{"id":467299,"date":"2010-03-24T11:46:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T15:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/what-recruiters-really-think-of-mba-programs-2010-3"},"modified":"2010-03-24T11:46:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T15:46:00","slug":"what-recruiters-really-think-of-the-top-business-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/467299","title":{"rendered":"What Recruiters Really Think Of The Top Business Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/what-recruiters-really-think-of-mba-programs-2010-3\/ges-erin-dillard-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"float_right\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba252d47f8b9a4e1d110100-296-220\/erin-dillard-ge.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Erin Dillard GE\" width=\"296\" height=\"220\" \/><\/a>What do recruiters really think about having an MBA? And which programs are the most likely to land you a job?<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what we asked top recruiters to complement our exclusive ranking of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3\">World&#8217;s Best Business Schools<\/a>.&nbsp; Our interviews covered a range of companies &#8212; from Citigroup, GE, IBM, Bain, et al, to a venture capitalist and the president of a life-sciences business.<\/p>\n<p>Many executives and recruiters we interviewed were reluctant to go on the record about the benefits and drawbacks of specific schools.&nbsp; 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&#8217;t matter much, especially if it was a top 25 school.<\/p>\n<p>Here, we bring you extended questions and answers with the people who might look at your resume one day.<\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/what-recruiters-really-think-of-mba-programs-2010-3\/ges-erin-dillard-1\">What recruiters really think of the top business schools &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><b>See Also:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3\">The World&#8217;s Best Business Schools<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>GE&#8217;s Erin Dillard<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba252d47f8b9a4e1d110100-400-300\/ges-erin-dillard.jpg\" alt=\"GE's Erin Dillard\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image: GE<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Name: Erin Dillard<br \/><\/strong><strong>Company: General Electric<br \/>Position:<\/strong><strong> Director, Commercial Development Programs at GE  Corporate<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>When you see an MBA on a resume, what value  does that add?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What we&#8217;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 &#8212; so marketing and sales &#8212;  as well as their domain experience in a specific industry.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What  specific skills does an MBA have over work experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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 &#8212; 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&#8217;s going to help propel them, accelerate  them to the next level in their next career, wherever that takes them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Is  an MBA&#8217;s network helpful?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&amp;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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Comments on specific schools:<br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#19-cornell-university-johnson-32\">Cornell<\/a>: <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#19-cornell-university-johnson-32\"> <\/a>Cornell<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#19-cornell-university-johnson-32\"> <\/a>fosters integrity and a collaborative environment.  Additionally, The Johnson School and GE have similar cultures which  foster excellence, without arrogance.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#18-university-of-virginia-darden-33\">Darden<\/a>: <\/strong>[University of Virginia]<strong>: <\/strong>Rigorous  program that delivers top-notch general manager talent.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#15-duke-university-fuqua-36\"><strong>Duke<\/strong>:<\/a> Marketing expertise, healthcare focus, inclusive and collaborative  culture. Good alignment for GE&#8217;s Healthcare business and  Marketing Function<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#30-indiana-university-kelley-21\">Indiana<\/a>: <\/strong>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 &#8220;roll  up your sleeves&#8221; mentality and are enthusiastic in initiatives outside  of their day to day responsibilities<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#7-northwestern-university-kellogg-44\"><strong>Kellogg: <\/strong><\/a>GE&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maryland:<\/strong> Diversity of student  background combined with rigor that the MBA program provides, matches  diverse needs of GE.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#17-university-of-michigan-ross-34\">Michigan:<\/a> <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#31-university-of-notre-dame-mendoza-20\"><strong>Notre Dame:<\/strong><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#35-university-of-southern-california-marshall-16\">USC:<\/a> <\/strong>USC&#8217;s collaboration efforts  prepares MBA&#8217;s who come to GE the willingness and ability to assimilate  to the unique company culture through quickly adapting to new  environments.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#5-university-of-chicago-booth-46\"><strong>Chicago:<\/strong><\/a> Based on Chicago&#8217;s curriculum there is a great alignment of the  school&#8217;s focus in Capital and Healthcare to GE&#8217;s Healthcare and Capital  businesses.