What do recruiters really think about having an MBA? And which programs are the most likely to land you a job?
That’s what we asked top recruiters to complement our exclusive ranking of the World’s Best Business Schools. Our interviews covered a range of companies — from Citigroup, GE, IBM, Bain, et al, to a venture capitalist and the president of a life-sciences business.
Many executives and recruiters we interviewed were reluctant to go on the record about the benefits and drawbacks of specific schools. Most said an MBA was great to have, but not critical. Some called out specific schools as best for their industry or company. Others said the choice of MBA program didn’t matter much, especially if it was a top 25 school.
Here, we bring you extended questions and answers with the people who might look at your resume one day.
See Also:
GE’s Erin Dillard
Image: GE
Name: Erin Dillard
Company: General Electric
Position: Director, Commercial Development Programs at GE Corporate
When you see an MBA on a resume, what value does that add?
What we’re looking for are strategic thinkers who can act as change agents in coming into GE. Deal with the ambiguity and solve complex problems in a very short period of time. We are also looking for individuals who we can leverage their previous work experience and education both functionally — so marketing and sales — as well as their domain experience in a specific industry.
What specific skills does an MBA have over work experience?
Especially in this current environment, in the complex issues we deal with, it gives people an opportunity to take a seat back and say how would I have done something differently, be a little bit more thoughtful in the way that they were looking at solving issues. I think it was also gives someone who already has a particular skill set in one area but is lacking in business acumen — kind of fill that void or gap. I believe the reason people should go back and get MBAs is because they are looking to fill some area that’s going to help propel them, accelerate them to the next level in their next career, wherever that takes them.
Is an MBA’s network helpful?
That is one of the reasons we rely on bringing MBAs in. We are a B-to-B company [business-to-business], but there are some great marketers who are coming from great B-to-C companies [business-to-consumer], like P&G. We rely on them not only to bring some of that skill set and expertise but also some of the network, so we can learn from best practices shared at other organizations. The network you build in your MBA is something you should carry with you throughout whole career and we hope to build on that.
Comments on specific schools:
Cornell: Cornell fosters integrity and a collaborative environment. Additionally, The Johnson School and GE have similar cultures which foster excellence, without arrogance.
Darden: [University of Virginia]: Rigorous program that delivers top-notch general manager talent.
Duke: Marketing expertise, healthcare focus, inclusive and collaborative culture. Good alignment for GE’s Healthcare business and Marketing Function
Indiana: Kelley has a very strong marketing program where graduates tend to be a great fit for GE culture due to their ability to solve nebulous problems. Students operate with a “roll up your sleeves” mentality and are enthusiastic in initiatives outside of their day to day responsibilities
Kellogg: GE’s approach to marketing continues to be heavily influenced by thought leadership from Kellogg. Beyond the obvious marketing focus, the Kellogg candidates we see are highly collaborative, team-players which makes them a strong cultural match with GE.
Maryland: Diversity of student background combined with rigor that the MBA program provides, matches diverse needs of GE.
Michigan: Many students at Michigan have a general management focus with good technical aptitude. ECLP provides the type of depth and breadth of opportunities and assignments where Ross graduates can build on their skills to become growth leaders at GE.
Notre Dame: Notre Dame lives up to their reputation in delivering top candidates who can execute and operate with integrity. Additionally, they have heavy executive support and engagement from top levels at GE.
USC: USC’s collaboration efforts prepares MBA’s who come to GE the willingness and ability to assimilate to the unique company culture through quickly adapting to new environments.
Chicago: Based on Chicago’s curriculum there is a great alignment of the school’s focus in Capital and Healthcare to GE’s Healthcare and Capital businesses.
Columbia: Columbia provides a foundation to produce good candidates with strong leadership abilities
Emory: Emory is a strong fit for GE/ECLP [Experienced Commercial Leadership Program] because the Emory community espouses core values that very closely match to GE’s Core Values with an emphasis on integrity.
Harvard: HBS’s mission of educating leaders that make a difference in the world compliments GE/ECLP’s focus on global citizenship as we have committed to taking on the world’s toughest challenges.
North Carolina: GE and UNC are aligned in their commitment to building and teaching leadership both through experience and in the classroom.
