MBA Intern Hiring Is Slow to Recover

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Before an MBA can accept or reject an internship, though, he or she has to find one. Increasingly that means tapping a far larger network than before, including family, friends, friends of friends, online acquaintances, alumni, and former colleagues. Damien Lipke, a first-year MBA student at Georgia Tech, engaged as many people as possible on his internship search. An officer in the Navy before business school, he says he also registered with MBA Veterans, a global network of business school students and graduates with military experience. Lipke ultimately landed a summer position at Bank of America (BAC) in Charlotte, N.C., through on-campus recruiting. "I'm really interested in the position I'm taking on as an intern," Lipke says.

"I hope it leads to a full-time role. It's one of the reasons I'm excited about the internship."

Don't Sit Around and Wait

Business schools are advising students to consider every opportunity that becomes available to them and to take advantage of their pre-MBA experience. "Recruiters want proven experience that they can leverage right away," says Darden's Oakes. Settling for less than your dream internship is no longer a mistake. "Students used to sit around and wait for Google (GOOG), only Google," says Peter Giulioni, assistant dean and executive director of MBA Career Services at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business (Marshall Full-Time MBA Profile). "That could be a really long wait."

Another strategy that business schools are asking MBAs to consider: making the first move. By identifying a solution to a company problem, students can persuade a potential employer to take them on for eight to 10 weeks to execute the idea, says Giulioni. Business schools themselves, says Foster's Klempay, are talking up MBA intern candidates in this way to small and midsize companies that might not have considered them an option before. Darden's Oakes says students need to show the value they can bring to the company—in dollars and cents. "Recruiters are looking for people to grow the business," says Oakes. "A potential recruiter's advice to me was to have students get as close to revenue generation as they can."

When jobs are scarce, critical mass also helps. Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business (Mendoza Full-Time MBA Profile) helped organize an interview forum in San Francisco for MBAs seeking internships and permanent positions. The draw: With six other business schools participating, prospective employers can combine several recruiting trips into one and get their pick of a much larger pool of candidates. Some Notre Dame students are even putting colorful company logos on their résumés to display their employment history, says Patrick Perrella, director of MBA career development at Mendoza.

To land an MBA internship, career service directors are advising students to give it everything they've got—and make no excuses. "We tell students we're not going to use the economy as a reason for not being successful," says Kranzusch. "There are enough jobs for MBAs. Students might have to work harder to get them."

Di Meglio is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in Fort Lee, N.J.

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