TEAMFLY Team-Fly ® Hiring the Best and the Brightest Hiring the Best and the Brightest A Roadmap to MBA Recruiting Sherrie Gong Taguchi AMACOM American Management Association Atlanta • Brussels • Buenos Aires • Chicago • London • Mexico City • New York • San Francisco Shanghai • Tokyo • Toronto • Washington, D.C. Special discounts on bulk quantities of AMACOM books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details, contact Special Sales Department, AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Tel.: 212-903-8316 Fax: 212-903-8083 Web site: www.amacombooks.org This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. This is dedicated to the hundreds of hiring managers who were my customers when I was VP of University Recruiting at Bank of America and Director of Corporate HR for Dole Packaged Foods and Mervyn’s Department Stores. Also, a debt of gratitude to the 1400ם executives with whom I have worked in the diversity of companies that annually recruit our Stanford MBAs. You all are an amazing source of inspiration. Cheers! Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taguchi, Sherrie Gong, 1961– Hiring the best and the brightest : a roadmap to MBA recruiting / Sherrie Gong Taguchi. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-8144-0635-1 1. Employees—Recruiting. 2. Employee selection. I. Title. HF5549.5.R44 T28 2002 658.3Ј11—dc21 2001041231 ᭧ 2002 Sherrie Gong Taguchi. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Printing number 10987654321 Contents Preface vii Chapter 1. MBA Recruiting at a Glance 1 Chapter 2. The Four Phases of MBA Recruiting—Real Time 11 Chapter 3. Phase One: Up-Front Preparation 21 Chapter 4. Phase Two: Best-in-Class Pre- Recruitment 41 Chapter 5. Phase Three: Interviews 54 Chapter 6. Interviewing Lessons Learned 66 Chapter 7. Phase Four: Second Rounds and Offers 77 Chapter 8. Structuring Compensation Offers 91 Chapter 9. Best Practices and Worst Mistakes: A Multi-Industry Perspective 106 Chapter 10. School Profiles of the Top Twenty Picks 119 Chapter 11. For Established Companies: Here Today, Here Tomorrow 191 Chapter 12. For Start-Ups Only: Cracking the Code on the People Issues 200 Chapter 13. Fast Track to Recruiting on the Fly 219 Chapter 14. Leveraging Your Web Site and Other Internet Resources 230 vi Contents Chapter 15. Developing and Keeping Your Talent 241 Chapter 16. Retention Tool Kit 253 Recommended Reading and Resources 264 Appendixes 266 Index 277 About the Author 289 Preface WHETHER WORKING WITH EXECUTIVES IN old or new com- panies—a Fortune 500, a start-up, a venture capital firm, an investment banking or management consulting firm, or a high tech, entertainment, con- sumer products, or manufacturing company—one of the top challenges I hear over and over is: How do we recruit, develop, and keep the best talent? The refrain is the same in both boom years and down times. This challenge is especially on organizations’ radar screens for MBAs and experienced talent. Whatever the state of the economy, whether vigorously growing or de- cidedly slowing, the best and the brightest employees are always in strong demand by great companies or by those aspiring to be so. It takes strategy, imagination, and execution to recruit, develop, and keep this talent— whether new MBA recruits or your current employees. The past few years have seen an intensely competitive and complex market. The rules have changed. Power has shifted from the companies to the candidates and back to the companies. There are new players competing in what some still call a war for talent. There are old players trying new things. The lessons that we learned, and are still learning, are incredibly useful. Now is an ideal time to reflect, to reinvigorate your thinking, and to build strengths in effective recruiting, developing, and keeping the best talent. Whatever your level of recruiting experience or success, I hope this book will give you the inspiration, insight, and ideas to help you on many fronts: • To build an MBA recruiting program from the ground up—from deter- mining your hiring needs to researching and evaluating schools to creat- ing a winning presence on your chosen campuses viii Preface • To improve significantly, or expand strategically, an existing recruiting program • To gain insight on best practices across industries in interviewing, inter- viewer training, the callback process, compensation/offers, and job de- scriptions • To add to your repertoire, your ‘‘toolkit’’—as a manager of people or as an HR professional—retention strategies, recruiting on-the-fly when there’s no time for planning, and top employment related web sites, among other critical knowledge and skills • To benefit from the advice of a diversity of frontline managers—a CFO, COO, VPs of HR, marketing, and engineering, among others—on what works for them, their philosophies and approaches, and their proven ideas I hope to