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#6-columbia-business-school-45\">Columbia<\/a>:<\/strong> Columbia provides a foundation to produce  good candidates with strong leadership abilities<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#38-emory-university-goizueta-13\">Emory:<\/a> <\/strong>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&#8217;s Core Values with an  emphasis on integrity.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#1-harvard-business-school-50\">Harvard:<\/a> <\/strong>HBS&#8217;s mission of educating  leaders that make a difference in the world compliments GE\/ECLP&#8217;s  focus on global citizenship as we have committed to taking on the  world&#8217;s toughest challenges.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#28-university-of-north-carolina-chapel-hill-kenan-flagler-23\">North Carolina:<\/a> <\/strong>GE and UNC are aligned  in their commitment to building and teaching leadership both through  experience and in the classroom.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#13-new-york-university-stern-38\">NYU<\/a>: <\/strong>NYU is a strong match for  GE due to it&#8217;s highly valued Finance program and population of students  with strong finance and commercial backgrounds.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#24-thunderbird-school-of-global-management-27\">Thunderbird<\/a>:<\/strong> Thunderbird&#8217;s  value proposition to ECLP is based on access to a highly  diverse population of international and domestic candidates who are high  caliber.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#3-university-of-pennsylvania-wharton-48\">Wharton<\/a>: <\/strong>Wharton is known for delivering talent who  provide a strong strategic thinking perspective combined with  exemplifying executive communication skills.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Any diamonds  in the rough?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dillard singles out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#25-university-of-texas-austin-mccombs-26\"><strong>McCombs<\/strong><\/a> at  the University of Texas at Austin. She notes that while they have not been one of  GE&#8217;s &#8220;core schools,&#8221; UT MBA grads have made a positive impression.  Dillard says they live up to their mantra of building &#8220;business leaders  of tomorrow while creating knowledge of critical significance for  industry and society.&#8221; She adds GE has found strong alignment for talent  as feeders into GE&#8217;s Energy business.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>Accenture&#8217;s John Campagnino (Consulting)<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba0fe807f8b9af6647f0200-400-300\/accentures-john-campagnino-consulting.jpg\" alt=\"Accenture's John Campagnino (Consulting)\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image: Accenture<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Name: John Campagnino<br \/> Company: Accenture<br \/> Position: Senior director of global recruitment<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Does an MBA  boost chances of success at <span class=\"misspell\">Accenture<\/span>?<br \/><\/strong><br \/>The  short answer is yes. I&#8217;d knock out four reasons off the top of my head  for what we think MBA programs bring to our business.<\/p>\n<p>First one  would be generally the broad business view that the MBA student comes  with. The second is time management. The ability to multitask &#8212;  many people balance work and school in some cases, or school and  internships and other outside activities.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;s the third one and probably one of the biggest. <\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s certainly something we value  here at <span class=\"misspell\">Accenture<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What  does an MBA mean 5 or 10 years later?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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 <span class=\"misspell\">Accenture<\/span> in two different ways. If you&#8217;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. <\/p>\n<p>For  experienced professionals, it&#8217;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 &#8212;  they bring the critical thinking skills, the commitment to team work  with them. They can make a good transition to executive. So if you&#8217;<span class=\"misspell\">ve<\/span> got industry  experience, if you&#8217;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.<br \/><strong><br \/>Are there specific MBA programs that consistently  give <span class=\"misspell\">Accenture<\/span> the best candidates?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The four core MBA schools we work with  are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#3-university-of-pennsylvania-wharton-48\"><strong>Wharton<\/strong><\/a>, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#5-university-of-chicago-booth-46\">Booth<\/a> (Chicago)<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#11-london-business-school-40\"><strong>London Business School<\/strong><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#8-insead-institut-europen-dadministration-des-affaires-43\"><strong><span class=\"misspell\">INSEAD<\/span><\/strong><\/a>. Whenever  we make a decision on the school, it&#8217;s an intersection of a couple of  different things.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the demographics &#8212; 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 &#8212; we are one of the employers that have a reputation on  campus that students will pick us ahead of others to interview with  first. <\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not to say we don&#8217;t go to other places. For  example in the U.S., we&#8217;ll go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#7-northwestern-university-kellogg-44\"><strong>Kellogg<\/strong><\/a>, we&#8217;ll go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#18-university-of-virginia-darden-33\"><strong><span class=\"misspell\">Darden<\/span><\/strong><\/a>,  we&#8217;ll go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#15-duke-university-fuqua-36\"><strong>Duke<\/strong><\/a>, we&#8217;ll go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#19-cornell-university-johnson-32\"><strong>Cornell<\/strong><\/a> and other institutions. And of  course we&#8217;<span class=\"misspell\">ve<\/span> 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How many programs do you  recruit from total?