Business Schools Are Stepping Up to the Plate for Wall Street Alum

The September 23rd Wall Street Journal article “Business Schools Gird for Wall Street Woes” by Alina Dizik described various actions being taken by business schools to help alum hit by the Wall Street crisis as well as current students planning a career on Wall Street.

If you have been affected by the Wall Street crisis, check with the careers services office at your alma mater to see if special services have been added to help people in your situation.

In addition, according to the article:

Career office staff members are also trying to steer undergrads to alternative careers. Patricia Rose, director of career services at the University of Pennsylvania, deals with undergraduate business school students along with students in other majors. Typically, Wharton sends about 50% of its undergraduates into investment banking. Ms. Rose says she’s recommending Wharton students look into technology or public service jobs, which are more plentiful than coveted finance jobs.

In accordance with the FLIPPING BURGERS philosophy of following your passion – and being willing to find a new passion if the first passion doesn’t work out, I think the accompanying article in the September 23rd Journal is more helpful: “Weighing a New Industry for a New Job Outlook” by Chandlee Bryan.

The article recommends thoroughly researching a possible new field. Here’s some good advice on research:

The recent turmoil at financial firms underscores the need to go beyond research on compensation and industry trends. Educate yourself on how a company or industry runs and pending legislation that may affect the employment outlook in a field. Review analyst reports, scour RSS feeds, and set up Google News Alerts by keyword once you’ve narrowed a field of interest.

This is excellent advice, and it should be coupled with using your network of friends and family to get the inside story. A few years ago I was hired at a web design firm just as it moved to swanky new quarters in downtown LA. Because I was in charge of the content of two major projects, I soon realized that there wasn’t enough work to keep everyone busy. Sure enough, in about two months several people, including myself, were let go.

Even if we had had the same level of internet news access then that we have now, this news wouldn’t have been public. It was only because I had my “boots on the ground” – to use a military expression – that I could see what was happening.

Whether you’re in high school, college or grad school now, talk to people in different careers to learn all you can about the vulnerabilities as well as the opportunities in that field. Keep the information you learned in an organized fashion in order to make reasonable comparisons. And make sure you date the info so you know how “fresh” it is when you later make comparisons.

And remember that you can make your own opportunities if you identify a need that isn’t being fulfilled at a company or in an industry. The responsibility is on you to learn as much as you can and then use that knowledge for your own advantage.

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M.B.A. Students Choose to Follow Their Own Career Paths

The August 19^th Wall Street Journal article by Samar Srivastava titled “M.B.A.s Skip On-Campus Recruiting” made my heart sing. The article focused on M.B.A. students who took the road less traveled by looking for their own post-M.B.A. jobs instead of going with the jobs-on-offer through campus career services.

Having an M.B.A. myself from Wharton, I know exactly what those on-campus interviews can be like -- the major companies offer the major jobs. And if one of those consulting or Wall Street jobs is not your cup of tea, you have very slim pickings of on-campus job interviews.

One advantage in choosing your own path and working on finding your own job is that you are often a potential work pool of one person when you get interviews on your own. Thus, if you do your research and connect with the right companies, you can have an excellent opportunity of getting the job that you want.

The Journal article says that Michelle Antonio, director of Wharton’s M.B.A. career-services office, talks about the students who opt for their own job searches working at an internship to gain experience. As readers of this blog know, one of my main emphases is on getting internships to try out careers.

One M.B.A. student interviewed for the article said she took an internship to “show her commitment” to the new career path she wanted to follow. This is precisely the opportunity that can be available if you have an open mind towards finding the path that suits you best rather than following the traditional path of someone who just earned an M.B.A.

The moral of this story? If you don’t want to follow the traditional path, be willing to use networking and other techniques discussed here and elsewhere to find your own path.

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Percentage of Women Attending Top MBA Schools

I earned an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1980. Last night here in Los Angeles I attended a reception for the new dean of Wharton. Dean Thomas S. Robertson has been on the job for eight months, and he gave us a delightful overview of Wharton on the home campus and Wharton in the international arena.

At the end of his talk he asked for questions. I raised my hand. “What is the percentage of women in the incoming Wharton MBA class for next year?”

Thirty-nine percent was the answer. And the dean assured us that this was a good number – a high average. He went on to explain what I already knew – that top business schools have a hard time getting 50% of qualified women in a class because of the work requirement before getting an MBA. This is not a requirement for law school or medical school, where top schools in both fields routinely have classes of 50% women.

I always find this answer amusing because, when I entered Wharton in the fall of 1978 at the age of 30, I was almost the oldest person there except for the military men attending Wharton. In those days work experience was not the holy grail requirement that it is today. But I don’t disagree with the current work experience requirement.

What bothers me is that I haven’t heard of any large-scale top business schools initiatives in the same vein as what engineering companies and engineering schools undertake: Offer programs in elementary and secondary schools that introduce engineering concepts to young people and get them excited about such careers. The same could be done about business concepts and careers.

There is a tiny ray of hope in the recently announced special MBA program at Harvard, known as Harvard’s 2+2, in which liberal arts majors who are juniors at colleges throughout the U.S. apply to Harvard Business School. If accepted, these students are assigned a mentor to help them obtain a job in the business world for two years before enrolling at Harvard. But this is only at Harvard.

While I was pleased to hear Dean Robertson announce a Wharton initiative to train 10,000 women in Third World countries about micro-business, I would have been more pleased to hear that Wharton planned an initiative to disseminate information throughout the U.S. on what a business career can mean. Because even with Harvard’s 2+2 program, if you don’t truly understand the endless possibilities offered by a graduate business degree, you won’t apply for that special program.

Today I’m offering a challenge to Dean Robertson and The Wharton School: While you are engaged in setting up a new interactive media center at Wharton and helping Third World countries, consider what you can do here at home to promote graduate business school education to young women (and young men).

Wharton, graduate business school for women