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Given the current job market and the bounty of great candidates, this is an ideal time to consider MBA recruiting. There are numerous reasons for employers to hire MBAs. Whether you're looking to reenergize a program or start one from the ground up, you can build your management pipeline, fill skill or capacity gaps, fuel growth to remain competitive, or generally infuse your organization with fresh ideas, perspectives, and approaches by bringing in top MBA talent. Effective MBA recruiting requires strategy, planning, and focused implementation. It can take several years to build your presence on campuses and begin to achieve results. Now's the time to get started. When the next economic cycle comes along -- a thriving job market and more competition for top talent -- your organization will be in a strong position to skim off the cream of the crop with a fine-tuned recruiting program. My book, Hiring the Best and the Brightest -- A Roadmap to MBA Recruiting, explains the four phases of MBA recruiting:
1. Identify your needs. Before planning your program, think about why recruiting MBAs is really important to your organization. Enlist internal resources (people and budget) to assess each department or group and identify their needs. Estimate the number of MBAs you want to hire. Think through the kinds of jobs you'll offer -- full-time and/or summer internships -- and formulate your budget and metrics to estimate your success (e.g. cost-per-hire, target-interview-to-offer ratio, forecasted acceptance rate, etc.). 2. Choose your best-fit schools. This is a critical step requiring thoughtful research, evaluation, and selection. Dave Wilson, CEO of the Graduate Management Admissions Council, notes that more than 1,500 MBA programs exist around the world. Develop a list of schools you'd like to consider based on what you think is important, such as caliber and experience of students, reputation of school, and ease or difficulty of recruiting. Research schools and make your first-cut selections using sources such as the school's Web sites, the MBA listings and rankings on U.S. News and World Report Online, Business Week Online, or the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). There are many factors to consider when evaluating the schools. I explore 15 dimensions in my book; here are a handful:
In short, determine best fit by answering three key questions:
Once you've winnowed down your list, start contacting the career center directors at your chosen schools. Ask for their recruiter guides, placement reports, and any other information for potential employers. Find out how the school's recruiting process works, and which program strategies are, or aren’t, effective. Also, initiate a meeting with corporate relations, key faculty, or a dean. Now that you've decided on the best schools for your needs, figure out how many interviews and schedules you'll need to offer at each campus to achieve your target hiring results. A good estimate is to assume that you will net one MBA hire per interview schedule (about seven to 14 interview slots). The career center staff can further advise you on how many schedules you'll need. 3. Think relationships, not transactions. Ideally, you want to build relationships with key faculty, career center staff, and student leaders. It's especially important keep up regular contact with the career centers and stay updated on how they can help you, keep abreast of upcoming events that would be useful for your recruiting, and to give and receive constructive feedback. 4. Have a communication strategy -- not a PR strategy. MBAs know recognize spin when they hear it so its vital that your communication strategy ring with authenticity. Develop one that includes key messages you want to convey about your company and its competitive positioning. For example, "This company cares about its people, planet, and profits," or "We value speed and innovation, but a more involved (read: longer, more drawn out) recruiting process pays off in the selectivity of whom we hire and how long our employees stay." Whatever your messages, use them consistently in your recruiting activities to position your company and build its unique presence. Some questions to ask in order to clarify your communication strategy are:
An often rushed and overlooked communication tool is the job description. Job descriptions can be powerful marketing tools and are often the company information most widely read by students. Giveaways are another good way to communicate your company's message. They don't have to be expensive, but can make a difference in breaking you out from the pack, creating a positive buzz, or familiarizing the students with your products or services. For example, when I was director of HR at Dole, we gave away stuffed pineapples or samples of our brands of sorbet. At Mervyn's, we gave away gift certificates. L'Oreal has been known to hand out its nail polishes, Bertelsmann its CDs, General Mills its Big K cereals, and General Motors has given out toy cars. 5. Hold pre-recruitment events. These can include employer information sessions, organized dinners or receptions, job shadowing at company headquarters or a regional office, or informal events such as BBQs at a senior manager's home, pizza or casino nights, or sports or Broadway show outings. It's a good idea to create a mix of your own sponsored events with those that the school already offers (info sessions, conferences, and career fairs). Two to three well-done events per year should be enough to get started. If your time or budget only allows one event per campus, the tried-and-true employer information session, usually scheduled through career centers, is your best bet. Choose an engaging speaker who can connect with the students and keep them from yawning -- most attend a fair number of these info sessions. Also be sure to do targeted and mass publicity for the event