Inside Cox's Career Counseling

George Johnson has been assistant dean of MBA Career Management at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business for the past year. Before that, he was in charge of corporate relations for the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and he then served as director of corporate relations and development for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's College of Business. The New York City native has also worked for Pfizer (PFE ) , Johnson & Johnson (JNJ ), Deloitte Consulting, and Schlumberger (SLB ).

Ninety percent of Cox's 2005 graduates had jobs three months after graduating, and while businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area snatch up many Cox graduates, alumni can be found working all over the world. Johnson recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online project assistant Meredith Bodgas. Edited excerpts from their conversation follow:

How do you think the job market is looking?
We feel pretty positive about this year. We're early into the season, but the numbers that we're tracking aren't much different from last year's numbers, which were good.

Which industries will want to hire your MBAs this year?
The standard industries -- corporate finance, consumer packaged goods, commercial banking, and marketing -- will continue to hire our graduates. Consulting and real estate will come back this year because of market demands. We're also seeing a lot of interest from Goldman Sachs (GS ) [see BW Online, 3/24/05, "Making the Grade at Goldman"], Morgan Stanley (MSD ), and Merrill Lynch (MER ) [see BW Online, 6/21/05, "The Extra Things Merrill Wants"] in the private wealth management area, which is probably a function of the baby boomers moving toward retirement and wanting to manage their money efficiently.

Where do Cox students get hired?
Our students have held internships with or been hired full-time by 7-Eleven [see BW Online, 8/01/05, "More than Slurpees at 7-Eleven"], American Airlines (AMR ), Citigroup (C ) [see BW Online, 3/24/05, "Making the Connection at Citi"], Deloitte [see BW Online, 6/24/05, "A Broader Perspective at Deloitte"], Dell (DELL ), JP Morgan (JPM ), KPMG, Lehman Brothers (LEH ) , Mercer [see BW Online,8/31/05, "Making It in Mercer's 'Meritocracy'", PricewaterhouseCoopers, Raytheon (RTN ), Smith Barney, Texas Instruments (TXN ), and Walt Disney (DIS ), among many others.

Which companies come to campus?
Some companies will post listings and do information sessions on campus, but...

See Full Version