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MBA diary: Chicken!
While others in his class were deciding between multiple job offers, Ricardo Taveira, an MBA student at Chicago's Booth School, was playing a game of brinkmanship
IN THE film “Rebel Without a Cause”, James Dean (pictured) plays a game called “chickie run”, in which two car drivers hurtle towards a cliff edge. The person who bales out first loses.
At business school, this is how it feels to search for a job in private equity and venture capital (PE/VC). There are two types of MBA recruiting: on-campus and off-campus. For the traditional MBA paths of investment banking and management consulting, on-campus is a well-trodden path. For sought-after opportunities in private equity and venture capital, not only is the process usually off-campus, but it is a test of your appetite for risk. Where on-campus recruiting is typically done by February, most off-campus PE/VC recruiting begins later. Herein lies the game of chicken: if you wait for PE/VC recruiting in the spring and fail to secure an internship you could well end up having no summer internship at all.
Lending a responsible hand
by B.R.
New York University’s Stern School of Business has announced an assistance scheme for its MBA graduates, to provide relief to help pay off business school-school loans. It is aimed at those who pursue a social enterprise career. The school says that because careers in this field are less lucrative than traditonal MBA tracks, such as financial services, consulting and marketing, the initiative is needed to "support the school’s mission to develop leaders who create value for business and society".
Loans relief is available to graduates from Stern's full-time, part-time and executive MBA programmes, who earn less than $100,000 a year. Alumni can apply up to ten years after graduation, with a maximum of $15,000 per year awarded. Graduates are eligible “if they work in a US or international organisation with a socially oriented mission, including not only tax-exempt organizations, government agencies and nonprofits, but also L3c [low-profit limited liability companies: commercial firms that invest in social ventures] and certified B companies”.
Correction: New York University is providing loan assistance to its students, not issuing the loans itself, as originally reported. This was changed on May 22nd.
Internships: School's out for summer
by B.R.
And the hunt for a full-time job begins
THE sudden appearance of interns around the office is as sure a sign that summer has arrived as the sighting of the first cornflower. June marks the beginning of the season, when workplaces become briefly filled with new blooms eager to make an impression. For those hired from business schools, the typical placement will last around 10 weeks, before the call of lectures and a second year of study draws them back to college.
Tough economic times had led to a dip in the number of interns that companies hired from MBA programmes. But appetite is on the rise again. Around half of business schools have reported an increase in the number of companies visiting campuses to recruit students for the summer holidays, according to the MBA Career Services Council, an industry body. Just 9% saw a decrease.
Before the crisis, it was the big financial-services firms that were the most voracious users of MBA students. Many had large formal programmes, sometimes taking in hundreds of students at a time. This is now less common. The crisis acted as a wild fire, says Michael Malone of the Kellogg School of Management near Chicago. Many prestigious firms were felled. But that has left the way clear for others who previously found it tough to compete for the best students. Consultancies, consumer product and tech companies, as well as boutique financial firms, have been particularly keen to fill the gap.
Lonely at the top
by J.L.H.D | ATLANTA
MICHELLE DUGUID, an assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Washington University in St Louis, recently published a paper on the behaviour of women in high-profile corporate roles. It is often assumed that such high-fliers can act as mentors, bringing other women into similar positions. But Ms Duguid has a theory of “value threat”: that certain women, high-achieving but isolated, see others of their sex as a threat to their own special status, and therefore may not want to promote their female peers. One thinks of Becky Sharp in William Thackeray’s novel “Vanity Fair” (pictured, as played by Reese Witherspoon in a film adaptation), who regarded all other women, even her best friend and her husband’s sisters, as potential romantic or financial rivals. (This is something also observed by Israeli professors, albeit at a more junior level, when they found female human resources staff were denying pretty job applicants an interview.)
Value threat can play out in three ways, Ms Duguid suggests. First, the higher-ranking woman (let’s call her Becky) might see the lower-ranking woman (Amelia) as potentially performing worse and thus reinforcing negative views of women, thereby hurting Becky’s own standing. Second, Becky might fear that there is only one slot available for a woman, and Amelia will take it. Third, Becky might fear being accused of favouring Amelia over her male colleagues.
The multi-talented MBA
April 4th 2012, 15:58 by J.L.H.D | ATLANTA
ONE argument which is often trotted out in favour of a liberal-arts curriculum, at least for undergraduates, is that being exposed to a variety of subjects leaves the mind supple and agile. Knowledge of accounting, say, is all well and good for standard problems, but to embark on fundamental change it is better to think as a biologist or philosopher would. If this is true, then the fifth of American college students majoring in business would seem to have put themselves at a disadvantage.
Your correspondent was reminded of this while browsing the winter issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review. In one piece, Leonard Berry of Texas A&M University, Ann Mirabito of Baylor University and Gale Adcock of SAS Institute, a software firm, describe how SAS takes care of its employees’ health-care needs on-site:
The SAS Health Care Center, which started modestly in 1984 and now has a staff of 55, including four physicians and 10 nurse practitioners, does not charge for services and collects no copays. Same-day appointments are common, and care is unhurried; clinicians may spend 30 minutes or more with a patient... As its own health insurer, SAS avoids the cost of paying staff to negotiate claims payments with insurance companies, as most private medical practices have to do. And SAS estimates that each on-site patient visit saves two hours of employee work time because the individual remains on campus, resulting in productivity savings of $3.6 million in 2010.