offer some valuable strategies and advice, best practices, les- sons learned, tips, and tools whatever your organization’s size, industry, arena (profit or nonprofit), and capabilities. This includes encouraging you to reinvigorate some of your business fundamentals, get back to basics, as well as to try some new ideas. Although the focus of the book’s first half is MBA recruitment, much of what is shared in this book has broader applica- tion to recruiting in general and to retaining ordinary or extraordinary talent already in your organization. My perspective is threefold: as a recruiter, as a manager of small to large teams, and as an MBA/business school insider. For many of you, I’ve walked in your shoes and am familiar with your realities. That’s why I hope your reading this book is more like our having a conversation, bouncing ideas back and forth, discussing strategy with practi- cal applications, and being creative. Like some of you, I started up a college/MBA recruiting program the month before we were to launch it, while under intense time pressure, bud- get constraints, and simultaneous with major layoffs. As a hiring manager myself or an HR coach for other managers, I know what you go through. I too have had to deal with 170ם open reqs, lots of TBHs on the org charts from many different groups, all needing the ideal candidates yesterday. I’ve also shared the experience of trying to keep all the great talent once it is recruited in. This has involved soup to nuts, from developing orientation programs to succession planning and what’s in between (building morale, Preface ix keeping people energized, performance management, career development . . .). I know it’s a lot harder than it looks, but when you do it, what a critical result for your team and organization. As head of Stanford’s MBA Career Management Center, I’ve worked with our MBAs, alumni, and business school colleagues, both here and inter- nationally. The coaching and advising have given me insights not only on what effective companies do to achieve recruiting success but also on what is most important to students in considering organizations and jobs, and later as alumni, what keeps them in their companies versus becoming tempted by that next big thing in another company or industry. I hope you take away many things from this book; that the ideas stimu- late you into action; that the strategies and frameworks help make you a more effective recruiter or manager; that the lessons learned are guiding food for thought. Most important, I hope that what is said resonates and that you come away more inspired and confident, with new tools, skills, and knowl- edge to achieve what you want for yourself professionally and for your orga- nization. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without the involvement of literally hundreds of people. I would especially like to thank my deans at the Stanford Graduate School of Business: Bob Joss, George Parker, and Dan Rudolph, and my incredible team and colleagues, particularly Liliane Baxter, Charlotte Carter, Cathy Castillo, Uta Kremer, and Becky Scott, for their belief in me and this project. A debt of gratitude to the thirty-eight executives who contributed their quotes, advice, and lessons learned in the book. The organizations represented include Goldman Sachs & Co., Mc- Kinsey & Co., Bain & Co., Booz Allen & Hamilton, Kleiner Perkins Cau- field & Byers, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Enron North America Corp., YuniNetworks Inc., Charles Schwab & Co., General Mills, Korn/ Ferry International, Del Monte Foods, MarketFirst, Maple Optical Systems, Hewlett-Packard, The Tech Museum of Innovation, The San Mateo City Library, Catholic Charities, idealab!, Capital Partners, Eli Lilly & Company, Seneca Capital, Marketocracy, Netergy Networks, Computer Motion, Brecker & Merryman, the Saratoga Institute, iQuantic, DialPad Communi- xPreface cations, GED Global—Hong Kong, the Graduate Management Admissions Council, WetFeet, Global Workplace, CruelWorld, a Spencer Stuart Talent Network group, L’Ore ´ al USA, Bertelsmann, Exxon Mobil Corporation, and Yahoo! To my nineteen business school career management center director col- leagues: My appreciation for sharing your in-depth knowledge about your MBA programs and your insights on effectively recruiting your students. To my remarkable AMACOM editors, Adrienne Hickey, Charles Lev- ine, Jim Bessent, and Andy Ambraziejus: Many thanks for your good humor, wisdom, and experienced guidance. Your late-night e-mails, valuable input to the manuscript, and smooth shepherding of the book through the process made this project a reality. To my husband, Mark: Thank you for being my most trusted adviser. Your loving support, patience in bouncing ideas back and forth, and IT expertise made all the difference in this writing endeavor. To my mom, Magen Gong Jensen: I am eternally grateful for your example of using what gifts you have to help others, the courage you instilled in me to follow my heart, and your boldness in leading an inspired life. Thank you all for playing a part in this adventure with me. TEAMFLY Team-Fly ® [...]