Why MBA Aspirants Should Take Closer Look at Career Services?

You, as an MBA aspirant, would be looking at various aspects of a business school like its academic rigour, quality of faculty, ranking and return on investment (RoI). However, there is one area that calls for a closer scrutiny, the career services.

Career services play a major role in assisting the students to find the right path for career advancement in various ways including keeping in assessing the market needs, moulding the students for the required roles, providing networking opportunities and other such facilities.

At Chicago Booth that stood first in the Economist Ranking of Business Schools, Dean Sunil Kumar told the Economist that the school sees the career services as an extension of its mission to create enduring knowledge and to educate students.

Ask the current students about the quality of the career services and the alumni whether they were able to land their dream job instead of relying on a business school’s marketing materials. It would be worthwhile to find how the career services helped students undecided about their careers find the right slot.

The school has a unified careers service across all its MBA programs and not just the full-time courses. It has a 12-member employer relations team, tasked with maintaining good relationships with potential employers, laying the groundwork for the school’s MBA students to connect with businesses upon graduation. It also lays emphasis on networking by providing various opportunities throughout the program duration.

The team also remains in constant touch with companies to know about their requirements and provides feedback to the school.

How important career services are for the students could be seen from the experience of Rebecca Zucker, an alumna of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. She told U.S. News that a key factor that made her choose this school instead of another top school was the interactions she had with the career services.

She had sought specific information from the career services on how they would help the students with job searches. While one school’s career official told her it was primarily the student’s responsibility to find a job after graduation, Stanford’s official assured her that it was their responsibility to help her land a good job.

So, how should you go about in finding whether the career services really deliver on their promises? Do an assessment of the success rate of recent graduates of a program. If you find that graduates who have specialised in a particular sector are working elsewhere, it is better to avoid such schools.

Ask the current students about the quality of the career services and the alumni whether they were able to land their dream job instead of relying on a business school’s marketing materials. It would be worthwhile to find how the career services helped students undecided about their careers find the right slot.

Look for schools with on-campus recruiting. Students at business schools with an abundance of on-campus interview opportunities are more likely to graduate with jobs. You should also find out which companies recruit on campus and see whether alumni frequently visit campus to network with MBA students.

Jeff McNish, assistant dean of career development at University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, says prospective students should analyse salary data and employment statistics for several years instead of the most recent reports.

Erin Breslin, a 2009 MBA graduate of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, suggests looking at placement rates during the last economic recession and compare it with other MBA programs during the same time period. This is because a good year could hide problems in placement while the variance in bad years could be found out more easily.