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AUGUST 12, 2003
B-SCHOOL Q&A: PLACEMENT Career Counseling, Darden Style Says John Worth, the B-school's top adviser: "Students get more personal attention than they might at another school"
Prior to joining Darden, Worth spent 10 years with Deloitte Consulting as an MBA recruiter, and prior to that was director of recruiting for the Boston office of Coopers & Lybrand. Before that, he started and ran a job-placement service for the Two/Ten Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Boston. Worth earned a BA in English from Merrimack College and has completed graduate work in Educational Administration at the University of New Hampshire. Recently, he spoke with Mica Schneider, BusinessWeek Online's reporter covering management education, about the current career environment for MBAs. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation: Q: How did having an interim director of career development affect Darden MBAs? A: I joined Darden in 2000 to be director of career consulting. Six months later, I was asked to also serve as interim director of career development. So the classes of 2003 and 2004 had a full-time member of the staff serving in an [additional] interim role. They felt reasonably comfortable with that. But the students and I preferred to have a full-time director. Q: In mid-July, the school announced its new director of career services, Everette Fortner. How does the office stand to change? A: The current economic slowdown requires business schools to focus more on external relations, marketing the school and the students and bringing in new companies. The major change is that we now have a fully staffed office, and we will be able to market Darden, solidify our relationships, and reach out to new companies to round out the portfolio of recruiters at Darden. Q: How did Darden's 240 MBA graduates fare with their job hunts this year? A: Currently, 80% of the class of 2003 has accepted a job, which is only a couple of points behind last year. Like the class of 2003 at other top MBA programs, when this year's grads applied to school they knew that the economy was bad, but I don't think they had any idea how bad, and how prolonged, it would be. Everyone comes to B-school with a short- and a long-term goal. A lot of people assume they'll be in banking or consulting for a few years, to get them to their dream job. Recently, they've had to readjust their goals dramatically, as hiring in banking and consulting declined. Students have recognized that they need to be creative and flexible, and take positions that aren't exactly what they want but that fit with their three- to five-year goals. Many of our students are going into general management and management-development programs.Other [MBAs] say, "I didn't come to get a job. I came to get the job I want." Those students are waiting things out, and they probably have the financial resources to do that. We stay in contact with these graduates to see how they're doing. There are also a fair number of people who are saying that it has been a long two years and that they're taking time off, but will look for jobs when they're settled. Q: How does Darden's location in rural Charlottesville, Va., affect students' job searches? A: If I'm recruiting from a major metropolitan area, it's easier for me to get to the local business schools. But we find that companies go where they think the best students are, and we're not so far away that recruiters won't come. We haven't heard people say we're too hard to come to. As for students, they may have to schedule meetings with companies during their holiday breaks or make other trips. No matter what school they go to, every company they're interested in isn't going to recruit at their school. Q: This fall, 312 new MBAs will arrive on campus as the class of 2005. How is the career services office planning to help them? A: We didn't increase the number of students in each MBA section, but instead added a new 60-person section. [Note: Darden places its MBAs into five class sections of 60 students during the first year of the MBA program.] We added a new career consultant last year so that students have the same [degree of] access to career advisers and the same amount of one-on-one attention as they did before the enrollment increase. Q: In 2002, graduates left Darden with a median starting salary of $85,000, and median signing bonuses worth $20,000. How will salary results differ in 2003? A: A lot of people assumed that companies would try to pay less this year. But the median starting salary is exactly the same as it was in 2002. What you may see are fewer $110,000 [salaries] from consulting firms, but more $85,000 or $90,000 salaries from pharmaceutical companies. Companies aren't hiring MBAs for one job but to groom them for a long-term career. You don't get that by paying a lower salary. We did see some changes in signing bonuses, which are now between $12,000 and $15,000 as opposed to the $25,000 or so of a few years ago. That's one area where firms have decided they can cut costs. Q: What's your outlook for Darden's first-year MBAs? A: For the class of 2004, 98% received one or more internship offer. Now, the question is what the job market will be like when they graduate. Will it turn around in next few months? That's where luck will come into play. Q: Is there any change in internship compensation this year? A: There is. Students are willing to take an internship that pays $1,000 a month less than they expect [or nothing at all] with a company that is likely to hire them full-time. MBAs see that as an investment worth making. If you can work for less or for free, your long-term goals may be better served, and the contacts you make will serve you better. Fewer than 10 students are working for free, but three years ago it would have been close to zero. Q: How damaging is it to a student's full-time job options when he or she hasn't completed an internship? A: It's not helpful, since a lot of recruiters want to know what the student did [professionally] most recently, which is often during the [previous] summer. If you didn't do anything, and sat on a beach in the Bahamas, you've got a little bit of explaining to do. If you did something to learn more about an industry, or you volunteered, or you bolstered your finance skills as a research assistant to a professor, it makes you a stronger candidate. You need to tell a recruiter that you've gained new skills and that you're more convinced about your job direction.
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