Amy Costa has been campus recruiting manager at BearingPoint, a consulting firm with a focus on technology, since January, 2004. She arrived at the McLean (Va.) company in 1998, first serving as a senior recruiter.
Lonny Spitz has been recruiting manager for commercial services and middle markets at BearingPoint (
BE
) for the past two years. Before assuming his current role, Spitz worked in the telecommunications and Internet world for 13 years with companies like Time Warner's (
TW
) America Online division and Global Telesystems in London.
BearingPoint has three main consulting areas: commercial, financial, and public services. It recently returned to campus recruiting after the economic downturn had taken it out of the scene for a couple of years. In the 2004-05 academic year, BearingPoint hired about 50 MBAs, and it's planning a formal summer internship program for next year.
Spitz and Costa recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter
Jeffrey Gangemi. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:
Q: For what types of positions do you hire MBAs?
Spitz: I hire into a practice that we call middle markets. We work with commercial companies with revenues under $5 billion. We look for relatively younger, aggressive, eager people with an entrepreneurial spirit. It's not pure management consulting. MBAs need to understand how technology fits in with business, which is what we do at BearingPoint.
Costa: I focus on the corporate program. We hire everyone from management analyst through senior consultant.
Q: Where do you recruit?
Costa: We target MBAs at
American University Kogod School of Business,
The George Washington University School of Business,
Howard University School of Business,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Business,
Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland at College Park, and
Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
We do a lot of local recruiting, because most of our openings occur within headquarters in McLean. We don't want people to have to relocate. We also look at affordability of candidates and our ability to be competitive on campus.
Spitz: For my middle marketing hires, I also do a lot of recruiting from the
Boston University School of Management MS-MBA program.
Q: How do you set BearingPoint apart from others in the recruiting game?
Spitz: What sets us apart from other consulting firms, like Accenture (
ACN
), Deloitte, and Booz Allen Hamilton, is that we let the students get to know us. We're much more accessible than many of the other companies that participate in campus programs. There's a great spirit around our campus activities.
Q: What makes a candidate successful?
Costa: We're looking for the well-rounded candidate who can come to the table with some previous experience -- not necessarily consulting but something at least indirectly applicable. We want someone with leadership, teamwork skills, and an entrepreneurial spirit.
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