Who Attracts the Best Talent?

Financial institutions are scarce on LinkedIn's new talent-attraction list, but Goldman Sachs slips in at no. 27 on its U.S. list

Which companies around the globe attract the best and the brightest?  Where do the most talented want to work?  What are the coveted places for those who are select their employers, before employers select them?

LinkedIn used its stockpile of data from over 400 million users and took a stab at creating a list. It used data analytics and data science. It tapped intuition and made assumptions (many of them). Here's one:  Companies that attract the best talent are companies that get the most job requests in LinkedIn or garner the most attention in LinkedIn updates or communications. 

In early July, it presented the results of the project, its first such effort. Its data and models produced a ranking of top companies or financial institutions it contends are successful in attracting the best talent. Some of the familiar names (Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, e.g.) led the top of the list.  Financial institutions were few in number, and there might be reasons.

Be mindful that a broad survey or analysis of the kind LinkedIn led could lead to possible false impressions or misrepresentations. (What is the real definition of "talent"? Aren't many talented people recruited without their making inquiries in LinkedIn?)

Yet the final list included names we would expect in 2016, names of companies that pay well, that have ambitious plans to grow and make a societal difference, that offer pleasing perks, and that present interesting problems for smart people to find solutions in their first few days on the new job.

Up front, LinkedIn needed to define top talent and best talent.  It then assembled a set of assumptions to define what it means to attract talent.   Are the companies at the top of its list attracting employees who sported the highest GPA's, who performed beyond expectations during internships, who have in-depth levels of skills in technical areas, and who have demonstrated qualitative skills (drive, energy, work ethic, leadership, etc.) in previous work assignments? Are they MBA's from top business schools, those who lead class discussions in investment analysis or chair the finance club?  Are they mostly computer science whizzes from elite engineering schools?

There's a global list and a U.S. list. Apple, Salesforce, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, Unilever, and Coca-Cola and Oracle appear on both lists.  In the U.S. compilation, you see Uber, Stryker, Netflix, Under Armour and Tesla. Are we not surprised? Don't talented people want to work at companies making a mark or sitting on the cusp of extraordinary growth? (Many of the companies on the global list are Consortium sponsors.)  Few financial institutions appear on the list, and we might be able to rationalize why.

LinkedIn explains the criteria clearly, even if many will argue about the flaws (as there are in just about all lists published and promoted widely).  LinkedIn has access to voluminous data--from companies, recruiters, employees, industry leaders, potential hires, students, etc.  It culled the data, deciphered trends, clicks and activity from its users, put together a set of rules and used results to present a list.

Its premise for talent-attraction is based on (a) reach and clicks (how well known the company and its brand are) (b) engagement and interaction (how often LinkedIn users connect with the company in some form), (c) job interest (how often LinkedIn users explore or seek employment at the company), and (d) staying power (how long do employees remain at the company).

Some filtering of data must have been necessary, because those who lack required skills or talent are also clicking and exploring and pursuing job opportunities at many of the same companies.  And often the best are discovered and tapped in other ways or through other channels.  They need not spend much time completing job applications discovered from an exploratory moment in LinkedIn. But LinkedIn asserts, if thousands are exploring employment opportunities at Google, then Google's chances of hiring the best increase.

Now what about financial institutions?  Why don't they crowd or dominate the list in the way they might have in the 1990's or mid-2000's, when art-history and music majors expressed interest in gaining a spot in an investment-banking class at, say, Credit Suisse or Lehman Brothers?

Why are Goldman Sachs (no. 27 on the U.S. list ) and Morgan Stanley (no. 40 on the U.S. list ) the only two large financial institutions on the list?  Do financial-service companies (banks, funds, institutions, insurance companies, and asset managers) not attract top talent annually from undergraduate and business schools or from other industries?  Are this generation's brightest choosing careers mostly in technology, new ventures or less-bureaucratic and less-hierarchal organizations?  And are work-life-balance issues factors?

What implications can we make from LinkedIn's efforts to highlight the paths that talented people take in pursuing opportunities or employment?

1) Investment banking might still be a lure.

Goldman and Morgan appear on the list, partly because of the continuing attraction of investment banking.  They are no longer "pure investment banks." (They are officially bank holding companies.) But in some circles, they are considered major investment banks before they are labeled commercial banks.

Wells Fargo, Citi, or JPMorgan Chase with similar brands and, in some cases, strong financial results might easily have supplanted Goldman and Morgan.  With Goldman and Morgan Stanley, there is the apparent direct tie (and heritage) to investment banking, where compensation packages are still lucrative and deals, transactions and trading still cause surges of adrenaline.

2)  The steady transformation of financial services (including the impact of regulation) can be daunting.

