Managing Career Change at London

Graham Hastie has changed Career Services at London Business School, (No. 5 in BusinessWeek Non-U.S. B-school rankings) over the past three years. Since arriving as director in March, 2003, the former McKinsey & Co. consultant has hired a team of 20 career-service professionals. Each of the staffers, says Hastie, has led the kind of business career to which students can aspire.

A 1995 INSEAD graduate, Hastie was an MBA recruiter for McKinsey at INSEAD's Singapore and Fontainbleau, France, campuses. He also recruited graduates from London Business School's full-time Master's programs, as well as other top-tier B-schools. Hastie recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online project assistant Janie Ho. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

How does your past as an MBA recruiter help you in this career?
I guess it has made me acutely aware of what recruiters are looking for, especially in the management-consulting sector. One of the things recruiters are really looking for are skills in solving case-study interviews.

We have really professionalized the way we teach students how to do case-study interviews. We bring in the former head of global recruiting at McKinsey to run a master class, where we teach case-study interviewing to second-year students. Second-year students then interview the fist-year students, so they learn to become the interviewer, rather than interviewees. They'll do several thousand sessions of mock interviews every year. Each student could easily participate in 10 to 20 practice sessions each.

How's the job market looking for London Business School grads in 2006?
Fantastic. We had our highest number of students, 96%, employed last year. Every sector is up. (see BW Online, 12/30/05, "A Heady Job Market for MBAs"). We had two-thirds of our students go into either investment banking or management consulting. One of things we have done is build relationships outside of those sectors, so the students have greater variety of choice in areas like technology and pharmaceuticals.

Where do students typically gain employment?
Our students, 85% of whom are not British, represent 60 different nationalities. Still, most of our students, about 60%...

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