Outsourcing the MBA Job Hunt

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In the past, EMBA participants' tuition costs were mostly funded by their employers with the understanding that after earning the MBA they would remain at the company for an agreed upon amount of time. Because of this, most EMBA programs did not offer their students access to career services. Times have changed.

Jobs for EMBAs, Too

Now far fewer companies will foot the bill for even a portion of an employee's EMBA tuition, and as a result, many program participants do not feel the same allegiance to their employer. It's not a surprise, then, that most EMBA students expect the same access to career services that their full-time MBA counterparts enjoy.

"In the past, the job of an executive program was content management," says David Springate, former director of the EMBA program and director of the Center for Finance Strategy Innovation, at the University of Texas at Dallas' School of Management (UT-Dallas Executive MBA Profile). "Now it's mostly about career management." Add this to the fact that many students have lost their jobs while enrolled in EMBA programs in the past year, and the need for career services support becomes even more imperative.

The problem, though, is that most MBA career services offices are not exposed to the kinds of jobs that EMBA students are looking for. "Traditional placement offices aren't well-suited for people with 15 years of experience," Springate says. With this in mind, administrators at UT-Dallas decided to partner with RiseSmart, a Web-based executive search firm that specializes in matching ultra-experienced job seekers with positions that pay more than $100,000, to help their executive students find jobs.

Through the partnership, UT-Dallas EMBA students get three months of access to RiseSmart's unique job search technology that presents subscribers with job openings tailored to their interests and experience, similar to what Netflix does for movie buffs. Also, users get access to personal "job concierges," human resources professionals who weed out positions that might not be the best fit. "It's the first time that there's been a human in the loop," says Sanjay Sathe, CEO of RiseSmart. "The job concierges do the final scrubbing, while the technology does the heavy lifting." Additionally, RiseSmart utilizes a user's connections on social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to recommend key job contacts within their existing networks, as well as individuals outside their networks who might be valuable to contact.

While Springate calls UT-Dallas' partnership with RiseSmart an "experiment," the school has included it as a selling point in its EMBA marketing materials for prospective students and is also considering making RiseSmart available to its EMBA alumni as well. "We aren't afraid to tell people we're doing it," Springate says. Currently, Sathe is in talks with the MBA program at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business (SMU Cox Full-Time MBA Profile), as well as several California business schools about additional RiseSmart/MBA collaborations.

How long MBA programs' interest in companies such as Doostang and RiseSmart lasts depends on how long it takes the job market to right itself. But in the meantime, business schools will likely continue to reach out to partners who promise to make the job search a little easier for students.

Gloeckler is a staff editor for BusinessWeek in New York.

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