Two of a Kind

Their programs may be different, but the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Stanford Graduate School of Business have twin presidents -- literally.

Dan Goldman, a 27-year-old first-year student at Kellogg, found out that he had won his school's election for class president on Mar. 3. Of course, he called his twin sister, Robyn Goldman, also a first-year B-school student (at Stanford) to tell her the good news. On that very day, Robyn's classmate John Foong asked her to run for the Stanford co-presidency. She agreed, and 10 days later, on Mar. 13, there were two presidents in the Goldman family.

Although these twins say they've always made decisions independently, their paths seem to run parallel. They attended different colleges -- Dan went to Middlebury College and Robyn attended Williams College -- but both were small New England liberal-arts schools just two hours apart, which made visits easy. They didn't choose their pre-business school career paths together, but they both ended up in marketing consulting.

And within their different corners of the country, both Dan and Robyn intend to make a big impact on their respective schools. Dan and his government are laying the groundwork for next year on three platforms -- branding, leadership, and improving the overall Kellogg experience. At Stanford, Robyn says her administration is working to promote more cultural integration, so students can maximize the opportunities to learn from each other. Robyn is also working to streamline the orientation of first-year students, so there's "less time spent on trying to figure things out and more time spent on doing and learning," she says.

Dan and Robyn's post-MBA careers might soon take them in different directions. Dan is looking to get into brand management, while Robyn is interested in international development and social enterprise. But they will never be too far apart. "There are so many advantages to growing up with a twin and a built-in best friend," says Dan. Add one more advantage -- trading political and business advice.

---

WetFeet Study

As the MBA job market continues to cook (see BW Online, 12/30/05, "A Heady Job Market for MBAs"), competition among B-school campus recruiters for internship hires is heating up, according to the second Internship Programs Report, a study conducted by WetFeet, a San Francisco company that provides employment research to job seekers and companies.

To determine the state of internship recruiting, WetFeet surveyed 746 MBA students from BusinessWeek's 2004 list of the top 30 business schools, as well as the internship classes of seven employers who agreed to serve as the benchmark for the broader internship pool -- Banc of America Securities (BAC ), Deutsche Bank (DB ), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), Kimberly-Clark (KMB ), Philip Morris USA (KFT ), Procter & Gamble (PG ), and UBS (UBS ). These companies paid WetFeet for a more detailed report of their findings.

Internship programs have long been a vital talent pipeline for some companies, and this hiring strategy is growing in importance across the board. "Whereas a few years ago, a company might have been looking to get half of its full-time hires from its intern group, now it's more like two-thirds," says Steve Pollock, president of WetFeet. But you don't always get what you want.

NOT IMPRESSED. The study suggests that the majority of companies are not impressing as many interns as they'd like. As of November 2005, 71% of the MBA interns surveyed reported that they either had received or expected to receive a full-time offer from their employer, up from 63% in 2003. But only 37% reported that they had accepted those offers.

Interns from the seven companies on which the survey focused tended to receive and accept more offers than the interns surveyed overall. Those seven companies extended a full-time package to an average of 80% of their MBA interns, while 51% of all other interns received offers. The yield was higher as well, with 57% of MBAs at the seven companies saying they would accept their offers, compared to 29% among the other MBA interns studied.

For students, the conversion rate is important. A company that entices its interns to become full-time employees usually devotes significant resources to its internship program, says Pollock. And the days of interns picking up dry cleaning and making coffee are long gone.

---

War Game

Two teams each from Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management recently faced off in the second annual "Strategy War Game." Teams of seven to 10 students assumed the identities of Verizon (VZ ), Microsoft (MSFT ), News Corporation (NWS ), and Apple Computer (AAPL ) in what was billed "The Battle for Digital Entertainment Supremacy."

Meant to mirror the competitive environment these companies inhabit and to play out the future of the digital entertainment space, the war game included an in-depth briefing for each team, with background research, profiles, and summaries of the companies. Then, the teams met for a grueling 12-hour day of meetings, deals, and presentations. Their performance was assessed by a group of industry experts.

Continued on next page>>  | 1 | 2