One of the primary goals of the career services office at any business school is to maximize the number of opportunities that its MBAs have to interact with employing organizations. In career services-speak, this is referred to as Job Development.
The concept – go out and round up employers to recruit on-campus – may sound simple. As a veteran job developer I can say that it is very complex.
For it’s not just about on-campus recruiting. It’s also about finding ways to engage the organizations and their representatives in playing an active and educating role within the College itself. This requires input from students, faculty, the deans, Executive Partners, Corporate and Alumni Relations staff, and alumni themselves in order for the career services staff to design the employer outreach plan that will benefit everyone.
This process also requires a great deal of research to ensure that we are reaching out to organizations whose values, cultures, and strategies mesh well with those of the Mason School and the College at large.
Fortunately, we have a lot of help. At Graduate Career Services (GCS), we’re currently working on a spring job development plan in collaboration with our colleagues at the William & Mary Career Center and the Mason School’s Office of Corporate and Alumni Relations.
To date we have identified nearly 70 employing organizations whose “common denominators” we share. The organizations on the list are large, medium and small. Many carry familiar names; many do not. All have high potential.
GCS has also collaborated with ten Executive Partners this month to launch the EP Ambassador Program. Each participating EP is responsible for reaching out to a major employing organization (identified by current MBA students), developing links to those with hiring influence, and setting the stage for GCS staff to follow up. We’re confident that this pilot program will not only yield results near-term, but will serve as a catalyst for future EP-GCS collaborations.
The one constant about job development is just that – it is always in play. Just this week, for example, we accepted over 35 student applications to join the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) in its formation of a William & Mary chapter.
This is in collaboration with Corporate Relations Director Tom Rideout and MBA alumnus Jaime Gracia ’01. NCMA’s database hosts over 1000 job and internship leads that are now available to our students. And GCS can use this database to target and develop recruiting relationships with member organizations.
In essence, this is how job development works. Watch for our blogs as we hit the road later this spring and early summer.