NYU: NYU is a strong match for GE due to it’s highly valued Finance program and population of students with strong finance and commercial backgrounds.
Thunderbird: Thunderbird’s value proposition to ECLP is based on access to a highly diverse population of international and domestic candidates who are high caliber.
Wharton: Wharton is known for delivering talent who provide a strong strategic thinking perspective combined with exemplifying executive communication skills.
Any diamonds in the rough?
Dillard singles out McCombs at the University of Texas at Austin. She notes that while they have not been one of GE’s “core schools,” UT MBA grads have made a positive impression. Dillard says they live up to their mantra of building “business leaders of tomorrow while creating knowledge of critical significance for industry and society.” She adds GE has found strong alignment for talent as feeders into GE’s Energy business.
Accenture’s John Campagnino (Consulting)
Image: Accenture
Name: John Campagnino
Company: Accenture
Position: Senior director of global recruitment
Does an MBA boost chances of success at Accenture?
The short answer is yes. I’d knock out four reasons off the top of my head for what we think MBA programs bring to our business.
First one would be generally the broad business view that the MBA student comes with. The second is time management. The ability to multitask — many people balance work and school in some cases, or school and internships and other outside activities.
The third thing I think is really important and the crux of the thing is that the work we do here is very aligned with the MBA school case study methodology. It’s really the presentation of the business problem, understanding the discrete elements of that problem and identifying key areas and then moving into solution mode is exactly what we do as an organization for our clients. That’s the third one and probably one of the biggest.
Finally, one of the things business schools brings is the ability to build your network and to have business contacts that may turn into client development opportunities later on. That’s certainly something we value here at Accenture.
What does an MBA mean 5 or 10 years later?
After a certain point we do tend to focus on work experience. I mean listen, we want to have people who know something about something at this organization. We can look at coming to Accenture in two different ways. If you’re a career changer, then I think an MBA has high value for the reasons that I mentioned. The best way to make that leap is with an MBA program for the four reasons I mentioned.
For experienced professionals, it’s a little bit more of a complicated question. We assume that individuals come in at some point in their career after a number of years in a professional work environment — they bring the critical thinking skills, the commitment to team work with them. They can make a good transition to executive. So if you’ve got industry experience, if you’re already a specialist in an area and plan on staying as such in that area, the MBA for us here may not be of that much value.
Are there specific MBA programs that consistently give Accenture the best candidates?
The four core MBA schools we work with are Wharton, Booth (Chicago), London Business School and INSEAD. Whenever we make a decision on the school, it’s an intersection of a couple of different things.
It’s the demographics — can we get the people, the skills we need from that school? Number one. Number two is, are we in a position to effectively attract students from that school? And then third, a lot of this has to do with some of our relationships. Where have we built good, robust relationships so we can be what I call a day zero employer — we are one of the employers that have a reputation on campus that students will pick us ahead of others to interview with first.
That’s not to say we don’t go to other places. For example in the U.S., we’ll go to Kellogg, we’ll go to Darden, we’ll go to Duke, we’ll go to Cornell and other institutions. And of course we’ve got local institutions we visit all over the world. But those four schools are where we get a large percentage of our management consulting capability from an MBA perspective.
How many programs do you recruit from total?
For MBA schools in the U.S., about ten on top of the four core schools.
What’s particularly strong about each of the four core schools?
These guys are all phenomenally good students. I would give a limb to have an MBA from one of those institutions. At the end of the day, I think they bring into balance the things that we need. They graduate people who have the right level of cross functional skill and business acumen that we need, the demographic around the people we get out of those schools. What I mean by that is those people are inclined towards the types of careers that we offer at Accenture, the type of work we do.
VC Adele Olivia
Image: Quaker BioVentures
Name: Adele Olivia
Company: Quaker BioVentures
Position: Partner
How has your MBA in marketing from Cornell served you?
I didn’t go back to business school to just check a box and get an MBA. I went back really embracing the opportunity to learn and to grow. For me, personally, I felt the MBA really accelerated my understanding of business and broadened my skill set in business, and I have found throughout my career the things I learned both in the classroom and on the team projects very valuable. Even now, when I’m close to 20 years from when I started my MBA, I still reflect on learning and situations then.