With new regulation keeping banks strapped in many ways, talented people might be restricted from being creative, expanding on bold ideas, and coming up with new products.  Regulated financial institutions have restrained balance sheets and thousands of pages of new rules to adhere to. 

3)  The survey, with some flaws, could still have omitted some institutions or miscalculated "talent attraction."

Let's consider that banks such as Wells Fargo, hedge funds such as Bridgewater and Citadel and private equity firms such as KKR, Carlyle and Blackstone indeed attract the financially talented.  How do they not appear on the lists? In some cases, they aren't household brands (one of the criteria). In other ways, they identify talent in stealth ways and hire in limited numbers.  And they may have a limited presence in LinkedIn.

4) The fintech revolution might, in fact, even its early unproven stages, be enticing talent that might otherwise have gone to work at Charles Schwab or Bank of America.

New companies that fit the mold of "fintech" didn't ease onto the lists. A few notable ones (Square) did. Others might show up on lists in the years to come. SoFi is a prominent example. But the wave has come and is far from peaking. They have affected talent retention at banks, which are suffering anxiety trying to determine a counter-strategy:  Beat them or join them or invest in them?

An MBA graduate (of a Consortium school?) with a concentration in finance and an extensive background in computer science is just as likely to want to explore working for a transformative, business-model-breaking fintech company as she would want to start out as an associate in project finance at Deustche Bank.

So the list is out, slowly slipping onto the digital screens of young professionals (and those more experienced).  It will likely be an annual LinkedIn roll-out, and no doubt it'll polish and update the criteria next year.

One special note:  Microsoft, which just announced its planned acquisition of LinkedIn, appears on the list.  LinkedIn list organizers unabashedly said they will keep the new parent on the list this year. For now, at least.

Tracy Williams

CFN:  The Fintech Revolution, 2016
CFN:  Financial Technology and Opportunities, 2014
CFN:  Bitcoins:  Embrace or Beware, 2014
CFN:  High-Frequency Trading:  What's Next? 2014
CFN:  Fortune's Best Places to Work, 2016

Choosing Financial Services in 2015

About 100 new Consortium students will indicate an interest in finance in 2015

In two weeks, about 400 new candidates for the MBA degree will become Consortium students. They will swarm into Phoenix for the Consortium's 49th Orientation Program. The new students (most of whom are privileged to be full-tuition fellowship winners) will start at 18 Consortium schools around the country this fall, but will first have the opportunity to meet each other, meet corporate sponsors and be congratulated dozens of times about their admissions into both the Consortium and top business schools. (A few will actually earn summer-internship offers from corporate sponsors, even before they start school.)

About 100 or so will express an interest in financial services with plans to become corporate or investment bankers, private-equity investors, financial consultants, community bankers, operations managers, venture capitalists, researchers, hedge-fund traders, or asset managers.

Trends and recent numbers suggest that, despite intermittent times of volatility and uncertainty for those who choose financial services, there won't be any noticeable drop-off among the MBA students who check off finance when deciding a concentration in 2015.

Is there some cause for apprehension? Do they know what they embark upon? Are they hopeful for ample opportunities? And do they understand the constantly changing scenarios faced by banks, funds, broker/dealers, and an all others in the industry?

Do they understand the implications of working for  an institution that regulators might declare "systemically important"?  Will they realize the impact of regulatory advisories that force banks to boost their capital cushion? Will they comprehend how this might have some influence on what they do in finance or how much in bonus they are awarded?

They likely do to some extent, if only because to gain admission at schools like Michigan, Virginia, Cornell, or UCLA, they will have thought deeply about what they want to do with the MBA and they will have expressed effectively in applications what they plan to do in finance or financial services (or at least, hope to do in the current environment).

How should the current MBA in finance approach this scenario?

A consensus among many says that long gone are the days when a finance MBA from, say, Dartmouth, Cornell or Emory, any respected school, could gain an offer as a corporate -finance associate at Goldman Sachs or a similar position at Wells Fargo and expect to be there 20-30 years, rapidly and assuredly climbing rungs of steps toward a senior-vice-president or managing-director slot.  And be happy about that or be comfortable working within the same institution with its same culture for decades.

Students today are better off approaching careers in segments, in five-year spans, knowing that vast change will continue to overhaul the industry or reshape the way financial services are delivered or performed.  Once there was a time when the finance MBA joined the institution, remained enthusiastically loyal to it, and often (sometimes naively) counted on the institution to shepherd him through development, enriching assignments and lucrative rewards.

The MBA graduate today is better off asking herself what contributions can she make to a project, team or institutions over the next five years, based on her talents, experiences, and skills.  And while at it, she  must ask what can she do for herself to ensure she continues to learn, develop, and adapt to different business conditions.