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For MBA schools in the U.S., about ten on  top of the four core schools. <\/p>\n<p><strong>What&#8217;s particularly strong  about each of the four core schools?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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 <span class=\"misspell\">Accenture<\/span>,  the type of work we do.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>VC Adele Olivia<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba10a2c7f8b9a266ecc0300-400-300\/vc-adele-olivia.jpg\" alt=\"VC Adele Olivia\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image: Quaker BioVentures<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Name: <\/strong><strong>Adele Olivia<\/strong><br \/><strong> Company: <\/strong><strong>Quaker BioVentures<\/strong><br \/><\/span><strong><span style=\"color: #000080;\"> Position: Partner<\/span><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>How has <\/strong><strong>your MBA in marketing from  Cornell<\/strong><strong> served you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;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&#8217;m close to 20 years from when I  started my MBA, I still reflect on learning and situations then. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Are there specific  things you remember in terms of case studies, the approach to problem  solving or the basics of finance? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think it was a  combination. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#19-cornell-university-johnson-32\">Cornell<\/a> 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 &#8220;Ps&#8221; of marketing and other things that you learn. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Have you found the degree opened certain doors or made conversations with those Quaker  BioVentures might invest in easier?<\/strong><br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>I certainly feel there  is a very big advantage to the expanded network and the halo effect of a  small business school. <\/p>\n<p><strong>For Cornell specifically?<br \/><\/strong><br \/>Absolutely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#19-cornell-university-johnson-32\">Cornell <\/a> specifically, but I also see it with other programs as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How do you view the MBA degree when hiring?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> 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 <span style=\"background-color: #66ff99;\"><\/span>in the future. I  don&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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 <span style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\">communication <\/span>pattern  that may provide shorthand. <\/p>\n<p><strong>In terms of specific programs, what are the best  you&#8217;ve found in the life science industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think there are three very strong programs in life sciences. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#19-cornell-university-johnson-32\">Cornell<\/a> has an accelerated degree for people with graduate degrees in  engineering and science. It&#8217;s a twelve month program and they get a lot  of very talented individuals. What I like about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#19-cornell-university-johnson-32\">Cornell<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>The second program is<strong> <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#3-university-of-pennsylvania-wharton-48\">Wharton<\/a>. Wharton has a healthcare specific track  and program that is very good in venture capital and private equity, as  does Cornell, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#19-cornell-university-johnson-32\">Cornell <\/a>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 <span style=\"background-color: #ffffff;\">terms,  legal documentation, things like that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>The third program I think very highly of is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#2-stanford-business-school-49\">Stanford.<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p> <strong>Any other diamonds in the rough,  especially for life sciences?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In term of part-time programs there&#8217;s a school in this area [Philadelphia], <strong>St.   Joseph&#8217;s University,<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Does getting an MBA from Harvard not  translate well into the life sciences? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No, not at all, there  are a lot of very successful people from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#1-harvard-business-school-50\">HBS<\/a>. It&#8217;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.<strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>Semprae Labs&#8217; Rachel Braun Sheri (Small Business)<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba119597f8b9aeb3e1b0000-400-300\/semprae-labs-rachel-braun-sheri-small-business.jpg\" alt=\"Semprae Labs' Rachel Braun Sheri (Small Business)\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image: Semprae Laboratories<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Name: Rachel  Braun Scherl<br \/> Company: Semprae Laboratories<br \/><\/strong><strong>Position: President<\/strong><\/span> <span style=\"font-family: comic sans ms; font-size: medium;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>How has your MBA helped you specifically?