Are there specific things you remember in terms of case studies, the approach to problem solving or the basics of finance?
I think it was a combination. Cornell has a combination of case studies and theory, which I loved. There were a number of case studies in the entrepreneurship class that I recall, but also paradigms. The great thing about business school is that it gives you paradigms in which to think through problems and take a view on situations, and those paradigms are valid today in terms of the “Ps” of marketing and other things that you learn.
Have you found the degree opened certain doors or made conversations with those Quaker BioVentures might invest in easier?
I certainly feel there is a very big advantage to the expanded network and the halo effect of a small business school.
For Cornell specifically?
Absolutely Cornell specifically, but I also see it with other programs as well.
How do you view the MBA degree when hiring?
I hire one or two people a year. I just caution people because I think it really is for an individual to decide the value that they can get from an MBA degree, and how it will help them grow in the future. I don’t think everyone has to go back to business school in order to be successful, and there are a lot of examples of people with strong operating backgrounds that have been very successful, or that are voracious readers and that are able to pick things up outside the classroom as part of the day to day course of their lives.
I do believe that it helps jumpstart, gives a perspective, provides a grounding in which people think in certain ways, and an understanding and a communication pattern that may provide shorthand.
In terms of specific programs, what are the best you’ve found in the life science industry?
I think there are three very strong programs in life sciences. Cornell has an accelerated degree for people with graduate degrees in engineering and science. It’s a twelve month program and they get a lot of very talented individuals. What I like about Cornell is that balance of case and theory, because I feel like both contribute to the learning and how you ultimately view things and approach life and business.
The second program is Wharton. Wharton has a healthcare specific track and program that is very good in venture capital and private equity, as does Cornell, Cornell also has a very good venture capital and private equity program. So I feel that the individuals that come out of Wharton have a strong health care network and then they also have some of the basics around terms, legal documentation, things like that.
The third program I think very highly of is Stanford. Stanford, not only because of the proximity to Silicone Valley, but because I think they do a very good job in the individuals they take into the program and screening those individuals. I find people out of Stanford bright, collegial, technically strong, and a huge asset no matter where they are, be it a company or at a firm.
Any other diamonds in the rough, especially for life sciences?
In term of part-time programs there’s a school in this area [Philadelphia], St. Joseph’s University, that has a part-time MBA program that is the best in the area and that has an emphasis on pharmaceutical marketing as well as the biopharmaceutical industry.
Does getting an MBA from Harvard not translate well into the life sciences?
No, not at all, there are a lot of very successful people from HBS. It’s just if I had to pick three, those would be the three I would pick. I think the graduates [from those programs] have tended to be a great cultural fit for the places where I fit. They bring a great skill set, are very diligent, hard working individuals that are team-oriented and want to succeed as a team.
Semprae Labs’ Rachel Braun Sheri (Small Business)
Image: Semprae Laboratories
Name: Rachel Braun Scherl
Company: Semprae Laboratories
Position: President
How has your MBA helped you specifically?
I would talk about specific skills that I found extremely valuable, which is, certainly at Stanford [MBA ’92], ability to manage in a situation that requires consensus or some sort of collaboration, because as a service provider, you are not the ultimate decision maker, but you have to have a cogent argument to support your point of view.
Also, given my background, it was hugely valuable to have the financial training — cost economics and accounting and all the basics was extremely valuable, because you then get to use it in the context of group work with people who have actually have been bankers and lawyers and all those kinds of things.
The third piece I would say is communications skills. And I put an extremely high premium on verbal and written skills. And I think that they encourage that kind of improvement and self presentation.
And finally I would say — it’s not as hard a skill — but confidence that you were successful in an environment with such terrific, dynamic, fabulous people and you could figure out a model that worked in the context of your personality. So I don’t just mean diversity — people of different races, backgrounds, ages — but diversity of thinking and presentation and ways of approaching things. Which in my experience is almost validated, praised and celebrated there.
When hiring, what does seeing an MBA on a resume tell you?