Today, the trading desk that existed five years ago has been disbanded.  Some of the financial modeling that new associates toiled over in years past is now performed in India. And much of the processing of securities, funds, and foreign currencies is presided over by vast computer systems. With the snap of a finger, GE decided to cast aside GE Capital. Banks that had bulge-bracket presence in investment banking decide overnight they don't want to do as much i-banking anymore.

Deals will get done, services will be delivered, clients must be hand-held and schmoozed, and transactions will be processed.  However, technology, systems and data analytics will be supreme, critical factors.  The MBA graduate might find himself spending as much time implementing technology or interpreting reams of data and statistics as analyzing capital markets or reviewing the financing needs of a new company.

The MBA graduate might opt to disregard working for the familiar, established companies like Morgan Stanley, AIG, Schwab, or JPMorgan Chase and consider working in what is popularly called "fin-tech," or working for the hundreds of new companies in "financial technology" that have sprouted in recent years.

Those companies have goals to upset the status quo, fill gaps where big banks may have struggled with in recent years (e.g., making corporate or small-business loans).  The fin-tech companies are experimenting with innovative ways to deliver financial services (make payments, make loans to small and large businesses, raise capital for new ventures, make loans to consumers, or execute trades for dealers). Long-term viability for most of these new companies is still in doubt, yet some new  MBAs might prefer the adrenaline (and possible mammoth long-term pay-off) that comes from working in a new, industry-busting venture.

Regulation? Yes, financial reform and regulation, in whatever degrees of pressure they exist, will always be the gray cloud that hovers overhead, even if regulation isn't too onerous or too oppressive. It will always be the elephant in the atrium, sufficient enough to redirect banking business strategies or force banks to cede control of products and services to the upstart fin-techs. The push-pull between those factions who argue regulation has overwhelmed and those who argue regulation is feeble will continue.

The financial crisis is slipping into memory for some new MBAs.  For some new students, the debacles that were Bear Stearns and Lehman happened when they were departing high school.  It helps, nonetheless, for MBAs in finance to be aware that crises come and go and return.  Markets are booming and can bust.  Interest rates plunge, but also soar.  Borrowers bankrupt, and new ventures can wipe out private-equity values.  And unfortunately,  the lessons learned from a previous crisis are sometimes forgotten or dismissed.

New MBAs should still know that despite the plague of  uncertainty, rollicking markets, and banking institutions that must reorganize and restructure themselves every other year,  some truisms remain. Financial technical skills are still a must-have.  In the end, financial managers, risk managers, financial consultants, and corporate-finance bankers still must make big decisions on loans, equity portfolios, bond portfolios, balance sheets, and investments.

They still need to be adept at near-expert levels in accounting, corporate finance, and capital markets. They will still need to understand what drives stock markets, what constitutes a shrewd investment, what influences interest rates, when a company should issue new stock, or why some companies can handle debt burdens better than others.  Graham and Dodd forms of analysis never go out of style.

Tracy Williams

See also:

CFN:  Opportunities in 2015
CFN:  MBAs and Technical Skills in Finance, 2010
CFN:  MBAs Face a Complex Landscape in Finance, 2014
CFN:  The Finance Resume' and Recruiters, 2014
CFN:  New Opportunities in Financial Technology, 2014

The Survey Says

GMAC shared the results this month of a global survey of MBA graduates 

GMAC is best known to MBA students and graduates for administering the GMAT, often a formidable hurdle when applicants decide to take two years off to immerse themselves in business school.  But the organization is more than a mere exam-process vehicle.  It is engaged, for example, in in-depth research in business education.

This month, it published the results of an extensive global survey to share what business-school graduates from around the world say they obtained from having earned an MBA degree.  What did they gain in terms of compensation, productive work experiences, and promotion paths toward the top? What were the most important skills they used in business experiences? What specific skills were important at various points in a long career?

Over 12,000 respondents replied to survey questions last fall.  They included MBA alumni from over 70 schools all over the globe, most of whom attended U.S. business schools, many in familiar two-year, full-time programs. Graduates from 1959-2014 were represented. Graduates in age from 25-75 were included. GMAC asked questions that encompass a multi-decade career and asked questions relevant to those just a year away from campus. It probed to determine whether business-school knowledge was more relevant in latter career stages than in the beginning. And it asked graduates whether or not certain courses are more important in senior corporate positions than in entry roles. 