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I  would talk about specific skills that I found extremely valuable, which  is, certainly at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#2-stanford-business-school-49\">Stanford<\/a> [MBA &#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Also, given my  background, it was hugely valuable to have the financial training &#8212;  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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>And finally I would say &#8212; it&#8217;s not as hard a skill  &#8212; 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&#8217;t just mean  diversity &#8212; people of different races, backgrounds, ages &#8212; but  diversity of thinking and presentation and ways of approaching things.  Which in my experience is almost validated, praised and celebrated  there. <strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>When hiring, what does seeing an MBA on a resume tell  you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I would say honestly it only means something in the  context of a broader experience. I do think that when you see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#2-stanford-business-school-49\">Stanford<\/a>,  the person who selected Stanford has selected it. People who go to  Stanford <span class=\"misspell\">aren<\/span>&#8216;t there because  they <span class=\"misspell\">didn<\/span>&#8216;t  get into Harvard. It&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What  about a candidate with a little less work experience but a stellar MBA?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;<span class=\"misspell\">ve<\/span> done  that in the context of the other experience they&#8217;<span class=\"misspell\">ve<\/span> had usually either strengthens  what they were doing before or help them get into a new direction, that  has a lot of value. <\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re talking about the difference  between a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#2-stanford-business-school-49\">Stanford<\/a> degree and 10 years of work experience, I don&#8217;t think  the equation works the same way. But on the margin, it absolutely would  make a difference. <\/p>\n<p>Part of that is the selection process. I  really do. You&#8217;re in a room just with really, really outstanding people.  It&#8217;s not that you&#8217;re friends with everyone, but there&#8217;s just a sense of  a strong culture.<\/p>\n<p>There is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#2-stanford-business-school-49\"><em>Stanford<\/em> <\/a>experience. If  you&#8217;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, <span class=\"misspell\">pre<\/span>-dispose  me to a candidate. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s politically correct or not,  but that&#8217;s my perception.<br \/><strong><br \/>How is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#2-stanford-business-school-49\">Stanford<\/a> MBA different for  working in a new business, versus, say <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#1-harvard-business-school-50\">Harvard<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#5-university-of-chicago-booth-46\">Chicago<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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. <\/p>\n<p>The skills to think strategically, understand markets,  identify opportunities for growth, whether that&#8217;s in a business  management role or consulting role, were very critical.<br \/><strong><br \/>How  about with venture capital?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re in <span class=\"misspell\">VC<\/span>, I think it&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s not interactive, it&#8217;s  dead at the start.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Outside of Stanford, which programs carry  the most weight?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Depending on the job, my experience is <strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#1-harvard-business-school-50\">Harvard<\/a><\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#1-harvard-business-school-50\">,<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#7-northwestern-university-kellogg-44\"><strong>Northwestern<\/strong><\/a> [Kellogg], <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#2-stanford-business-school-49\">Stanford<\/a> <\/strong>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#3-university-of-pennsylvania-wharton-48\"><strong>Wharton<\/strong> <\/a>would all carry a lot of  weight. <\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#3-university-of-pennsylvania-wharton-48\">Wharton<\/a> person knows their way around a business, they  know their way around a P&amp;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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#2-stanford-business-school-49\">Stanford&#8217;s<\/a> a 10, maybe that&#8217;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. <\/p>\n<p>For me, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#7-northwestern-university-kellogg-44\">Northwestern<\/a> is  that they get marketing. They step in the door and they get it. There&#8217;s a  focus on the consumer, there&#8217;s a focus on insights. My experience is  they&#8217;re very easy to work with &#8212; 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, &#8216;I&#8217;m starting as a CEO my first  day out.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>I think that [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#1-harvard-business-school-50\">Harvard<\/a> 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&#8217;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&#8217;re trying to do any kind of business in  terms of finding good people, access to capital, resources, all of those  things.