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CFN hosted its annual webinar to launch interview season Most MBA students today, including Consortium students across the country, will argue there is no one segmented part of the calendar for "recruiting season."  Every aspect and experience of business school is "recruiting season," from the time students declare their intentions to attend a certain school until graduation. Every day, not just a few weeks in the fall, MBA students contemplate where they want to be and what they should do to secure the right job. Students today, and their career-advisory specialists on campus, say there is seldom a time when an MBA student is not absorbed in thought about information interviews, mentors, alumni connections, career choices, or a specific post that awaits after graduation. Nonetheless, late fall usually signals the formal start of interviews:  information interviews,  first rounds, lottery interviews, interviews earned from being selected by companies, second rounds...

Jenn Wei, a Stanford MBA who once worked in investment banking, is now researching, chasing and negotiating deals in technology as a venture capitalist at Bloomberg Capital.  Last week, in postings that appeared widely in business media, including  VentureBeat.com , she wrote about the startling, but not surprising lack of women in venture capital--in Silicon Valley (California), in Silicon Alley (New York) and at other pivotal venture spots around the country. She reminded us of the glaring scarcity of females at negotiating tables, within network huddles when ideas are bantered about, and in closed-door meetings where entrepreneurs, deal-doers and investors decide the right amounts for an early-round investment to support the next new thing. She offered a few reasons why women are not prominent in the industry and dared to propose solutions. She said women desperately need role models in the industry and industry participants need to take time to understand the likes, intere...

Something often plagues MBA students and many young professionals in finance. Why don't mentoring relationships always work as they were envisioned or designed? Why do mentoring relationships often get off to exciting, hopeful, ambitious starts, but flicker, whimper and die out? Why do they start with promise and then meander into nowhere? Not all mentoring relationships, we know, falter.  Some thrive. Some lead to life-long relationships and friendships.  Some lead to opportunities, new jobs, promotions and even new careers, activities, and hobbies.  Note the themes of thriving relationships. They suggest something refreshing, new, opportunistic, and different. But what about those that falter, the life of which oozes out and dwindles to nothing? What happens when the eager first-year MBA student at Virginia, Emory or Berkeley links up with a principal at a private-equity firm. They meet, greet, exchange business cards and discuss respective backgrounds. They deduce the...

From Emory MBA to Film Production Now and then MBA graduates depart from business school with aspirations to succeed in a conventional career: Consulting, banking, investing, marketing, or start-ups.  Somewhere along the way, they  re-discover themselves or  re-kindle other passions and head into other directions.  They find new interests and opportunities. And off they go.  Sometimes they transition into another conventional pursuit. Or sometimes pursue something off the beaten paths. Theresa Moore, a Harvard athlete and graduate, earned an MBA from Emory (now a Consortium school) and started out conventionally in marketing at Coca-Cola.  However, along the way, she switched courses, while  taking advantage of her business education and experiences.  Today she runs her own film-production company and directs and produces her own documentary projects. Her most recent project aired on CBS-TV in December and the NFL Network in February. She directe...

Bonus season at financial institutions has come and gone. Yet for the month or two afterwards, there is the inevitable aftermath, the ruminating over what happened and the pondering over whether lucrative payouts in years past will ever reappear. In the post-crisis financial industry, where many just feel fortunate to be employed, there will still be some degree of anger, frustration, or disappointment in payouts. Many yearn for the times of the 1990s or the early 2000s.  Most know the industry is still enduring a shake-out or a re-engineering of sorts, and compensation is a candidate for shake-out, too.  Handsome compensation packages still exist in certain segments, perhaps most prominently at venture-capital firms, private-equity companies and hedge funds.  Even in 2012, you can read about insane, mind-boggling bonuses, likely because someone made an insane, mind-boggling hedge-fund trade.  Payouts at banks, investment managers and other financial institutions (or...

Remember days of yore--when an MBA in finance accepted an offer from an investment bank, commercial bank, brokerage house, trading firm or insurance company in the spring of second year and thereafter embarked on a long career with one firm, one employer?  Shortly after arriving at the firm, the MBA started a training program or entry position--with the expectations of earning promotions every few years and with sights on becoming a senior manager (at the same firm) at the apex of a productive, memorable career. In those days, you had the luxury of failing or slipping up in performance (a few times, not often), as long as you showed drive, loyalty, commitment and some promise. Now and then, you could fail to win a deal, could lose a major client, or could report a decline in revenues. You were reprimanded slightly, gently coached, and learned from experience. You were confident you would get a second chance, and you envisioned a career lasting, oh, 15, 20 or more years. What happen...

To join or not to join. To get involved or not.  The New York Times Sunday posed the query to Consortium CEO Peter Aranda in its July 3 edition:  Should members of under-represented groups join the "affinity groups" that exist in certain business settings?  They are special-purpose groups within a company that attract a membership of women, Hispanics, or Asian- or African-Americans. Or they may be groups that attract others with shared interests or backgrounds:  LGBTs, Native Americans,  Arab-Americans, or South Asians. They may include--within the institution--groups of African-American investment bankers, an Asian society of traders, researchers and analysts, or women in risk management. They could include Latinos in private banking or financial consulting. The Times posed a challenging question, one that many within these groups grapple with from time to time. Is there an advantage or disadvantage if you choose to affiliate with affinity groups while you ar...

Just when we thought all had turned around and we sensed the corner had been turned, we hear banter about financial institutions pondering lay-offs and staff reductions. Haven't we heard these rumblings before? As big banks and other financial institutions stumble toward the end of the second quarter, 2011, published reports say lay-offs are looming. Senior managers have begun to panic over whether they will be able to generate returns that will match those of 2010, especially with deal flow, trading activity, and the economy sputtering.  Historically, the first response of financial institutions (from trading desks and deal teams to operations groups and compliance functions) is to reduce personnel numbers to brace for rougher waters.  And always, the method that comes to mind to reduce is "LIFO" outplacement--the last in are the first out. Critics say the first reaction is to protect compensation among the elders when the industry must weather a brief storm. This time a...