What's on Tap at Miller Brewing

David Gunn is the director of Human Capital Competitiveness for Miller Brewing, the second-largest brewer in the U.S., based in Milwaukee. Gunn has been with Miller since October, 2004, after two years as human resources manager for General Electric's (GE ) medical-systems division.

Letha Sloan joined Miller in April, 2004, and is the marketing human resources manager at the company, which is a unit of SABMiller (SBMRY ). For four years before joining Miller, Sloan was a human resources generalist for motorcycle-maker Harley-Davidson (HDI ).

Miller typically hires 5 to 10 MBA interns per year and makes full-time offers about 75% to 80% of the time. Despite these relatively low hiring numbers, Miller plans to expand the MBA recruiting program significantly in the coming years.

In the results-driven world of brewing and marketing beer, Gunn stresses the need for new MBA hires to think critically and be able to defend their opinions. He and Sloan recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Jeffrey Gangemi. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

Q: What's your recruiting strategy?
Sloan: There are campus teams for each of our target schools, which are usually headed by alums of those schools. The campus teams do presentations and host receptions for students, so they can sample some of our fabulous product and get to know us in a more informal setting. Then we do on-campus interviews.

Q: How does the interview process work?
Sloan: The interview process is roughly the same for internships as it is for full-time positions. We have two rounds and extend offers as soon as possible after the second round.

See Full Version