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>McKesson&#8217;s Ryann Cheung (Healthcare IT)<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba1326f7f8b9aa46cbf0100-400-300\/mckessons-ryann-cheung-healthcare-it.jpg\" alt=\"McKesson's Ryann Cheung (Healthcare IT)\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image: McKesson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Name: Ryann K. Cheung<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Company: McKesson Corporation<br \/> Position: Program Manager, Talent  Acquisition<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\"><strong>Does an MBA help a candidate will thrive at McKesson?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">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&rsquo;ve had a pretty dynamic response, so we  recruit them straight from business school and they come into this  program. We&rsquo;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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\"><strong>What specific skills usually come from an MBA?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">I think for us it&rsquo;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&rsquo;re doing a  career change and they&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s about having that grounding. If, for example, they&rsquo;ve been in IT and they  want to go into finance, then we know that they&rsquo;re coming in with some  baseline finance skills even if maybe they haven&rsquo;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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\"><strong>Is there a difference  between an MBA and spending a  year or two in the health care industry in a similar role?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">People  come out of business school with a broad network of classmate and  professor connections, so for example if there&rsquo;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, &ldquo; OK,  I&rsquo;m going to take a lateral move from IT into finance because I  persuaded the financial manager to give me a shot,&rdquo; 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\"><strong>Is an MBA just a good screen of candidates for recruiters?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">That&rsquo;s a tough question for me to answer from  an HR perspective because I don&rsquo;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&rsquo;t want to harp on the career change  too much, but if someone says, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m willing to invest in myself and I&rsquo;m  interested in furthering my career and so I&rsquo;m going to take this opportunity to either step  out of the working world for two years or disturb my work life balance,&rdquo;  I think that&rsquo;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&rsquo;ve certainly hired people that have  completed their MBAs through an evening or weekend program because for whatever reason they can&rsquo;t step out to do a full-time  degree or haven&rsquo;t chosen to do it that way, but they can still also still bring a lot of  value and demonstrate that, &ldquo;Hey, I&rsquo;m more than what my resume says right now and I&rsquo;m going get my  degree to prove that.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\"><strong>How many campuses do you  focus on, and which?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">Currently  we have six to seven target schools. Six officially: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#26-university-of-california-los-angeles-anderson-25\"><strong>UCLA Anderson<\/strong><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#14-university-of-california-berkeley-haas-37\"><strong>Haas at  Berkeley<\/strong><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#3-university-of-pennsylvania-wharton-48\"><strong>Wharton<\/strong><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#38-emory-university-goizueta-13\"><strong>Goizueta at Emory<\/strong><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#25-university-of-texas-austin-mccombs-26\"><strong>UT at Austin &#8212; McCombs<\/strong><\/a> &#8212; and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#36-vanderbilt-university-owen-15\"><strong>Vanderbilt  Owen<\/strong>.<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why those schools?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">Generally, when we&rsquo;ve looked at adding target  schools we&rsquo;ve look at a couple of different factors. We look for some kind of strong health care  presence. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#14-university-of-california-berkeley-haas-37\">Hass<\/a> 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. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#3-university-of-pennsylvania-wharton-48\">Wharton<\/a> obviously has a very strong health care  program, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#36-vanderbilt-university-owen-15\">Vanderbilt<\/a> as well. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#26-university-of-california-los-angeles-anderson-25\">UCLA Anderson <\/a>actually has a pretty strong health care club presence &#8212;  students have banded together to say &#8216;hey, this is a really interesting  industry we have an interest in exploring.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">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.&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#25-university-of-texas-austin-mccombs-26\">UT Austin<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#26-university-of-california-los-angeles-anderson-25\">Anderson<\/a> tend to have people that are very  interested in corporate finance. We have a corporate finance program. With <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#14-university-of-california-berkeley-haas-37\">Haas <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#3-university-of-pennsylvania-wharton-48\">Wharton<\/a> we look for the corporate strategy and business  development group.