An International Outlook

The student body at York University's Schulich School of Business in Toronto is diverse in more ways than one. More Schulich MBAs have a background in tech and engineering than business, and former students of the arts and humanities make up a big slice of recent classes. More than half of the students are international, and 37% of those students are from Asia. More than a third of students are women. Many of Schulich's MBA students take night classes where they are mixed in with part-time students.

This all makes for an eye-opening MBA education, but it can also make the job tough for the school's career-services director, Joseph Palumbo. Palumbo recently talked about the changing needs of Schulich grads with BusinessWeek intern Kristin Dew. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

How does the student body diversity come into play when it's time for you to do your job?
You have to be an active, focused, energized, confident job-seeker that seeks opportunities, that doesn't sit back and wait for the company to come on campus or for the job to hit the bulletin boards. If you're an international student, you are even more under pressure to do this because this is perhaps your life savings that you've put into this program. Not only have you given up two years of income, but you've traveled a long way.

Do a lot of grads look for jobs in the U.S.?
Five years ago, most students wanted to stay in Canada and the U.S. While there's still a core group of people who want to stay here, more are looking to build their career based on where they've been. They have a Western education from a top-quality school, so they're going to go back to their home country and hopefully take their careers even farther because that's the edge they have (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/31/06, "India: A Hot Brand Climate?").

How has that changed your job?
Now we have to not only give them the tools to look on their own, but we're also supporting their career search globally. We attend the international MBA consortiums, but we also make frequent job treks to the U.S., Britain, India, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, France, and Japan. We're doing virtual global career fairs, job postings, and networking. We also have full-time offices in Beijing, Mumbai, Seoul, and a small office in Moscow.

Which companies are tops for internships and hiring at York, and who would you like to see more often?
We see all the Canadian banks and some U.S. banks, especially Citibank (C ). We also see a lot of the capital markets, like UBS (UBS ). We're getting increased business from the banks with a British and China presence, like Bank of America (BAC ), HSBC (HBC ), and Standard Chartered Bank. And then we have other non-banking institutions, like [Proctor & Gamble] (PG ), General Mills (GIS ), Kraft (KFT ), Pfizer (PFE ), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ ), and Dell (DELL ). The area that is the fastest growth for us would be consulting. We're up 84% from the previous year, but we have a ways to go.

Can you differentiate your career services from those of a U.S. program?
Generally, the amount of experience and the age is dropping in a lot of the top schools in the U.S., while our age and experience and diversity is going up. We also do something called Career Boot Camp, which is a two-day intensive program. It's self-branding and marketing during the job search: How do you identify what your brand is? What is your unique selling proposition? How do you convey that message clearly, concisely, effectively to your target audience?

It can be an ordeal to get a visa in the U.S. right now. Does that give you an advantage?
U.S. schools' ability to attract international students has gone down (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/1/06, "Give Me Your Diligent, Your Smart"), so students are choosing to go to Canada, Britain, Australia, and Europe rather than going to the U.S. We've got the same student visa, which allows students one year to work in their field of study. And while it may be difficult to get your citizenship in Canada, we have this landed-immigrant status that means you can work legally anywhere you want.

I would say as long as you are a professional, have a strong degree, and speak English or French, most people who come to a Canadian program will get this status of landed immigrant within two years.

Do you see any disadvantages to being in Toronto?
Rarely is Toronto difficult, but being in Canada means a lot of territory to cover. Also, Canadian companies are being acquired by U.S. and European and Asian companies. The capital markets in Canada are not as developed as they are in Britain or in the U.S., so we become targets for acquisition.

The more our companies get acquired—the more the decision-making, the control, goes offshore—the less likelihood there is that we're going to reach decision makers here. What we have is we have a branch-plant economy or a hollowing out of the business sector.

What's new in your international offerings for students?
The first dual degree we had here was with Kellogg and our Executive MBA. It's the first Canada-U.S. joint venture on the Executive MBA, but to me a real interesting one that we've just launched with Peking University in Beijing [is] where the students do one year in China, one year in Toronto, and get degrees from both places. We're looking to do more of those in countries that we feel are very rapid-growth, very sound, very much more than emerging markets.

What are some of the places on your short list for new joint programs?
We're looking at strong markets where there is a local shortage of talent, usually because there are not enough world-class universities in that country or the population is too great, like in India. We're going to open three or four centers before the end of next year. We feel strongly that people will be focusing so much on Asia that they'll forget about Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela. Many of the top Latin American markets don't have enough schools and professionals.