I would say honestly it only means something in the context of a broader experience. I do think that when you see Stanford, the person who selected Stanford has selected it. People who go to Stanford aren‘t there because they didn‘t get into Harvard. It’s a choice and a philosophy and a point of view. So I am positively predisposed to the kind of person that that will be.
What about a candidate with a little less work experience but a stellar MBA?
Absolutely, I think you have to be able to check the box [of an MBA], for sure. I think it does make a difference. The fact that they have that and that they’ve done that in the context of the other experience they’ve had usually either strengthens what they were doing before or help them get into a new direction, that has a lot of value.
If you’re talking about the difference between a Stanford degree and 10 years of work experience, I don’t think the equation works the same way. But on the margin, it absolutely would make a difference.
Part of that is the selection process. I really do. You’re in a room just with really, really outstanding people. It’s not that you’re friends with everyone, but there’s just a sense of a strong culture.
There is a Stanford experience. If you’re looking for experiences like that I think it could help you focus your job search. And I think as a hiring person, it would help you have sense of the kind of a person it was. It would absolutely, positively, pre-dispose me to a candidate. I don’t know if that’s politically correct or not, but that’s my perception.
How is Stanford MBA different for working in a new business, versus, say Harvard or Chicago?
There is a true, true focus, investment and skill base in entrepreneurship, in doing things a different way. Whether that means a new business model, a new business, a new approach, a new way to communicate, a new technology. So there is a legitimate emphasis on running your own business.
The skills to think strategically, understand markets, identify opportunities for growth, whether that’s in a business management role or consulting role, were very critical.
How about with venture capital?
If you’re in VC, I think it’s a huge advantage. The network is unparalleled. For me it was enormously helpful when I went out to raise venture funding, which I had never done before.
It’s not a call back or not, it changes the way the conversation starts. It changes the dynamic in your favor at the beginning of the conversation.
It’s yours to lose at that point, as opposed to having to climb up a really big hill from the bottom. It really changes the dynamic. People do it in sports all the time. If they have a common school they root for or a team they root for, it just sets it up so there’s a sense of personal connection. That enables you to tell your story in a way that is not as wrote and in a way that is much more interactive. And in fundraising, if it’s not interactive, it’s dead at the start.
Outside of Stanford, which programs carry the most weight?
Depending on the job, my experience is Harvard, Northwestern [Kellogg], Stanford and Wharton would all carry a lot of weight.
A Wharton person knows their way around a business, they know their way around a P&L, they know their way around a spreadsheet. They know how to be successful in a really competitive environment. I think of that as somewhat of a collaborative environment. If Stanford’s a 10, maybe that’s a 7? But absolutely strong, strong, fundamentals. Business fundamentals, strategy fundamentals, finance fundamentals. They encourage you a lot to do internships and programs to get some actual business experience.
For me, Northwestern is that they get marketing. They step in the door and they get it. There’s a focus on the consumer, there’s a focus on insights. My experience is they’re very easy to work with — I would absolutely be most positively predisposed to a Stanford MBA or a Northwestern MBA. A large part of that is because I believe they teach collaboration and figuring out your role in an organization. As opposed to, ‘I’m starting as a CEO my first day out.’
I think that [Harvard MBA grads] are incredibly bright and they do a great job of teaching leadership. Someone with a Harvard Business background has access to a network that’s unparalleled. That would be an advantage in terms of knowing that someone was ready for prime time. I could put them in front of a boardroom, I could put them in leadership positions because they had a lot of experience presenting. They really do focus on leadership and they have a great network which has a lot of meaning when you’re trying to do any kind of business in terms of finding good people, access to capital, resources, all of those things.
McKesson’s Ryann Cheung (Healthcare IT)
Image: McKesson
Name: Ryann K. Cheung
Company: McKesson Corporation
Position: Program Manager, Talent Acquisition
Does an MBA help a candidate will thrive at McKesson?
I think that we value the MBA degree because it tends to bring talent in with new and or latest ways of thinking, to infuse us with new perspective. We have a finance rotational program that is focused to rotate through McKesson over the course of two years. These people touch different business units and we’ve had a pretty dynamic response, so we recruit them straight from business school and they come into this program. We’ve had great responses from people in terms of the energy level the new MBAs bring as well as value that we gain from their knowledge coming out of business school.