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">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.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#38-emory-university-goizueta-13\"> Emory <\/a>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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">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&rsquo;ve  got people form different  educational backgrounds  bringing different ways of thinking and problem solving.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\"><strong>Are there programs that have yielded strong employees that  aren&rsquo;t in that instantly recognized list of MBA brands?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">I would have to go back to our target  schools. One of the reasons they&rsquo;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&rsquo;s a school that could be  a great fit for us [that we&rsquo;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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0pt;\">If we were at 50 schools but only ever hiring from  five for the  rotational finance program, I&rsquo;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.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>Bain&#8217;s Mark Howorth (Management Consulting)<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba11ff77f8b9a1c3d5d0900-400-300\/bains-mark-howorth-management-consulting.jpg\" alt=\"Bain's Mark Howorth (Management Consulting)\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image: Bain &#038; Co.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Name: Mark Howorth<br \/>Company: Bain &amp; Company<br \/>Position: Head of global  recruiting<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Does an  MBA make for a better consultant at <span class=\"misspell\">Bain<\/span>?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s  certainly not a requirement to work at <span class=\"misspell\">Bain<\/span> &amp; 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 <span class=\"misspell\">MBAs<\/span> 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. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Some say an MBA is just about a name on a resume and  networking. Your reaction?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s  important for us, at least at <span class=\"misspell\">Bain<\/span> &amp; Company,  where we&#8217;re trying to hire the best business talent, it&#8217;s important that  our consultants know that stuff. That&#8217;s the first thing.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8230;you&#8217;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 &#8212; really working through what did they  do in that situation. For our business, the consulting business, that&#8217;s a  perfect laboratory to practice the skill-set that you&#8217;re going to use  when you come here. We help our clients out of usually pretty tough  situations. Usually they&#8217;<span class=\"misspell\">ve<\/span> 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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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 &#8212; that we have a group of  people I know I can call who can help me when I&#8217;m trying to solve my  client&#8217;s problems.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What about different MBA brands?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I  don&#8217;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 <span class=\"misspell\">Bain<\/span> &amp; Company, if  you look at their career trajectory over the next three to nine years,  there&#8217;s no difference how somebody does based on where they got their  MBA. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Most place a huge value on going to the top business  schools. Is that a fallacy?<br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The actual education that you  learn &#8212; there are tons and tons of great schools that can teach you  that. I don&#8217;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&#8217;s probably where we end  up going to try and hire from places like that. But in terms of the raw  education, you&#8217;re going to use the same textbooks and get the same  business theory at all the schools. We don&#8217;t see much different from  that at all. <\/p>\n<p>There is something to the fact that you do get a  lot of the learning from your program from the students you&#8217;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 <span class=\"misspell\">Bain<\/span> &amp; Company at least, we can&#8217;t tell  the difference. <strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Just to push you a little bit &#8212; <span class=\"misspell\">isn<\/span>&#8216;t a  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#1-harvard-business-school-50\">Harvard<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3#2-stanford-business-school-49\">Stanford <\/a>MBA a little different from others?<br \/><\/strong><br \/>If  that were true, I&#8217;d only go to the top five programs. But I don&#8217;t &#8212; I  go to 20, 30 programs to recruit. Obviously we spend more energy and put  more resources against the places where we think we&#8217;ll find more  students that will pass our screen, and those tend to be the top 15  programs. That just makes sense, because that&#8217;s where the talent is. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s  just natural resource allocation to say if a whole bunch of people go  to the top three or four schools, that&#8217;s where we make sure we&#8217;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&#8217;t pay  attention to which school they came from. <\/p>\n<p>Are there other  hurdles? While it&#8217;s not impossible for someone to do well at <span class=\"misspell\">Bain<\/span>,  it is generally tough if you have a GMAT below 650. When we&#8217;re trying to  sort out who we&#8217;re going to interview for the jobs, we don&#8217;t use GMAT  as a strict screen, it is a good indicator &#8212; if someone got a 550,  they&#8217;re probably not going to do well at <span class=\"misspell\">Bain<\/span> &amp; Company. The  schools tend to collect people with certain level of <span class=\"misspell\">GMATs<\/span>.  