've taken. And, last year, the Class of '98 put themselves at a 9.2 satisfaction rate. As far as I'm concerned, that's as an important indicator of how we're doing as any other measure, including dollar amounts of salary.

Is there a greater amount of perks being pushed in front of MBAs these days?

It's a little early in our framework to be able to comment on that, but I know, for instance, that the consulting firms are paying more this year than they've ever paid before. And so my sense is the overall salary packages are going to be stronger this coming year.

Given how competitive this marketplace is and how lucrative packages have become, is there a concerted amount of programming through your office that helps students assess an offer or negotiate a better package for themselves?

Yeah, there's a lot of things at work here. As an office, we bring in a professionals to talk about negotiating. In addition to that, we have a couple of very strong faculty members whose specialty is negotiating, and students consult with them on an individual basis to go over negotiating strategies. And then, again, those of us in the office do a lot of work with how to negotiate.

I see a lot of people at the end of the first semester when they're getting offers, helping them evaluate their offers. We do a weighted value approach to figuring out what an offer is really worth. It's not just what the dollar value of the offer is, it's really how to get an indication of how good a fit [a job] is. The salary package, although important, may not be the leading indicator of how well a student is going to do at a particular company.

Have you seen an increase in the amount of students who are turning down higher pay packages for jobs that offer greater flexibility and lifestyle options?

You know, I have no specific data on that. But anecdotally, we have found that a fairly high percentage of students are turning down their highest offer for a job that makes more sense in terms of what they want to do in terms of lifestyle. That's something that companies come here asking for advice on.

International students looking to work in the Unites States after graduation perhaps face the greatest challenges with respect to the job search and placement. Despite that fact, most unsponsored foreigners at many of the top U.S. B-schools still go after job openings in the U.S. Is that the situation at Johnson?

That's not uncommon. A lot of internationals will take a look at the consulting and finance industries because they tend to be a little easier to get work in the U.S. with after graduation. But part of what we do is make sure that their expectations are in line with the difficulties of finding and getting U.S. placement.

The other thing that we use is the alumni network, where international students can call alums of companies who are in the position to point out those people [in their company] who are interested in hiring folks with international backgrounds but do not have U.S. work authorization. There are alums at most companies who can say, "Here's the person that you really should be talking to."

Does your office employ a staff member whose primary responsibility is to cater to Johnson's international student body population?

We have one person who deals with internationals. In addition to setting their expectations, that person counsels internationals on how to write an American-style resume and on the differences in job hunting in the U.S. and other parts of the world. For example, job hunting in this country tends to be a lot more aggressive than it might be in countries in the European Union. Student have to understand that in the U.S., the job search entails more than just sending in a resume and cover letter and then waiting for a reply...you have to go the extra mile and do a lot of informational interviewing as well.

Is it easier or harder to satisfy the needs of your international constituency?

It's an interesting situation to listen to high level CEOs talk about globalization and the global economy, and then realize that a lot of times, that message hasn't trickled down to the companies' hiring folks. There are still a lot of restrictions. My hope is that in the future, as people realize the great contributions made by employees outside of the U.S., that international entrance into the U.S. workforce will happen more easily and often. I can't say that will happen in the next 2-3 years, but so many corporations are getting half of their revenues from outside of the U.S., that their staffing needs will truly be coming from the international arena.

Let's revisit the scope of the alumni's involvement in the school's career-services programming. What types of programming have they really been thrust into to help students along in their job searches and ultimate employment?

I think the alumni career network is certainly the most important one. That's where our alums are available to students, either to give leads or information and contacts and so forth. The other thing that's happened is we see everyday during the recruiting season young alums who are excited about the school coming back to interview as a representative of their company. And so, people that have gone through the program who have had a great experience are going to bat for their companies and saying, "We really need to have more people from Cornell here." Each day, when we serve lunch to our employers, it's sort of a mini alumni event.

Are there certain times of the year where a number of alumni panels will come to campus to talk about their companies, their industries, or how they became successful?

Yeah, we do some of that. But again, we have a great working relationship with the 20 to 25 student clubs here, and they're the ones that really are bringing the folks back to talk about what careers are like in brand management, for example. Since students have access to the alumni information, they can invite those people as part of the club activities.

I refer to the last couple of years within the MBA arena as the Golden Age, because MBAs have just been getting fat off their postgraduate pay checks. Do you find that students today feel a little bit more of a sense of entitlement, making your job more challenging?

I haven't seen a sense of entitlement. When we look at the facts, we find that if you add up the amount of salary that they're giving up while they're here and the amount of dollars that they're spending to come here, the average Johnson School person who comes to school is investing maybe $160,000 to $180,000, which is considerable. So people are understandably concerned about what's going to happen to them next.

I wouldn't use entitlement. I'd say they're very interested and very concerned. And they also hold us accountable about the kinds of things that we're doing in order to help them in their career planning and ultimately, where they go to work.

Does that sense of accountability extend into postgraduate life? In other words, if I'm a Johnson alum, over the course of my business career, can I look to your office to assist me in my all my career transitions?

Yeah, we partner with our director of Alumni Relations on those responsibilities. And so if an alum calls up and says, "Gee, I'm thinking about making a career change," one of us in the office might have conversations with that person about the self-assessment piece of that, what they're interested in, what they're looking at, what they consider to be their strengths, how they feel they want to leverage those kinds of things. Then the Alumni Relations office takes over in terms of putting our alums in touch with other alumni who have already volunteered to be useful. (Editor's note: For more information on alumni-career services, go to Business Week's Cornell B-school profile, and scroll to the bottom of the page)

Are most of the services offered to alums free?

Yes. You know, we're very happy to do the career counseling piece that we do. And, in my sense, it's a part of the commitment that the school has to our alumni.

Finally Steve, you were saying that you think pay packages are going to hold up for this year and that you expect an increase in base salaries. For the prospective applicants out there who are thinking about pursuing an MBA, what do you think they can expect in the future from the placement side of things?

The first thing that applicants can expect is a much more difficult time getting into the Johnson School! You know, we are running approximately 180% higher in terms of the number of applications we've received this year over last year. So getting here will be a little bit more difficult down the road. But in terms of what they can expect afterwards, I'm very optimistic about that. We know, just by looking at history, there are going to be upturns and downturns in the employment scene. And a lot of the school's activities are centered on developing broad and deep relationships with the companies that come to interview here. So even if we have a downturn, we will expect those companies to be here on campus, to participate in the life of the school. Then, when there is an upturn again, we expect them to continue hiring in the way that they have done so in the past.

To sum it up, I'm very optimistic about the placement scene.

Thanks very much. I appreciate your filling me in on the career services of the Johnson School.