What specific skills usually come from an MBA?
I think for us it’s really about the latest ways of thinking, because we obviously get people targeting us that are interested in the health care industry that bring a lot of passion. Maybe they’re doing a career change and they’re bringing a skill set from prior company life into business school and then making a transition into health care or it could be somebody that’s been on a health care path. Particularly for people doing some kind of a career change, whether its industry or a functional area change, it’s about having that grounding. If, for example, they’ve been in IT and they want to go into finance, then we know that they’re coming in with some baseline finance skills even if maybe they haven’t had that work history in their resume. So I think an MBA is very helpful for people looking to make a career shift to gain that knowledge in an academic setting before they step into a new role for them.
Is there a difference between an MBA and spending a year or two in the health care industry in a similar role?
People come out of business school with a broad network of classmate and professor connections, so for example if there’s a problem that a company is grappling with [they have people to reach out to for that] or in terms of the knowledge of a professor doing research in an academic area. I think there is a lot of social development that goes on in business school that somebody may not be able to get in the same way if they just say, “ OK, I’m going to take a lateral move from IT into finance because I persuaded the financial manager to give me a shot,” because at business school you get mentoring, if you will, from fellow students that may have been in finance and are looking to make a switch elsewhere.
Is an MBA just a good screen of candidates for recruiters?
That’s a tough question for me to answer from an HR perspective because I don’t want to sound like we would necessarily take someone that has deep industry knowledge over a newly-minted MBA. It depends on position and role. I certainly think, I don’t want to harp on the career change too much, but if someone says, “I’m willing to invest in myself and I’m interested in furthering my career and so I’m going to take this opportunity to either step out of the working world for two years or disturb my work life balance,” I think that’s a very positive thing for them to demonstrate. Even more so for folks that do a degree through an executive MBA or an evening/weekend program. We’ve certainly hired people that have completed their MBAs through an evening or weekend program because for whatever reason they can’t step out to do a full-time degree or haven’t chosen to do it that way, but they can still also still bring a lot of value and demonstrate that, “Hey, I’m more than what my resume says right now and I’m going get my degree to prove that.”
How many campuses do you focus on, and which?
Currently we have six to seven target schools. Six officially: UCLA Anderson, Haas at Berkeley, Wharton, Goizueta at Emory, UT at Austin — McCombs — and Vanderbilt Owen.
Why those schools?
Generally, when we’ve looked at adding target schools we’ve look at a couple of different factors. We look for some kind of strong health care presence. Hass has a focus in health care that you can get if you do a straight MBA and then they also have a combined MBA and PH degree. Wharton obviously has a very strong health care program, Vanderbilt as well. UCLA Anderson actually has a pretty strong health care club presence — students have banded together to say ‘hey, this is a really interesting industry we have an interest in exploring.’
In addition, we really look at where students want to go in terms of what are our recruiting needs from a full time and internship perspective. UT Austin and Anderson tend to have people that are very interested in corporate finance. We have a corporate finance program. With Haas and Wharton we look for the corporate strategy and business development group.
We also look for a nice geographic mix in our schools because we do have opportunities across the country, particularly for the finance rotational program, and we want to have people that are set to take the journey with us over the course of two years. Emory is a small school but they have a strong health care presence and they definitely hit the geographical component for us in terms of our Alpharetta offices.
We also look for schools with a strategic focus on building a diverse student class because we want to make sure that we are hiring people with diversity and inclusion from our traditional thought process on gender, race, and ethnicity, but also a nice mix of schools so that we’ve got people form different educational backgrounds bringing different ways of thinking and problem solving.
Are there programs that have yielded strong employees that aren’t in that instantly recognized list of MBA brands?
I would have to go back to our target schools. One of the reasons they’ve continued to stay target schools is because the people coming from them have been cultural fits for us. To flip that question around: Is there’s a school that could be a great fit for us [that we’re overlooking]? Maybe. We also focus on keeping our number of target schools realistic to our hiring targets, particularly from a just-out-of-business-school interns and fresh grads perspective.
