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APRIL 13, 2000 B-SCHOOL Q&A: PLACEMENT Meet Olin's Placement Director "These days, the MBA student is a more sophisticated customer, and probably demands more industry-specific knowledge than in the past. And they do understand that this is the day of the self-directed job search."
Q: Greg, you've almost completed one year at Olin. What's your initial reaction to academia as opposed to investment banking? A: It's been very busy. It's got every bit of the pace and challenge of investment banking. There are parts of the financial-services business that I do love, and that was learning about financial capital. This [job] is learning about human or intellectual capital. The hours are long, and when I look at some of my colleagues at other top schools, I can see where they've had sort of a burnout factor with it. But it's exciting working with the students and helping them with the process of the job search. Many of the students are looking at starting their own businesses, and I love helping them with the business plans, and it sort of flows to me because of my past work experience. The biggest challenge has been the effort to transform our career-resources center. And we've had a lot of success this year. I was trying to build a career center that fit the needs of its customers: students and employers. As a result of that, we're taking a partnering approach with the students and the student clubs, such as the finance, technology, and marketing clubs. We also took a proactive marketing approach by hiring a business-development person who started calling on companies in some of the main industry groups. We look for innovative ways to link the two parties: the potential employers with students. That happened on our road shows, where we took groups of students to Silicon Valley, Chicago, and New York, where we focused on investment banking, and recently Boston, where we focused on e-commerce and technology. We're starting a new series called "techportal@olin," which is a way to link local technology, e-commerce, and telecommunications companies with our students. We'll bring in five or six startup companies to campus to present a 10-minute power-point presentation. Then, the students will have a networking session with them to ask questions, or to talk to them about employment opportunities, submit their resume, etc. We'll start the series up again in the fall. Judging from the RSVPs from the technology community in St. Louis, it should be a success. Q: How does Olin measure the success of its road shows? A: We're looking at that right now, but it's tough to get the full measurement because some of the firms do just-in-time hiring. By the end of the year, we'll have better statistics on that. The Wall Street Week, which is a New York road show, was very well-received. We had the usual list of suspects -- Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Banc-Alex. Brown, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Salomon Smith Barney. About 65% of the students got first round interviews out of that trip. Q: Three percent of the class of 1999 took a job with a company that had fewer than 100 employees. What's going to happen to that figure in 2000? A: There is an increased interest in younger, entrepreneurial companies. That figure is going to be larger than [last year's]. A finger-up-in-the-wind guess would be that about 10% of the class will go to dot-com or startup companies. I have seen a change in the student body in terms of their desire to experience entrepreneurial situations. Q: How so? A: Olin is pursuing traditional industries and having great success at that. We're seeing an increased desire among our students for more technology and entrepreneurial ventures, and to expand some of our programs to entrepreneurship. It manifests itself in a couple of ways. First, we're trying to expand our Hatchery program, in which students develop business plans for their own business ideas or for those of outside entrepreneurs. We're looking at adding more classes in entrepreneurship. We also started a seed-capital fund with one million dollars. There's a possibility for additional funds. We're also looking at partnering with some incubators locally, and possibly with other incubators outside of St. Louis.