... and sizes In an e-mail interview with me, David Wilson, CEO of GMAC (the Graduate Management Admissions Council), notes that currently there are more than 1, 500 MBA programs around the world, with about 900 in the United States Most of these require 10 Hiring the Best and the Brightest the GMAT (Graduate Management Admissions Test), the standardized entrance exam, like the MCAT for medical school and. .. hear about comp store sales, SKUs, and inventory turn In consulting, there are engagements and being on the beach, and in banking, dealflows and tombstones In your own company, you probably also have your acronyms and 12 Hiring the Best and the Brightest special buzzwords At Stanford, for example, our MTCs are ‘‘Meet the Company’’ presentations by recruiters for students, and OCR is short for ‘‘on campus... level of demand for the students by recruiters and companies You will need to choose the schools for your recruiting wisely and think The Four Phases of MBA Recruiting—Real Time 19 about which will give you the best value back for the time and energy you’ll expend WEB SITES FOR THIRTY OF THE TOP SCHOOLS The URLs for thirty of the top MBA programs, both U.S and international, are shown here These thirty... ‘‘customers,’’ and it can be a roller coaster ride of wins and losses Ultimately, though, it is an adventure that can bring some of the best talent into your organization to meet many of your most critical needs MARKET SNAPSHOT: TRENDS, THEMES, REALITIES Dr Jac Fitz-enz, founder and chairman of Saratoga Institute and renowned HR visionary, notes: *See www.kornferry.com 6 Hiring the Best and the Brightest The. .. trending down over the past few years Most companies will say that while it’s costing more on average to hire 8 Hiring the Best and the Brightest a top MBA, their acceptance rates and yields on offers are mostly down, although there may be some ‘‘blip’’ years This translates into having either to attract more qualified candidates in order to get the number of hires you need or to improve the yield rate... eclectic mix of resources and advice for recruiting on the fly and tapping into the best of what the Internet offers? Are you new to recruiting, or an experienced HR manager who wants to broaden your knowledge and skills? Are you an executive or manager who plays a key role in recruitment for your company or leads and develops top talent, including MBAs? 2 • • • Hiring the Best and the Brightest Are you just... industry is hot, there seems to be a key role for MBAs in shaping the industry and helping companies to compete successfully within the industry Examples of this are real estate in the mid-eighties, consulting and investment banking in the eighties through the present, and now the dot-com world Each of these industries found ways to utilize the skills and capabilities offered by MBAs, and MBAs were instrumental... Stanford the incoming class of students is usually referred to as MBA1s or first years, because they are in the first year of their 2-year program The graduating class comprises the MBA2s or the second years For ease, the class is referred to by the year it graduates, for example, the class of 2002 Alumni are graduates of the MBA programs, but in some cases schools extend the alumni mantle to others, such... important The process of recruiting is crucial because everyone understands that one of the keys to winning the playoffs and titles is getting the most talented players you can and developing them into a cohesive team with the help of great leadership and a winning strategy That’s about where the metaphor with the NBA ends Put simply, MBA recruiting means recruiting degree candidates for the Master... function There’s the premise these days that if candidates made it into a top MBA school, their experience and knowledge are transferable across different industries Anything they don’t know, they can learn fast Other companies have been adopting this approach We see more companies casting wider nets for candidates within the MBA programs We also see companies who look in other places on campuses—beyond the . Team-Fly ® Hiring the Best and the Brightest Hiring the Best and the Brightest A Roadmap to MBA Recruiting Sherrie Gong Taguchi AMACOM American. Data Taguchi, Sherrie Gong, 19 61 Hiring the best and the brightest : a roadmap to MBA recruiting / Sherrie Gong Taguchi. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0- 814 4-0635 -1 1. Employees—Recruiting. 2 Twenty Picks 11 9 Chapter 11 . For Established Companies: Here Today, Here Tomorrow 19 1 Chapter 12 . For Start-Ups Only: Cracking the Code on the People Issues 200 Chapter 13 . Fast Track to Recruiting on the