If we were at 50 schools but only ever hiring from five for the rotational finance program, I’m kind of wasting my brand, and time, and dollars going to that many schools. Really taking a strategic focus on digging in and making sure a school is right for us is a very important thing.
Bain’s Mark Howorth (Management Consulting)
Image: Bain & Co.
Name: Mark Howorth
Company: Bain & Company
Position: Head of global recruiting
Does an MBA make for a better consultant at Bain?
It’s certainly not a requirement to work at Bain & Company to have an MBA. What we do expect though is that people have a certain tool-kit if you will. A set of business understanding and experience. What we find is that people with MBAs typically have that tool-kit. Getting an MBA is a great way to get the basics of business education that our clients expect the consultants they hire to have. So understanding the basics of finance, marketing and strategy and organizational behavior, etc.
Some say an MBA is just about a name on a resume and networking. Your reaction?
I disagree with that. I think there is a lot of value in getting an MBA. Do not underestimate what our top business schools are able to do in terms of teaching those basic business skills. Very few people have had a year or two years to go and study cutting edge thinking in terms of finance and marketing and strategy and capital markets and all the rest of that stuff. That’s important for us, at least at Bain & Company, where we’re trying to hire the best business talent, it’s important that our consultants know that stuff. That’s the first thing.
The second thing I think is very valuable about an MBA that is somewhat unique to that degree is that at virtually all the top MBA programs…you’re spending a lot of your time each day getting into the heads of a bunch of different companies that have been in very challenging business situations — really working through what did they do in that situation. For our business, the consulting business, that’s a perfect laboratory to practice the skill-set that you’re going to use when you come here. We help our clients out of usually pretty tough situations. Usually they’ve got to make some hard business decisions and so what better way to learn it then to spend a year or two going through that and sort of role playing it.
The third thing is the networking. At the end of the day, the lifetime network you build is powerful and important for our industry. Often time when we’re trying to help our clients, we can talk to people you may have gone to school with 10 years ago, and be able to get help from those kinds of people. And that absolutely helps our clients — that we have a group of people I know I can call who can help me when I’m trying to solve my client’s problems.
What about different MBA brands?
I don’t view one MBA brand as different from another. We interview every candidate similarly. That may come as a surprise to you, but once someone gets a job offer from Bain & Company, if you look at their career trajectory over the next three to nine years, there’s no difference how somebody does based on where they got their MBA.
Most place a huge value on going to the top business schools. Is that a fallacy?
The actual education that you learn — there are tons and tons of great schools that can teach you that. I don’t control where the best business talent decides to get their MBA, so we tend to go to the places where we can find the best talent. If for whatever reason, there are five schools out there that the top students are trying to go to, then that’s probably where we end up going to try and hire from places like that. But in terms of the raw education, you’re going to use the same textbooks and get the same business theory at all the schools. We don’t see much different from that at all.
There is something to the fact that you do get a lot of the learning from your program from the students you’re going to school with. So if the best students are going to the top 30 schools, well maybe there is a slightly different level of education. But like I said, once they get to Bain & Company at least, we can’t tell the difference.
Just to push you a little bit — isn‘t a Harvard or Stanford MBA a little different from others?
If that were true, I’d only go to the top five programs. But I don’t — I go to 20, 30 programs to recruit. Obviously we spend more energy and put more resources against the places where we think we’ll find more students that will pass our screen, and those tend to be the top 15 programs. That just makes sense, because that’s where the talent is.
It’s just natural resource allocation to say if a whole bunch of people go to the top three or four schools, that’s where we make sure we’re going to go and find those people there, because our job is to find the best business talent. But once we start the interviewing, we don’t pay attention to which school they came from.
Are there other hurdles? While it’s not impossible for someone to do well at Bain, it is generally tough if you have a GMAT below 650. When we’re trying to sort out who we’re going to interview for the jobs, we don’t use GMAT as a strict screen, it is a good indicator — if someone got a 550, they’re probably not going to do well at Bain & Company. The schools tend to collect people with certain level of GMATs. So once again, we’re going to go where we think the most talent is, but that doesn‘t mean that if we find some random MBA program and somebody has done well and they get their application in to us, we’re certainly going to interview them.
What’s the value of having an MBA 10 or 15 years after the degree?