Respondents attended a wide spectrum of business schools (which means a range of MBA experiences and curricula).  They included graduates of MBA executive programs, one-year programs, regional schools, and those brand-name elite schools with 3-5 times more applicants than spots for students (including Consortium schools).  The survey, hence, drew conclusions based on the input from, say, a septugenarian MBA graduate from a local business school in the 1960's, from 1990's graduates of prominent schools in Europe or from those who just stepped from the halls of, say, Dartmouth-Tuck or UCLA-Anderson a year or two ago.

But praise the organization's comprehensive efforts.  While the MBA evolves and adapts to the times, there is common ground for most MBA graduates. There are common experiences in school, common core courses, and a common immersion into factors (markets, finance, economics) that affect business performance.  The survey results suggest, for MBA's, there is long-term value. 

Survey Shortcomings?

Like all surveys, there are flaws or short-comings, even in the GMAC survey.  Graduates who are doing well professionally or have done well over many decades may be more eager to take the time to complete a long list of questions and share their stories of promise and good fortune and report their upward-sloping compensation ranges.  As well, measurements of "success," "accomplishment" or "senior management" benchmarks are often a function of personal experiences, values and objectives.

Furthermore, the good or bad fortune of graduates is influenced by other matters besides hard work, preparation, and business-school knowledge.  Notably, an indefinite number of factors unrelated to the MBA can explain "success," including the economy, an industry's product timeline, market timing and plain ole good luck, being in the right place at right time (or being at the right place, but in the wrong time, as many 2008-10 MBA graduates would attest). And even in 2015, bias, nepotism and old-school fraternal ties might come into play. 

Summarizing the Results

Yet like many surveys, there are some intriguing trends and worthwhile messages.  Some of them are highlighted here:

1.  The more senior they rise within an organization, the more likely MBA graduates will admit they use knowledge and skills obtained from business school. 

This suggests a notion many have stated all along--that MBA learning focuses on senior leadership, senior management, and global businesses. Business schools are often praised for teaching students to become sector leaders, business heads and chiefs of finance and marketing. 

But the same schools are often chastised for not reminding new graduates that the road toward the top will be long and hard, and years of dues-paying grunt work will likely precede end-of-career success at the top of the organization chart. 

Survey results show that as business-school graduates become more accomplished over time, they more readily acknowledged that the analytical and management skills they were exposed to as MBA students helped prepare them for current, senior roles.  A public-policy, real-estate or operations-research course might seem irrelevant to a first-year associate, but the head of Asia operations will more likely say exposure to those courses long ago helped. A second-year brand manager at a major consumer-products company may not appreciate her intermediate accounting course until she becomes a business-unit head responsible for a substantial balance sheet and bottom line. 

2.  Recent MBA graduates (more than older graduates), the survey suggests, say professional and alumni networks have helped propel their careers (win coveted job offers or get early promotions). 

Such sentiments might suggest the difficulties MBA graduates of the last decade have confronted, when financial crises, recessions, and massive restructuring across many industries meant graduates had to push beyond MBA credentials to find the best opportunities. Meanwhile, more experienced MBA alumni, established in their roles, may not need to rely as much on networks and contacts.

3.  The survey concludes that more experienced MBA graduates, especially those who have advanced to the highest rungs in organizations, are more likely to feel comfortable with taking risks in their careers.

They are more willing to embrace innovation and change, more willing to be pro-active in business strategy and more tolerant regarding risks of all kinds (financial risks, market risks, business risks and social risks). 

Many inferences can be drawn from the results, although not necessarily conclusively. Some will argue it's easier to take risks early in a career, when reputations have not yet been molded and when graduates have fewer family constraints and can start, stop and transition elsewhere without significant responsibility.  

But these survey results may imply: 

(a) Those who are the types who embrace and gravitate toward risk-taking, business execution, challenge and change are more likely to advance high in their industries, firms or companies. (They advanced because they were risk-taking.)

(b) Those who have reached those highest rungs also have the experience, confidence and financial resources to be able to take risks they may not have been able to when they were strivers still seeking to show competence. (The are risk-taking now because they have advanced.)

4.  For most of those who work in conventional corporate settings, there are few timeline short cuts to "C-suite" positions (CEO, CFO, chief marketing officer, chief information officer, chief risk officer, etc.). 

Survey results say it takes about 17 years of related work experience to reach the top of an organization, business unit or sector. The average age is 48, and the survey tells us something we already know well--that the officer in their C-suite slot is likely to be male.  

5.  Large numbers of MBA graduates today don't work for mega-corporations. They (about 12% of those surveyed) are entrepreneurs or are self-employed.  MBA entrepreneurs tended to be those in technology or products.  Those self-employed tended to be consultants. Vast amounts of the survey might have been irrelevant to them. The survey, nonetheless, allowed them to opine and reflect on their MBA degrees, as well.  