So once again, we&#8217;re going to go where we think the most talent is, but  that <span class=\"misspell\">doesn<\/span>&#8216;t mean that if  we find some random MBA program and somebody has done well and they get  their application in to us, we&#8217;re certainly going to interview them. <strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What&#8217;s  the value of having an MBA 10 or 15 years after the degree?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Zero.  Obviously it&#8217;s nice if they have an MBA, but when we&#8217;re hiring people  at the manager or partner level, 99 percent of what we&#8217;re looking at is  what they&#8217;<span class=\"misspell\">ve<\/span> done with their business career, what kind of experiences they&#8217;<span class=\"misspell\">ve<\/span> had, and  whether or not they&#8217;<span class=\"misspell\">ve<\/span> a track record of being able to crack tough business problems and help  change clients. That&#8217;s really what we look at there &#8212; we pay almost no  attention to the school at all.<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Excluding undergraduate hires,  what percentage of new employees have <span class=\"misspell\">MBAs<\/span>?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At a  consulting level, it varies by year, but it&#8217;ll typically be that 70 or  80 percent of the people will have <span class=\"misspell\">MBAs<\/span>. 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. <\/p>\n<p>In Europe &#8212; let&#8217;s use Germany as a good example.  The MBA degree <span class=\"misspell\">doesn<\/span>&#8216;t really have a  lot of &#8212; I don&#8217;t want to say credibility &#8212; frankly people <span class=\"misspell\">aren<\/span>&#8216;t  even all that aware of it. As a result, the best talent <span class=\"misspell\">doesn<\/span>&#8216;t  go get an MBA. In Germany, as an example, what you do is go get a PhD.<\/p>\n<p>If  you look at Asia, there&#8217;s some value on the MBA degree there, but there  are limited sources of good <span class=\"misspell\">MBAs<\/span> there. Just because of the hard demand  for talent we have there, by definition we&#8217;re bringing in people who  don&#8217;t have that kind of degree. They are still top &#8212; our rule is not  let&#8217;s look for the degree, let&#8217;s find the best business talent. <\/p>\n<p><em>Note:  <span class=\"misspell\">Bain<\/span> declined to provide a list of schools it recruits at, but its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.joinbain.com\/apply-to-bain\/bain-on-your-campus\/default.asp\" title=\"recruiting website\">recruiting website<\/a> has <span class=\"misspell\">dedicated<\/span> pages for MBA programs at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Northwestern, <span class=\"misspell\">INSEAD<\/span> and <span class=\"misspell\">LSE<\/span>,  among others. <br \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>Citigroup&#8217;s Eileen Stephan<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba8d0d47f8b9aca4f330100-400-300\/citigroups-eileen-stephan.jpg\" alt=\"Citigroup's Eileen Stephan\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image: Citigroup<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Name: Eileen Stephan<br \/>Company: Citigroup<br \/>Position: Head of graduate recruitment<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>How  is an MBA valued at Citigroup?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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 &#8212; or continues  &#8212; their professional career in financial services. We think it&#8217;s very  valuable.<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Is an MBA just a box to check? Or are there actual  skills?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;s finance,  accounting, strategy, marketing, etc. that are all valuable pieces of  that platform. <\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s necessarily a check the box endeavor.<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What&#8217;s  the value of an MBA, say, 10 years after the degree?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s  very individual to the candidate and the experiences they&#8217;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&#8217;s a very individual process and I don&#8217;t think it can be captured  in an &#8216;if this, then that&#8217; assessment. <strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What roles do you most  commonly hire MBAs for?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Where does Citi  focus its recruiting? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s experiences, the sum total of their  education and how they present as a candidate.<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>There some programs that are better than others, no?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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].<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s physically not possible for me to say  that school A, because it&#8217;s quant focused or finance focused is more  important to us than school B that&#8217;s leadership focused, because we  focus on such a wide variety of campus programs that we recruit from  into the firm.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Any diamonds in the rough outside the 25  schools you recruit at?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It depends on how you classify what  your top 25 is. In any given year, there are schools &#8212; call it up  to the top 50 &#8212; that will produce some wonderfully talented candidates.  