Zero. Obviously it’s nice if they have an MBA, but when we’re hiring people at the manager or partner level, 99 percent of what we’re looking at is what they’ve done with their business career, what kind of experiences they’ve had, and whether or not they’ve a track record of being able to crack tough business problems and help change clients. That’s really what we look at there — we pay almost no attention to the school at all.
Excluding undergraduate hires, what percentage of new employees have MBAs?
At a consulting level, it varies by year, but it’ll typically be that 70 or 80 percent of the people will have MBAs. However, recognize that there is significant geographic differences is that. Culturally, the MBA is viewed very differently in Europe and Asia than it is in North America.
In Europe — let’s use Germany as a good example. The MBA degree doesn‘t really have a lot of — I don’t want to say credibility — frankly people aren‘t even all that aware of it. As a result, the best talent doesn‘t go get an MBA. In Germany, as an example, what you do is go get a PhD.
If you look at Asia, there’s some value on the MBA degree there, but there are limited sources of good MBAs there. Just because of the hard demand for talent we have there, by definition we’re bringing in people who don’t have that kind of degree. They are still top — our rule is not let’s look for the degree, let’s find the best business talent.
Note: Bain declined to provide a list of schools it recruits at, but its recruiting website has dedicated pages for MBA programs at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Northwestern, INSEAD and LSE, among others.
Citigroup’s Eileen Stephan
Image: Citigroup
Name: Eileen Stephan
Company: Citigroup
Position: Head of graduate recruitment
How is an MBA valued at Citigroup?
We very much value students who come with an MBA to Citi across a variety of our businesses. We feel strongly it provides a great platform as someone begins — or continues — their professional career in financial services. We think it’s very valuable.
Is an MBA just a box to check? Or are there actual skills?
The value of an MBA is something that displays itself over time. There are immediate benefits to pursuing an MBA that a student or candidate brings to the job as a newly-minted MBA. They’ve been in a classroom setting for two years working with faculty who have conducted tremendous amounts of research about the business world and changes in the global economy that are important for a company to be abreast of, and new students entering the firm bring that spirit of research and excitement about the business world with them. And there are skills that are learned in the classroom, whether it’s finance, accounting, strategy, marketing, etc. that are all valuable pieces of that platform.
An MBA is a life-long benefit in that after you bring your initial set of immediate skills to the table, as you progress through you career, you have the opportunity to draw on the things you learned in the classroom as you take on greater leadership and management responsibilities. You think of the general management courses that people take, the organizational behavior classes that people may be involved in. You would draw upon those maybe a little later in your career, which provides again, an important benefit of the degree. So I would not say it’s necessarily a check the box endeavor.
What’s the value of an MBA, say, 10 years after the degree?
It’s very individual to the candidate and the experiences they’ve had. We take a very thoughtful approach at reviewing candidates and their expereinces and the sum total of those experiences. You can have someone with a graduate degree with significant experience and that makes them the appropriate candidate; you can have someone with significant experience without a graduate degree and that experience is sufficient. So it’s a very individual process and I don’t think it can be captured in an ‘if this, then that’ assessment.
What roles do you most commonly hire MBAs for?
For direct from an MBA program into the firm, we hire students into our institutional securities businesses, which includes investment banking; our global transaction services business; our finance function; a global leadership development program. So a wide variety.
Where does Citi focus its recruiting?
We look at, broadly speaking, the top 25 MBA programs globally, and our obviously very interested in the students coming from those programs. We also welcome applications from highly qualified students from a variety of business schools around the globe. It depends on the candidate’s experiences, the sum total of their education and how they present as a candidate.
There some programs that are better than others, no?
We truly value our relationship with all the schools that we recruit from and we find marvelously talented people who are interested in financial services. To somehow imply one school or two schools are better at it than others is just not [fair].
We are a diversified financial services firm situated in 105 plus countries. We look for quite a variety of backgrounds, skill-sets and education from those who comprise MBA students globally. So it’s physically not possible for me to say that school A, because it’s quant focused or finance focused is more important to us than school B that’s leadership focused, because we focus on such a wide variety of campus programs that we recruit from into the firm.
Any diamonds in the rough outside the 25 schools you recruit at?