beforehand. Pre-recruitment activities are critical in building your company’s visibility on campus as they help generate awareness around the opportunities you offer and ultimately get students interested in signing up for interviews. Pre-recruitment also allows students to self-select where they want to interview, resulting in candidates who are better suited to the available jobs. Lead up to your pre-recruitment activities with targeted communication to the MBAs (phone calls, e-mails, or direct mailin 6. Select great interviewers and prepare them for the job. Carefully choose who will represent the company on campus and conduct the interviews. Many companies have a senior "relationship" manager for each school, along with a core team of people representing the company in pre-recruitment activities and interviews. Whenever possible, use alumni from the schools you are visiting, or from peer schools. Next, you'll need to prepare your campus representatives for the task at hand. Hold a briefing or kick-off meeting to prep your reps with critical information such as:
Also include school-specific information such as:
In general, provide your recruiters with all of the information they'll need (within reason) to be your best ambassadors on campus. Keep in mind that interviewing is a skill. Just because a manager is great at his or her job doesn't mean he or she can interview effectively. Conduct interview training for those who need it using actual MBA job descriptions they'll be recruiting for. Good interview training can include live examples of what to do as well as what not to do: Have two people enact an example of both a good and bad interview, encourage interview role-playing, and videotape mock interviews for feedback. Be sure to cover politically incorrect, illegal, or inappropriate questions. 7. Observe the golden rule. Try to treat candidates as you would want to be treated if you were in the same position. Discuss and evaluate their fit quickly and get back to them with a yes, no, or maybe as soon as possible -- within two days to two weeks. Remember that how you reject someone is just as important as how you pursue him or her. You don't want to become fodder for the rumor mills and develop a bad reputation in this way. And practically speaking, some of the students you turn down may some day be your customers or strategic partners. 8. Orchestrate compelling callbacks. After deciding which candidates you want to invite for second-round interviews or callbacks, design an agenda that will enable them to get an up close and personal look at your company. A winning callback agenda might include:
Try to follow up with candidates as soon as possible -- definitely no later than one to two months after the callback interviews. If you need to extend your follow-up timeline, be sure to keep in touch with the candidates you're interested in and give them a valid reason for such a lengthy response time. 9. Formulate your offers. In addition to base salary, signing bonus, and stock options, there are a host of intangibles and perks to consider such as job title, opportunities for continued learning, international assignments, mentors, onsite gyms or child care, and sabbaticals. These days, your company's stability -- you might still be growing and profitable, or simply not conducting layoffs -- can also be viewed as a significant benefit. Once you've developed your hiring package, make your offers sequentially or in waves. Keep in touch with all new recruits during the lag time before they start work. Some companies assign a relatively recent hire to act as an informal advisor, or pal, to the new recruit(s) and to keep in touch with them. A recruiting team member can also take on this role. 10. Get 360-degree feedback and make improvements for next time. Improve your program for next year by finding out what worked, what didn't, and how you can do better next time. Initiate feedback from your recruiters, interview candidates who did and didn't accept your offer, career center staff, and executives from your company who are evaluating your success. You can also learn from other companies whose recruiting programs might seem more or less successful than your own. Take what you've learned and start planning your program for next year. And don't forget to give hearty thanks to those people -- both inside and outside your company -- who contributed to your efforts. They might prove to be invaluable contacts for next year's recruiting season. Good luck and stay tuned for upcoming articles on: "Taxonomy of an Interview and How to Get the Information You Need," "Preparing Your Managers to Interview -- When They Don't Do It Often," "Choosing Your Recruiting Team," "15 Dimensions for Evaluating Schools Where You'll Recruit," and "Communicating with Candidates before, during, and after the Interviews." Author Bio Sherrie Gong Taguchi is a leading author and career management and recruiting expert. Her experience includes serving as VP of University Recruiting at Bank of America, Director of Corporate HR at Dole Foods, and Assistant Dean for the Stanford Graduate School of Business Career Management Center. She is currently Principal in Career Inspirations. Her book for employers, Hiring the Best and the Brightest -- A Roadmap to MBA Recruiting, has been lauded by Jerry Porras, author of Built to Last, who says: "It's a handbook, workbook, casebook, reference book, guidebook, and user's manual all audaciously rolled into one. A better description of the right way to find and retain great people does not exist. Whether you're hiring or wanting to get hired, this book is for you." Sherrie's current book, The Ultimate Guide to Getting the Career You Want (And What to Do Once You Have It) (McGraw-Hill) is for individuals at the executive level, aspiring to bold, meaningful, dynamic careers over a lifetime. Both books are available at www.barnesandnoble.com. |
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