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APRIL 25, 2002 B-SCHOOL Q&A: PLACEMENT A Talk with Michigan State's MBA Placement Director Helen Dashney, director of the MBA Placement & Career Center at Michigan State University's Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, on finding jobs in tough times
Q: MBAs seemed to be tripping over job offers in the late '90s. How has the atmosphere changed? A: As the economic situation has changed dramatically, the job opportunities have as well. In 1999, students were having offers dropped in their laps. This year, students are having to work tremendously hard to develop leads and convert those into summer internships or full-time positions. Q: Have a lot of companies stopped on-campus recruiting? A: Certainly, we've seen some slowdown. What we've seen more are fewer hires by the companies that do come. Obviously, we have strong affiliations with the auto industry. All the companies came to recruit -- they were just looking for far fewer hires this year. Q: How many companies participated in on-campus recruiting this year? A: We are a rather small MBA program -- we will be graduating just 95 students from our second-year class. We currently have about 110 students in our first-year class. We entertained about 50 companies this year, down somewhat from previous years. Q: Has the hiring outlook brightened at all? A: We're beginning to see a little bit of pickup, yes. But companies are responding in the economy. Based on our curriculum and our location, many of our companies are manufacturers. Inventories are a huge thing for them and they're way down, perhaps indicating a bottoming out in the industrial economy. When manufacturing picks up, MBA hiring will pick up. Q: How has your office worked with students to prepare them for the chilly reception from recruiters? A: It's absolutely essential that their job-search skills be impeccable. There are many more candidates vying for any single position, so in order to get consideration, students need very good lead-generation capabilities and networking skills. When they do get an opportunity to speak to a recruiter, their interviewing skills have to be perfect. So we're spending a lot of time with students to make sure those kinds of skills are as good as they can be. We, of course, are doing a number of other things, just like many schools. We're relying heavily on our alumni. Alumni are always our best recruiters and they're doing everything they can to hire the students or share leads, maybe refer students to their contacts outside their firm. Q: Have students' expectations changed, in light of the difficult market? A: I think one thing is that students are becoming more flexible about the size of firm they'll consider. When large companies are hiring few MBAs, you have to look at smaller companies or midsize companies that haven't necessarily done campus recruiting in the past. And we have to find ways of reaching out to them. It's more a just-in-time hiring process than the long lead times that are typical of campus recruitment. As for big companies, after last spring, when many had to delay starting dates for new hires or rescind offers, they're hiring more on an as-needed basis as well. Q: Intel, Ford, and IBM were the top three hiring companies at Michigan State last year. How are those relationships? A: All of these companies not only hire our students but are very supportive of faculty research. Clearly, all three have been impacted by the downturn. While they were our top three hirers last year, they probably won't be this year. But we are staying in close touch with these firms. For example, our new dean was just in Phoenix and sat down with several key folks from Intel, just solidifying that relationship even though its number of hires is down this year. We want to make sure to meet Intel's needs on a long-term basis. This is a relationship business, and we're in it for the long haul. Q: Has there been a change in the type of companies that recruit at Broad? A: Consulting is always of great interest to students, but it has basically been nonexistent in hiring at most schools this year. Certainly, that's true at Michigan State. Q: Have you noticed any fluctuations in salary levels from years past? A: No. I think the salaries are holding, maybe increasing marginally. This year, our average salary will drop compared with last year because there's less consulting in the mix, and consulting salaries are significantly higher than the average. But at the same company, for the same kind of position, the money is the same or slightly higher. If we see a change, it will be that companies are offering smaller or no signing bonuses. That reflects the fact that companies find no justification in offering a signing bonus if they've had to let employees go to reduce staff. Q: What are some strategies for people who have graduated but yet don't have full-time employment? A: There's no magic elixir. One of the things that we suggest is that they approach a job search just like a job. We recommend that they set a goal for the number of new contacts that they make every week. Another thing that we're finding increasingly important, and that recruiters are bringing to our attention, is not only having an MBA but some sort of professional certification. So we've been researching a number of certification programs, such as those for financial analysis and supply-chain management. In a competitive marketplace, those can be the differentiator between our candidate and a candidate who has just been laid off. Q: What changes are you making in your curriculum to produce more competitive MBAs? A: We're going to be putting electives into our first year curriculum. Starting next year, that will allow students to develop greater depth in their area of interest. We're also working hard to bring leadership and change management more into our curriculum. We just welcomed a new dean, Bob Duncan, who comes out of Northwestern and has been a leadership and change-management guru there, so he's bringing a lot of good ideas in that area. We're also continuing to develop team-based concepts. We have a team and leadership effectiveness lab that all our students go through, which has proven to be very effective and appeals to recruiters who are looking for that kind of skill set. We also feel that our students need to have better negotiating skills, so we're getting ready to introduce more of that into the curriculum as well.  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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