It depends on how you classify what your top 25 is. In any given year, there are schools — call it up to the top 50 — that will produce some wonderfully talented candidates. The trick is making the match happen. Whether that’s through student networking or alumni contacts, etc., we welcome candidates from competitive programs and see if we can make the right match for something at the firm.
We don’t use any one metric for whether a school is appropriate for Citi. We look at the rankings, sure, they’re there, they’re publically availible, there’s lots of work that goes into them and they yield some important information.
But we also look at the performance of the candidates we’ve attracted from those schools who are working at Citi. We look at the quality of the education, we look at the rigor of the admissions process, we look at a variety of factors for how we want to position ourselves.
IBM’s Peggy Tayloe
Image: IBM
Name: Peggy Tayloe
Company: IBM
Position: Director of Recruiting
How does an MBA help IBM candidates?
There is a portion of the hiring that we do that’s specific targeted to candidates with MBAs. For those specific types of skills and talent needs, we absolutely target a business school background. Usually, we like to have some practical experience on top of that or to compliment the business school training. And mostly those are analytical skills — business intelligence, business analytics and optimization, enterprise resource planning, those kinds of consulting and leadership development positions.
I’m not saying that’s the only criteria, or if you don’t have your MBA you won’t be considered for those jobs, but it definitely is something we look for and our attracted to.
Does an MBA teach relevant skills for working at IBM?
Yes, especially on the consulting side. The idea of honing an analytic approach to problem solving — modeling out some scenarios to help with problem solving — absolutely that way of thinking is developed in MBA programs and that is something we look for in our candidates. I wouldn’t say it’s just a credential, it’s absolutely a good investment if you’re looking for a job in certain areas of IBM. But does it mean someone without an MBA does not have those skills? No, not necessarily. So, it’s not a base-level criteria that we look at, but it’s definitely a preferred part of the background.
How much does an MBA mean 10 or more years out?
I don’t think it plays far less of a role. I think an MBA from 10 years ago is still an incredibly powerful part of a candidate background. It also depends on what that candidate did in addition to . We really look for well-rounded resumes. In this day in age, we look for the global citizen, who is going to having experience with multiple languages or experience with a corporate that has presence in multiple countries or if they’ve worked abroad, or if they’ve got an upbringing that was abroad outside of the United States. That would be great and that would be considered in addition to any kind of formal education. But the formal education, whether an MBA was 10 years ago or this year, an MBA is a very powerful part of your credential.
Are there specific schools you like to recruit from?
It would not be fair to call out one school over another. Because we hire so many people around the world and the skill ranges are so broad, we might work with a local program to be the pipeline in to certain skill sets or hiring initiatives. And we might work with the top tier MBAs. We don’t specifically partner with some subset of schools. Our needs are so broad. It can come down to one hiring manager being interested in one candidate and it really doesn’t matter what school that candidate is from.
There is no targeted strategy at IBM for MBAs. We are very thoughtful about engaging with those programs, but when it comes down to candidate selection, the gamut is open.
Is there really no programs that stand out on a resume?
I understand where you want to go with that, and I would tell you if we did. We just don’t. We don’t as a matter of practice think one school brings something better to the table consistently to another school. It really is a matter of the needs of the business and the specific talent and location needs — and the candidates. That determines who we hire and where we hire them from. We really don’t target X number of students from X school.
Other voices
Ira Ehrenpreis
Image: Technology Partners
“There’s no single path to entrepreneurial or venture success. Ranging from college dropouts like Bill Gates to the well-educated and fully pedigreed leaders in the start-up and venture communities, there’s a wide range of backgrounds, experience and education that define the most successful companies and VC firms. I have a lot of respect for the MBA as one path of formal training, but it’s clearly not a prerequisite to success.”
—Ira Ehrenpreis, General Partner, Technology Partners (Venture capital firm)
“Certainly an advance degree exposes people to different skill sets, experiences and training that expands their horizons. Yet, there is also no substitute for real business experiences and the lessons one gains from both successes and failures.”
–Elizabeth Decker, Assistant Vice President, New York Life Insurance Company
See the World’s Best Business Schools
Join the conversation about this story »