Not pretty
A story from The Economist this week has news of a study by two Israeli professors looking at what happens when job candidates include a photo with their curricula vitae, as is the norm in much of the world. The pair came up with some inteteresting findings. Anyone who has fought against sexism may wish to look the other way now.
For men, the results were as expected. Hunks were more likely to be called for an interview if they included a photo. Ugly men were better off not including one. However, for women this was reversed. Attractive females were less likely to be offered an interview if they included a mugshot. When applying directly to a company (rather than through an agency) an attractive woman would need to send out 11 CVs on average before getting an interview; an equally qualified plain one just seven.
...Human resources departments tend to be staffed mostly by women. Indeed, in the Israeli study, 93% of those tasked with selecting whom to invite for an interview were female. The researchers’ unavoidable—and unpalatable—conclusion is that old-fashioned jealousy led the women to discriminate against pretty candidates.
Read the full article here.
Ready to board
Mar 7th 2012, 14:56 by J.L.H.D | ATLANTA
As the debate over whether to impose quotas of female board members on European companies continues, a group of business schools have weighed in by offering a list of 3,500 potential candidates. The schools include St Gallen and IMD in Switzerland; London Business School and Cambridge Judge Business School; IESE in Spain; Rotterdam School of Management; and INSEAD in France. Although the announcement is paired with profiles of 160 or so representative candidates (not all 3,500 names are revealed; instead the member schools have promised to reveal their individual lists, if asked. IMD, for example, has a slate of 348 alumnae, each with more than 25 years’ worth of experience, and 12 senior faculty members who might suit. Groups such as the Global Telecom Women’s Network and Women on Board, a Belgian organisation, have put together their own slates.
A perusal of the sample profiled candidates reveals a few Americans. Boston University’s Brussels arm was one of the nominators, but the thinking also seems to have been that companies might be more attracted to the candidates if they could add geographic and gender diversity at the same time. The sample profiles are made up largely of British and French high-ranking women, with a few Belgians and Italians as well; it’s not clear whether this is simply representative of the nominating schools, or meant as a message to Britain, France and Italy in particular (the latter two having already passed board quotas).
MBA diary: From fairway to a fairer way
Pablo Esteves swapped life as a professional golfer first for an MBA at IE Business School in Spain and then for a programme helping poor students in South Africa
PURSUE your dreams. We’ve all heard this mantra and it is a worthy one. One of the best decisions I ever made was to pursue mine. I wanted to become a professional golfer and compete on the world tour. With much dedication I managed to do just that. Then, thankfully, I managed to fail miserably. In 2009, I played the tournament that turned out to be my last. I had huge expectations. I trained really hard. And then I choked on the last day. Choked horribly, in fact. That afternoon, I realised I had reached a plateau and had three options: work on my golf for a couple of years and chase that elusive breakthrough (it is a sport in which improvement comes with marginal gains over time); become a coach (not really of interest; I was already doing it on the side); or switch careers again. Almost six months later, and after three years out of the job market, I landed in Madrid to pursue my MBA.
At some point during my first few months on campus two of my classmates told me about a fellowship programme called Emzingo that brings MBAs to South Africa. There are moments in life when fate plays a hand. Without really knowing what I was applying for, I wrote a cover letter and sent my CV to them. Then, nine months into my MBA, I was selected as one of 13 students to take part in a social impact consultancy project in Johannesburg.
It's a dirty job, but some MBA has to do it
Jan 31st 2012, 12:14 by M.S. | PARIS
THE findings of the latest Global Snapshot, a survey carried out by Antal, a recruitment agency, will come as a surprise to some. No sooner had the UK announced a 0.9% drop in manufacturing output for the last three months of 2011 than Antal’s (global) survey concluded that the best hiring prospects for professionals and managers in the first quarter of 2012 will be in manufacturing. The firm studied hiring trends at nearly 20,000 companies across the world, finding that almost 70% of organisations in the manufacturing sector intend to take on new staff at professional or managerial level during this period. To compare, the figure is just 52% in banking and financial services.
If one of the consequences of the downturn is a return to making things people want to buy, rather than shunting money around in ever more complex and unfathomable ways, then all well and good. (Anyone with doubts would do well to wonder why Germany has remained Europe’s strongest economy despite being at the heart of the troubled euro zone.) But have the world’s MBA students understood this message? Or are they, like so many of their predecessors, still focused on getting a highly paid job in banking on graduation?
Micro-lending to the more unlikely
Jan 25th 2012, 15:40 by J.L.H.D | ATLANTA
Rotman’s Centre for Health Sector Strategy recently announced the end of a pilot programme conducted with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH; like Rotman, a part of the University of Toronto) in which aspiring business owners with mental health or drug addiction problems received micro-loans and guidance. The programme, called Rise Asset Development, not only provided the loans but also paired participants with Rotman alumni to act as business mentors. By definition, it targets people whose problems have damaged their credit history and made them unattractive to banks. Of the 11 initial participants, three have already paid off their loans.
In a similar vein, a group of financial engineering students at Haas have proposed a scheme that would award micro-loans to convicted felons looking for a second chance. They call their plan “Valjean financing,” after Jean Valjean, the good-hearted thief of Les Misérables. Inmates could qualify for a Valjean bond after being evaluated for conduct and potential to repay; investors could then bid on the interest rates, with the lowest rate winning. Given the sheer scale of America’s prison system—one in 11 black adults, and one in 45 white adults, is under correctional supervision—there should be a lot of potential economic and social capital that could be unlocked by such a plan. Convicts, who face a significant disadvantage when applying for jobs, would have more options than simply resorting to crime again.
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