Many in this group describe themselves as being slightly less risk-taking than those in C-suite positions. 

That contrasts from popular notions that entrepreneurs and owners of their companies are those with unlimited courage, willing to tackle business and financial risks boldly.  Like others, they attribute parts of their success stories to business-school learning. They take risks, they acknowledged, but they are measured, calculated risks, especially because they are singularly responsible for employees and accountable to demanding lenders and investors (venture capitalists, banks, and funding backers who want a five-year payout).

6.  About 17% of survey respondents work in finance.

They survey shows that the oldest MBA alumni worked more prominently in finance (about 20% for graduates before 1990).  For later graduates, the global MBA workforce in finance has remained flat, notwithstanding the financial debacle of the late 2000's.

MBA graduates in greater numbers are  marching into technology and consulting (17% and 12%, respectively, over the last five years).  The most notable decline is the significant decrease in recent alumni (over the past five years) choosing government and non-profit positions. 

Those in finance, as expected, are working in financial centers around the world:  Singapore, Japan, New York, and London, e.g. 

7.  As alumni, what do MBA graduates want from their alma maters?  The survey shows they don't want to be harrassed too much about how much they aren't donating to their business schools.

Meanwhile, they prefer their schools offer alumni seminars in business strategy, business analysis, and data science.  They also want continuing access to career-development offices, alumni networking events, and more contact with professors on campus. 

Of the 12,000 graduates participating in the survey, about 70% graduated within the past 15 years and 70% are from the U.S.  About 69% were male, reflecting a surprisingly woeful lack of gender balance at the MBA level (and contributing to a scarcity of women who enter the pipeline from MBA associate to sector head).

Expanding the Survey?

The GMAC survey omitted many questions and topics it could have (or should have?) covered.  No doubt it needed to present a polished, easy-to-check-the-box list of questions, one for which there are discrete answers and which would not be time-consuming for survey-challenged executives. For the sake of efficiency, it avoided topics where responses are ambivalent or deserving far more than a multiple-choice selection.

The survey, for example, didn't provide breakdowns among some segments of alumni--women and under-represented minorities, for example, although there was ample categorization based on geographies and industries.

It would have been informative, for example, to review trends and signs of success among Latino graduates or to review the MBA skills women in senior roles saw as affording them a big advantage in pushing their careers. It could have provided hard data about trends among African-Americans in corporate hierarchies and compensation. And it could have confirmed whether the pipeline to senior leadership is dwindling or promising. 

The survey, too, didn't give alumni a chance to opine on the future of MBA education:  What should business schools focus on? How should courses be taught and in what format and timeline?  What should be in a first-year student's core? How much emphasis should schools put in online offerings, international experiences, operations and management topics, ethics, politics, and psychology?

GMAC is already doing research and sharing its finding on many of these topics.  The 2014 effort was likely about getting maximum participation from the largest number of respondents possible, from all over the world and from all ages and letting the data alone speak.

Tracy Williams

See also:

CFN:  MBA Opportunities in 2015
CFN: Who are the Most Satisfied Business School Alumni? 2011
CFN: Is the MBA Under Attack, Too? 2013
CFN: Mastering MBA Technical Skills, 2011
CFN:  The MBA:  Remaining Relevant, 2011

On Campus: Always Adapting

Emory Dean Erika James

Business schools evolve and adjust to a rapidly changing business environment.  They adapt and overhaul to prepare another generation of managers, leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, advisers, consultants, teachers and bankers.

Some schools turn themselves inside out to make themselves relevant to the complexities of business today. Most align with other programs (medicine, journalism, engineering and law, e.g.) and consider altering the structure and timetable of degree offerings. Many now require overseas study (usually in the student's second year) and combine courses like finance, marketing and operations to show prospective employers that MBA graduates have depth across disciplines and functions. Sure, they continue to have required content. Students cannot avoid a core curriculum of economics, statistics, marketing, accounting, operations, policy, and finance.

Yet today's MBA students must squeeze in coursework in ethics, entrepreneurship, digital advertising, risk management, social media, derivatives markets, private equity, crisis management and global politics. Business schools offer courses in these areas, but must support scholarship and academic research in the same by hiring the right professors and organizing rigorous curricula.

It's all inevitable. It's normal for business schools to introduce new disciplines, programs and initiatives every year to keep up and stay relevant.  The sample below tells what's going on at many Consortium schools in early 2015.

David Thomas, dean of the Consortium's newest school Georgetown-McDonough, told an audience at a special forum led by Washington, D.C.-area business schools last fall that MBA students today are not going to school to select employers. This post-crisis period is characterized by electronic commerce, digital communications, and innovation.  New industries, products and start-ups emerge every week.

