During the last year, Fisher’s Office of Career Services fine-tuned employment practices and developed broad and diverse corporate relationships that have benefited employers and students alike. By researching and sharing recruiting strategies and job market trends, Fisher staff continues to be recognized as experts on job-seeking and recruitment management.
Maximizing Experiences
In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2003 rankings of the top 100 international MBA programs, Fisher was recognized for its commitment to students’ experiences from orientation to placement. The college rates:
• 1st in diversity of recruiters
• 9th in ability to open new career opportunities for graduating students
• 12th in students’ reports on whether Fisher’s career services department met their needs and expectations
• 17th in percentage of students finding jobs through the career services office
Recruiting Practices
Top corporate recruiters and career services directors from the nation’s leading business schools met in December for the first-ever Summit at Fisher. Featuring John A. Challenger, CEO of international outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, Inc., the group assembled to exchange recruiting best practices and to rethink traditional MBA hiring strategies. Attendees included representatives from General Electric, IBM, Eli Lilly and Nationwide and from schools such as Stanford, Cornell, University of Michigan and the University of Southern California.
Personalizing Approaches
During the past year, career service office staff redesigned its approach to client success. From a graduate perspective, students and employers alike are approached from a discipline-specific and personalized manner. This focus serves companies with the best candidates for both internships and full-time opportunities. The undergraduate career team focuses on the best prepared job seekers. Students are encouraged to complete a career marketing plan, which includes company characteristics, values and competencies. The plan helps undergraduates best market themselves to their choice employers.
Targeting Candidates
Fisher Recruiting Fridays provides recruiters an intimate visit with some of the top business graduates in the country. Companies pre-select candidates within select disciplines and benefit from discussions in a comfortable, private environment at Fisher’s four diamond hotel, The Blackwell. This year, Fisher Friday companies included: Emerson-Copeland, Kimberly-Clark, GE Consumer Finance, General Electric, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., Eaton Corporation, Alliance Data Systems, American Greetings, National City, Scotts Company, Steak-n-Shake and StorageTek.
Creating Impressions
With 24 percent more MBA graduates looking for work in 2003 compared with 2000, leading business schools are providing training in business etiquette to make students even more attractive to corporate recruiters. Fisher is one of only a handful of the nation’s top-25 schools that offer etiquette courses on networking, dinner etiquette, work attire and party conversation.
Qualifying Candidates
To help undergraduates better prepare for on-campus interviewing while meeting the high expectations of top recruiters, the Office of Career Services created the Qualified Undergrad Interview Candidate program. In order to interview with companies who recruit at Fisher, students must pass a series of preparation milestones. Mentored by staff and graduate students, these undergraduates gain interviewing strategies while companies benefit from potential employees who have refined their professional acumen.
Moving Up
According to the 2004 Financial Times top 100 MBA rankings worldwide, 88 percent of Fisher’s class of 2000 alumni were employed three months after graduation. This is the 16th best placement rate internationally and the 5th best in the United States. When measuring how quickly alumni moved up the career ladder three years after graduation, Fisher ranks 7th internationally and 2nd in the United States.
Marketing Students
One of only a handful of such programs in the country, Fisher Futures coaches and mentors a small group of driven, bright and savvy undergraduates with an interest in Wall Street banking. This highly personalized and select program helps chosen students market themselves for internships in the New York investment industry. With the help of alumni and industry experts, students apply to the program, where their knowledge and analytical skills are measured and honed for the interview process. Last year, one Fisher student received a paid summer internship with UBS in New York in this very competitive field.
Deepening Relationships
Fisher’s Corporate Sponsorship Program enables recruiters to attract the best and brightest candidates, develop a strong campus presence and gain access to faculty. The new program provides four sponsorship levels with increasing levels of access to Fisher’s 2,500 undergraduates and 400 graduate candidates. Sponsoring companies include: American Electric Power, BMW, Convergys, Dow Chemical Company, Fifth Third Bank, General Mills, KeyBank, Kimberly-Clark, National City Bank, NCR, NVR, Philip Morris, PPG Industries, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Shell, StorageTek and Wendy’s.