The trick is making the match happen. Whether that&#8217;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. <\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t use any one metric for whether a  school is appropriate for Citi. We look at the rankings, sure, they&#8217;re  there, they&#8217;re publically availible, there&#8217;s lots of work that goes into  them and they yield some important information.<\/p>\n<p>But we also look at the  performance of the candidates we&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>IBM&#8217;s Peggy Tayloe<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba250ba7f8b9adc14410300-400-300\/ibms-peggy-tayloe.jpg\" alt=\"IBM's Peggy Tayloe\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image: IBM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Name: Peggy Tayloe<br \/>Company: IBM<br \/>Position: Director of Recruiting<\/span><\/p>\n<p>How  does an MBA help IBM candidates?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There is a portion of the  hiring that we do that&#8217;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 &#8212; business  intelligence, business analytics and optimization, enterprise resource  planning, those kinds of consulting and leadership development  positions. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not saying that&#8217;s the only criteria, or if you  don&#8217;t have your MBA you won&#8217;t be considered for those jobs, but it  definitely is something we look for and our attracted to. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Does  an MBA teach relevant skills for working at IBM?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yes,  especially on the consulting side. The idea of honing an analytic  approach to problem solving &#8212; modeling out some scenarios to help with  problem solving &#8212; absolutely that way of thinking is developed in MBA  programs and that is something we look for in our candidates. I wouldn&#8217;t  say it&#8217;s just a credential, it&#8217;s absolutely a good investment if you&#8217;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&#8217;s  not a base-level criteria that we look at, but it&#8217;s definitely a  preferred part of the background.<br \/><strong><br \/>How much does an MBA mean 10  or more years out?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;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&#8217;ve worked abroad, or if  they&#8217;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. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Are there specific schools you  like to recruit from?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;t matter what school that candidate is  from. <\/p>\n<p>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. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Is  there really no programs that stand out on a resume?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I  understand where you want to go with that, and I would tell you if we  did. We just don&#8217;t. We don&#8217;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 &#8212; and the candidates. That determines who we hire  and where we hire them from. We really don&#8217;t target X number of students  from X school.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>Other voices<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4ba131717f8b9acd6bfd0500-400-300\/other-voices.jpg\" alt=\"Other voices\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Ira Ehrenpreis<\/p>\n<p>Image: Technology Partners<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s clearly not a prerequisite to  success.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &#8212;<strong>Ira Ehrenpreis, General Partner, Technology Partners (Venture capital  firm)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &#8211;Elizabeth Decker, Assistant Vice President, New York Life Insurance Company<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>See the World&#8217;s Best Business Schools<\/h2>\n<p><div class=\"image-container slide-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/image\/4b87f0207f8b9a79778f0200-400-300\/see-the-worlds-best-business-schools.jpg\" alt=\"See the World's Best Business Schools\" border=\"0\" class=\"slide-image\" \/><\/div>\n<h1><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/worlds-best-business-schools-2010-3\">Our exclusive ranking of the world&#8217;s top business schools &gt;<\/a><\/h1>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/what-recruiters-really-think-of-mba-programs-2010-3#comments\">Join the conversation about this story &#187;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/Z1rVe4Bj_rl-faEoqiOqLiaYEy0\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/Z1rVe4Bj_rl-faEoqiOqLiaYEy0\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/Z1rVe4Bj_rl-faEoqiOqLiaYEy0\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/Z1rVe4Bj_rl-faEoqiOqLiaYEy0\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?a=4a_V3--4fDg:8k80rImZ8WA:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?a=4a_V3--4fDg:8k80rImZ8WA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?i=4a_V3--4fDg:8k80rImZ8WA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?a=4a_V3--4fDg:8k80rImZ8WA:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?i=4a_V3--4fDg:8k80rImZ8WA:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?a=4a_V3--4fDg:8k80rImZ8WA:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?a=4a_V3--4fDg:8k80rImZ8WA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/greensheet?i=4a_V3--4fDg:8k80rImZ8WA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/greensheet\/~4\/4a_V3--4fDg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do recruiters really think about having an MBA? And which programs are the most likely to land you a job? That&#8217;s what we asked top recruiters to complement our exclusive ranking of the World&#8217;s Best Business Schools.&nbsp; Our interviews covered a range of companies &#8212; from Citigroup, GE, IBM, Bain, et al, to a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}