Q: Do the MBAs have an edge if they have had experience in a dot-com? Or do the traditional and dot-com companies not care? A: With a dot-com, if you've had experience working with an e-commerce consulting firm or an incubator, that [experience] will play very well. With a traditional company, I've not had a chance to explore that. It's still all so new. I haven't had a chance to really sit down with students and find out if they've had dot-com experience, or if that's played well with some of the traditional employers. I don't know if that situation has even occurred yet. Q: How are the older companies changing their recruiting practices to lure first- and second-year MBAs to their corporation? A: One, they're recruiting earlier in the cycle. We see the investment banks and the consulting firms coming to campus earlier. We've also seen them be very approachable with some of the marketing programs we have. They've been receptive to our doing road shows and bringing students to them. They're also willing to look at undergraduates to fulfill their needs. What I sense -- and I haven't done a scientific study on this -- is that the analyst programs at the investment banks and consulting firms are taking on increased importance. Q: The Weston Career Resources Center caters to the full- and part-time MBAs as well as undergraduate business students. How do you ensure that the MBAs get their fair share of attention? A: We've tried to show that we give individualized attention to the MBA students. We have our business-development manager, who has been working with the student clubs to arrange road-show schedules, to help to find opportunities for students, and to help to create some of those opportunities. We also have a full-time MBA advisor who, in addition to her advising responsibilities, teaches a course on professional development planning. When an MBA starts here, that's a class that they take for credit to help them sort out their career desires and to coordinate their curriculum to match those goals. Our dean has done a terrific job expanding our curriculum, expanding our faculty, and [by adding] this course, which helps students. Q: How many people in the career-resource center focus only on the full-time MBAs? A: In addition to the people I've mentioned, we have an international-student advisor to help those students. So four of us spend the bulk of the time with MBAs. There is also support staff to help with on-campus recruiting. Our librarian spends a lot of time advising people, because this is the day of the self-directed job search, and the library becomes an important information center for that activity. Q: Let's talk about the international students. Before beginning an MBA program, many non-U.S. applicants will question their job prospects after graduation. What is it that international students do at Olin to better market themselves? A: They're having success this year because of a couple of things they're doing. First, they're getting more personalized attention from our international advisor. Through her [work], we've held cross-cultural panels to help them in the job search. We also explain the differences between the U.S. search process and the Asian, European, or Latin American ones. Second, a lot of them are pursuing positions with multinational, consumer product, and pharmaceutical and automotive companies. Those employers are very receptive to international students. Third, companies in Silicon Valley and Boston that are both e-commerce and technology oriented are starting to lobby Washington as a whole to make sure that more immigration barriers are not thrown up to prevent them from hiring international students. There's a tremendous need for engineering and technology talent, and these students can provide a terrific source of intellectual capital. A larger trend is that business is done on a global basis now. And it's important to have a diverse work force to achieve your ends globally. Q: How about salaries? How has the career-resource center adjusted its analysis of compensation packages to accommodate the ones coming from startup firms? A: Our goal has been to collect as much information as we can because it's such a moving target. We are seeing an upward push on salaries. We've seen some startup companies pay market-rate salaries, and throwing in the equity portion and options. Q: What do the students need to do better next year? A: The students need more specific industry preparation before interviewing. These days, the MBA student is a more sophisticated customer, and probably demands more industry-specific knowledge than in the past. And they do understand that this is the day of the self-directed job search. They look towards us to give them the tools to do that. Aside from the training and educating we do here, an important tool we can help give them is one of developing industry opportunities and contacts. And then bringing in some of those industry contacts to help better prepare them for the interviewing process. Q: What can recruiters do better next year? A: It ties in with what I just stated about trying to bring them in to speak to students. Recruiters will be most effective if they come to a campus and help educate the students on their industry and what it takes to get a position in that industry. When that approach is taken, that can be the best advertisement for their company. Companies are realizing that you don't have to go to the top three schools to find top-quality candidates. You can visit any of the top 20 business schools and find them. Our students have joined some of the top consulting firms and investment banks. Students go to Diamond Technology Partners, McKinsey, Zefer, Salomon Smith Barney, Credit Suisse First Boston, DLJ, Proctor & Gamble -- all the way down the line. Q: It's your first year as a director of career management at Olin. What will you do differently next year? A: We've made a lot of progress this year with new technology and new databases that have been developed. New marketing programs, road shows, and partnerships with the student clubs have been very popular and well-received. Next year, I'll continue many of those themes and try to develop better relationships with the recruiting companies. That will be done by involving more professionals in Olin's industry-specific student clubs, trying to draw more of the alumni to speak at the student clubs, and helping the students prepare for interviews. In addition to that, we're looking at improving our Web site, our recruiting guide, adding new marketing materials, and things like that. Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | APRIL Learn about your online education options |
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