Ken Keeley is executive director of the Career Opportunities Center at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business (No. 15 on BusinessWeek's 2004 list of Top-30 business schools) in Pittsburgh. Before arriving at CMU 11 years ago, Keeley was the director of the MBA program at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University.

Choosing a career goal is the key to having an enduring, fulfilling career. "If students know what they want to do," says Keeler, "they can stick to their guns and put 80% to 90% of their effort directly into achieving that goal." He recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter, Francesca Di Meglio. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

Q: What should new MBAs do before getting to campus?
Keeley: In the applications that students write to get into MBA programs, students are trying to convince the admissions staff that they know exactly what they want to do and how the school will help them do it. But about 60% to 80% of the MBA students who walk through our door are clueless. They know more about what they do not want to do.

Developing a career goal is Step One. Step Two -- and you can't do this unless you have a focus -- is to pick the school that lines up best with your goals. Know the school's strengths and choose accordingly.

Q: Which careers goals don't fit well with the Tepper School's offerings?
Keeley: Carnegie Mellon, in general, has a great reputation in operations and information systems. Our finance program is the hidden gem. It gets some recognition through various rankings, but I don't think most people understand how good it is.

Q: What are the most innovative services you offer MBAs?
Keeley: This year, we chiseled out 13 hours of the orientation program exclusively for career services. We included a session on etiquette that was run by a woman who used to be a manager for Merrill Lynch. Later in the week, students tested their networking and etiquette skills at a luncheon with alumni and career-services staff, who periodically provided feedback.

When they graduated from undergraduate institutions, many of our students were heavily sought by employers, because of their engineering and computer-science backgrounds. Things are different when you come out of the MBA program: Graduates are both the product and marketer. We brought in Next Step Partners, [a career counseling firm], which delivered a session on creating a career marketing plan, and ran a case-interview workshop to benefit both first- and second-year students.

Q: Have things changed for career services since March, when the hedge-fund manager and alumnus David Tepper announced a $55 million gift to the school?
Keeley: Yes. When the economy was hot, the career-services staff was at one end of the building, and the interview rooms were at the other, because there was more room there for recruiters and students. Visiting executives and alumni were physically separated from our staff, and we lost valuable networking opportunities.

Now, we've renovated a portion of the building so that the professional staff and the interview rooms are in the same location. And the interview facilities have a much more corporate look. We're also putting more money toward marketing the school in general and career services in particular.

Q: How do you market your students?
Keeley: For the first time, we're developing a marketing brochure specifically for companies. The quality of our program is strong, and our graduates do well. But because [our MBA classes are smaller], you are less likely to run into one of our alumni. Highlighting successful alumni in various industry segments creates awareness about the quality of our product.

Q: Which recruiters are coming to campus, and which ones are you trying to attract?
Keeley: When the high-tech industry was booming, we would place at least 25% of our graduates on the West Coast, but that market has pretty much disappeared in the last two years. We're fighting hard to regain relationships. We just got Intel to commit to meeting students at our California facility, which is outside San Jose.

Q: Do recruiters have a say in the MBA curriculum?
Keeley: In one form or another, recruiter feedback gets into the curriculum. The dean has an advisory committee that includes corporate executives to provide feedback on the overall operation of the school. Our dean has lunch with recruiters on a fairly consistent basis, which gives him a chance to get blunt feedback.

Q: What is the average starting salary for Tepper grads?
Keeley: The median starting salary [in 2004] was $85,000, and the mean was $82,115.

Q: Is the job market really recovering?
Keeley: The obstacles have been reduced. At the moment, 94% of our graduates have at least one job offer, compared to 84% at the same time last year, and about 92% of our graduating MBAs have accepted an offer. More companies are reengaging in the MBA-recruiting process: 178 companies have made offers to graduates, compared to 129 in 2003.

Consulting firms, traditionally the big eaters in the MBA world, came close to disappearing for two or three years. But in 2004, about 21% of our graduates accepted offers in consulting, indicating the industry is returning to a level of health.

Continued on next page>>  | 1 | 2