Students, too, still haven't forgotten about how the predictable, safe careers paths of their elders were derailed in the late 2000's. MBA graduates, Thomas said, are choosing "meaning and purpose" in what they want to do. Sometimes what they want to do is not doing what they can to secure a spot at Morgan Stanley or McKinsey.

Last fall, the school hosted a case competition for students to find business solutions for non-profit 

organizations.  Students made presentations on behalf of a foundation that supports families in Nicaragua and made recommendations for improvements in health care and education.

Like many top schools, Georgetown encourages and helps arrange international experience.  It sponsors a "Global Business Experience" program, where students are assigned to a company in a foreign "client" country and recommend solutions in finance, operations and organization structure. 

Students at Dartmouth-Tuck late last year formed a consulting team that worked with the U.S. Olympics Committee to assist in Boston's bid to be chosen as the site of the 2024 Olympic Games. Their project wasn't an academic exercise; it was a real business case, requiring analysis, study, recommendations, implementation and presentation. Boston is still in the running, and the Tuck team's contribution could make a long-term difference. 

The entrepreneurial bug has bitten everywhere, not just among venture capitalists on the West Coast. Major business schools have had programs and courses in entrepreneurship for decades now. For years, they offered a handful of courses, and there were always related student clubs and forums that invited prominent entrepreneurs.

Today, entrepreneurship (via academic study, special institutes, coursework, and student groups) is a major concentration at most schools. They offer a long slate of courses and invite successful alumni  regularly to explain their start-up stories to eager students. Students devote time to start-up ideas or legitimate business plans, and schools arrange for venture funding, sponsor competitions, and organize alumni networks to help students take signficant steps to execute their plans.

USC-Marshall now offers a master's degree in entrepreneurship and innovation. Cornell-Johnson sponsors its version of the "Shark Tank" television program, where students present their ideas and detailed plans to panels of professionals.  (A "Shark Tank" on its campus is scheduled for Feb. 15.)

At the senior levels and in diversity, business schools have begun to walk the walk, while talking the talk.  Some Consortium schools have appointed deans who are women or from under-represented minority groups. The dean at Georgetown (Thomas), for example, is African-American. Emory-Goizueta's dean, Erika James, who starts her second year in 2015, is an African-American woman. 

James, for many years, held senior positions at another Consortium school, Virginia-Darden, before Emory offered her the deanship.  She also has a Ph.D. in organization psychology at yet another Consortium school, Michigan-Ross.

En route to Emory, she and others have done interesting research on women as CEO's of major companies.  They examined what happens to the stock price of a public company when it announces it has appointed a woman CEO.  Research shows that in many cases (all other factors being controlled or acknowledged), the stock price declines.  They tried to explain the cause. Often, the decline might be caused by the market's lack of confidence in the selection or by a perception that investors force women heads to prove themselves before share prices catch up. 

James arrived in Atlanta just in time to help shepherd Emory to the top of a list of schools with the highest rates of offers among MBA graduates last year. Both Emory and Consortium school Dartmouth-Tuck reported offering rates of 98% (through August, for a recent graduating class), along with graduates of Chicago and Penn-Wharton.  Offering rates, the statistics themselves, imply many factors could be in play:  

(a) The schools are doing exceptional jobs in helping graduates find employment by attracting major recruiters and preparing students for the process.

(b) The schools are in regions or have relationships with companies, sponsors, or firms where there are historic pipelines to financially stable employers. (General Motors and General Mills, for example, will consistently turn to Michigan-Ross when it needs to hire financial-management MBA's. Coca-Cola will likely approach Emory year after year to recruit MBA's in marketing and international management, especially since vast contributions of Coca-Cola stock explain much of the university's high endowment.)

(c) Yet offering rates at some schools will be affected by a portion of students who are pursuing non-traditional careers or are contemplating start-ups or small companies, where offers are not timely or formal or offers don't exist. A few graduating students withdraw from the process, while exploring a different kind of opportunity.

Michigan-Ross, in the past year or so, has introduced new research studies called "Positive Business" and "Open-book Finance," based on recent work from some professors.  Open-book finance would aligns the finance function with business-unit management and human resources.  It encourages companies to share details of corporate performance (revenues, costs, profits, profit objectives, growth goals, etc.) with all employees, not just business-unit managers or those working in finance.

Researchers indicate employees are more productive and more committed to job functions when they understand their impact on bottom-line performance and understand what the company must do to reach revenue-profit goals. 

Last month, an opening of relations between the U.S. and Cuba was proclaimed in headlines everywhere. Now even business schools are following the coattails of the major news story. Virginia-Darden didn't wait to find a way for MBA students to have a business experience in the country . This month, 26 second-year students spent a week in Havana studying the culture, politics and history, monitoring a training center for entrepreneurs and visiting other small businesses.

