Student MBA provide vocational guidance Services a new assignment

Illustration by Olimpia Zagnoli

By Oliver Staley

When the University of Chicago Booth School of Business first contacted Groupon in 2009, the school had no idea that startup, and then a year, would be later $ 4.75 billion. Booth career services Department has heard of students and former students coupon site and contacted the Director General Andrew Mason to plead for the hiring of graduates of business schools. This year, the company interviewed students of Booth and six other MBA programs for summer internships.

B-school graduates once were happy to get a job on Wall Street or the & S P 500 company. Today, a growing number are defining their views on the less conventional careers. Which join the startups, non-profit organizations and other employers who recruit traditionally on the campus of schools. Career services officers are networking spending more time and accompanying students on excursions to visit businesses. Many B-schools are hiring additional personnel dedicated to the identification of potential employers. "We must be much more proactive," explains J.J. Cutler, who manages Wharton School the University of Pennsylvania career services. "I need to have thousands and thousands of links with these small firms everywhere in the world."

The movement is led by students, said Cutler. "In this context is a reaction to the financial crisis, it is a change of generation, part of it is that they are much more diversified backgrounds."

Amit Koren, a student aged 29 at the booth, interned together on in the summer and he worked while he completed his MBA. He did not meet any of the large employers recruiting on the campus of last year because he wanted to work in a young company. "I was looking for a place where I could have an immediate impact and grow with the company," says Koren, who, before to start business school, worked in Group monitor, the firm of consultants from Cambridge (mass.), co-founded by Michael Porter management guru. "The opportunities are so much greater." You can get your hands dirty, you can learn much more. ?

Come September, Neeraja Bhavaraju, an old student of 29 years of the Dartmouth College-Tuck School of Business in Hanover, N.H., will begin to work in the offices of the FSG Boston, a non-profit corporation that works with charities and businesses on the responsibility of the construction company programs. Bhavaraju, who worked at the McKinsey before leaving for his MBA, says employment in a for-profit business is no longer a appealed to him. "I realized that doing this kind of work was not well enough for me," she said. "It was intellectually stimulating but filling does not for me.".

Wharton, where 250 companies recruiting on campus, has reorganized its Office of career of 25 people services; There are now six members of staff who give the floor to small employers. Cutler, explains: "we used to have to play a game and now we have to play two." The Tuck School at Dartmouth has staff stationed in San Francisco and Montevideo, Uruguay, to identify potential employers, on the West Coast and in Latin America. Booth built his outreach team to seven, two, since January 2009.

Business schools invest in career services because they want to continue to meet their graduates. Place any newly MBAs in the perfect job is "probably the greatest motivation to their satisfaction, which translates Alumni giving and participation on the road," explains Scott Shrum, Director of research for the admission of the MBA at Veritas Prep, a provider of prep GMAT test and admissions consulting services based at MalibuCalif.

Unlike large enterprises that hire dozens or even hundreds of business school graduates each year and make job six months before the start of the position, small businesses are often offer until just before the graduation. That creates anxiety for students waiting for startups hear while their classmates accept jobs in blue chip companies, says Rebecca Joffrey, Co-Director of the office of career services at the Tuck School of Business. "Must be a certain amount of tolerance at the risk of really pursue what they came to want to continue," explains Joffrey. "The activity surrounding the MBA recruitment is very strong and widespread."

Jacqueline a. Wilbur, Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management career development, see graduate chase employers rather that the reverse is a welcome change. "This is an unhealthy dynamics, where just because you are accepted to a certain set of schools, businesses come find you", explains Wilbur. "This is not how the world works."

GroupOn, which now has nearly 5,000 employees, has been besieged by requests for information from students, according to Halle Jensen, who heads MBA recruitment company based in Chicago. "There is a scarcity of opportunities such as Groupon, in the past two years" explained Jensen. "Students are excited."

The bottom line: B-schools placement offices are staffing until they work to develop relationships with employers who recruit traditionally MBAs.

Staley is a journalist for Bloomberg News.

View the original article here