Financial engineering and quantitative finance are disciplines not far removed from the MBA core. In most cases, they are divisions within a business school, an attachment to or an advanced offering in the finance discipline.  Students can take related courses or earn a master's degree in quantitative finance.  Some MBA graduates in years past have specialized in quantitative finance or earned separate degrees. 

Carnegie Mellon-Tepper is widely known to have one of the best programs in quantitative finance. At the business school, students can earn a master's in computational finance. Many of them are preparing for careers in asset management, hedge funds, capital markets and financial products, or academic careers in finance. 

At Tepper, students take familiar business-school courses in accounting and economics, but veer immediately into coursework that will include options pricing, derivatives, risk management, arbitrage, data analytics, asset pricing, and advanced statistics. Tepper likes to distinguish itself from other schools with this special offering and permits MBA students with some interest in these courses to pursue them, if they wish.

Yale School Management ("SOM") moved into its sparkling new quarters, Evans Hall, a year ago, after vowing to follow other schools in building architecturally appealing, state-of-the-art facilities. Yale's large glass structure with blue hues and adorable courtyards is already a popular destination for other schools on campus by hosting events, symposia and conferences. You won't hear anymore a Yale SOM student disparage about having to scamper from old building to old building to attend classes or participate in case-study groups.

In the past year, Yale MBA students launched a group, "RevYale," that encourages MBA students to act as mentors to undergraduate students, particularly those that lead student groups and those interested in starting organizations on campus.  More experienced MBA students act as partners and mentors to undergraduates, whether they are interested in art, music, politics, sciences, or business.

The Yale MBA students provide guidance in leadership, finance, and organization management, based on their experiences and studies. The undergraduates get to have an MBA "big brother or sister" in their midst and learn something about the value of graduate business education. Yale SOM gets to steer smart minds toward an eventual Yale MBA.

Tracy Williams

See also:
CFN:  Wall Street's Favorite Business Schools, 2014
CFN:  Yale SOM Gets a New Look, 2014
CFN:  Georgetown Becomes the Consortium's Newest School, 2013
CFN:  Wisconsin:  Preparing for a Diverse World, 2014
CFN:  Is the MBA Under Attack? 2013
CFN:  MBA Diversity: A Constant Effort to Keep Up, 2012
CFN:  Fighting the Gender Fight at Harvard Business School, 2013

Work-Life Balance: The Discussions Continue

These are times when banks and other financial institutions worry about their junior resources, the analysts and associates who toil in cubicles, working legions of hours each week cranking out spreadsheets, pitch books, industry analyses and client presentations. It's exhausting, tiring, grinding work.


Picture a first-year associate who makes plans with college buddies on a Friday evening at about 8:30 pm after a long, tough week. Just as she taps the elevator button, she is summoned back to her desk, because a vice president in M&A just received an e-mail from a managing director, who just received a phone call from a client CFO who on a whim decided to increase the offer price that the client company wants to make on a target firm. The CFO, responding to the CEO, wants to know if the numbers make sense for the new offering price and wants to know the answer by Saturday afternoon.

The associate returns to her desk and cancels her Friday plans and all hopes of spending a weekend winding down from a week of hard labor. Back into the dozens of variations of Excel spreadsheets depicting merger-acquisition scenarios she plunges. Nothing is new. She and her analyst and associate colleagues encounter this scene several times a month.

The tale is told frequently, year after year.  In post-crisis times and in times when recent college and MBA graduates can be lured into other more humane (and perhaps similarly compensated) career choices, some financial institutions worry they must do something about a potential talent drain. This tale, however, has been told over generations. Financial analysis, financial modeling, and the early years of banking and financial research have been marked by stories of hours working until 2 a.m. and weekends erased by a sudden tap on the shoulder.

Banks, too, have endured intermittent panics about about potential talent drain since the mid-1990's. The current times aren't the only times they've hustled among themselves to do something about it. Remember the dot-com craze of the late 1990's and early 2000's? An analyst from this period wrote a memorable treatise, a state-of-banking message about what banks must do to appease the junior crowd and keep them from escaping to more interesting dot-com jobs on the West Coast. His plea and his presentation of soft demands appeared on the front page the New York Times.

Around that time, banks, one by one, began to ease the starched-shirt, Brooks Brothers suit dress code and permit what is now know as "business casual" fashion in the office. Many of his "demands" from that time, however, have disappeared into history, and banks quickly resumed their culture of expectations that analysts and associates must work marathon hours to justify their handsome compensation packages and must, as industry old-timers contend, "pay their dues just as those who trekked before them."

Voluminous websites, chat-rooms, magazine stories, and books have been written about the lifestyles and work burdens of those in their early career years working at banks, private-equity firms or hedge funds. In recent years, especially in 2014, big banks have reviewed work-life balance in the trenches and tried to come up with satisfactory solutions, including offering juniors the occasional weekend off and presenting ways to relieve the work pressures and daily burdens.

Some banks are considering increasing the number of hires in the coming year under the premise that (a) business conditions are better, (b) there is more work to be done for clients and (c) it would be better to spread this work among a larger number of analysts and associates. In the last few weeks, a few banks (notably, Goldman Sachs stepping out in the middle of summer with its announcement that it will pay analysts and associates base salaries that are about 20 percent higher) have decided to increase compensation in ways they did routinely before the crisis.

History suggests the pathways to better work experiences are slippery. They improve. Business (deals, client activity, trading, and expansion) takes off. Competition grows stiffer. Work burdens pile up. Work environment inevitably sinks back to days of dreary, exhausting work weeks. Banks resolved and committed to improve the work-life balance of young professionals. But the real world got in the way.

When deals must get done before they are lost to competitors and when client presentations must be prepared overnight, or when market conditions change suddenly as stocks rumble or interest rates surge, vice presidents and managing directors hardly think about work-life experiences. Bank senior managers slip back into old habits and forget about the newly implemented programs to improve the lives of juniors.

(In banking, the competition to win a client or a new deal has been and continues to be fierce.  Bankers know that clients sometimes resort to whimsical, illogical criteria in choosing a winning bank.  Pricing, fees and execution may be a primary reason why a Fortune 500 company chooses Citi to lead a financing deal (or why Alibaba opted for Goldman to lead its upcoming IPO).

But in some cases, bankers know the client might choose a bank based on exuberant vibes in a client meeting, a polished presentation before the client's board of directors, or a personal relationship that goes back to good times in a freshman-year dorm. Bankers, therefore, don't want to take chances; hence, they summon analysts and associates to be accessible 24/7 to help find more ways to increase the probability that their bank will be selected.)

After the financial crisis of the late 2000's, banks once again felt they reached an emergency state, where they feared the best and brightest will ignore Wall Street. Most inside and outside the industry (whether they were just about to embark on a career or had survived decades) contemplated deeply about long-term careers in financial services: How will roles change? When will client activity rebound? What impact will regulation have on roles? As banks re-engineered the organization, how would they re-design work roles?  Will bank jettison entire units (trading desks, departments, etc.) over time or in one leap?

An industry in turmoil also had to confront criticism from every direction--regulators, politicians, the public, other market participants, and clients. How could financial institutions, therefore, convince a recent Brown graduate or a new Michigan MBA that he should migrate to Wall Street and be assured that his business unit will be in operation a year or two later? And how could they convince him to ignore a sweet offer to work at Google or at a West Coast start-up, where the grass is green, the sun shines, lunch is free, and time spent away from the office is applauded?

The environment continues to be tweaked. Banks (and hedge funds and private-equity firms) continually address work conditions, even as traders and deal-doers slip back into old habits. Even if the long work hours are still characteristic of the banking life, the discussion continues.

Tracy Williams

Se also:

CFN:  Delicate Balance:  Long Hours and Personal Lives, 2010
CFN:  Goldman Sachs and Work-life Balance, 2013
CFN:  MBA's and Investment Banking, 2013

Finance MBA's Face a Complex Landscape

Michigan's Ross (above) and 18 other Consortium schools welcome 405 new MBA's

In a week or two, over 400 new MBA students will journey to Austin, Tex. for the Consortium's 48th annual Orientation Program. Like other OP sessions, they will meet each other and share cocktail, networking moments with business-school deans and large throngs of corporate representatives. They will attend special sessions related to industries and job functions. They will discuss hopes and expectations of a current generation of MBA graduates.

For this moment, they'll celebrate reaching a fork in the road that opens up to bright opportunities. And for right now, they'll dismiss worrying about the burden of coursework they confront in the fall.  Nineteen Consortium institutions, all prominent business schools with rigorous programs, will welcome them in Austin and then escort them back to the MBA experience in the fall from California to New Hampshire.

Of the 405 Consortium students of 2014, about 100 have indicated an interest in finance or financial services, hoping to land jobs in a range of positions from M&A investment banking to real-estate private equity.  Many in this group endured the grueling times of the financial crisis.  Some were undergraduates during those years (2008-2010) trying to make sense of a financial system on the verge of collapse. They must have asked themselves:  Could they envision themselves as role players in the industry in years to come?

The landscape has changed in many ways, and most new MBA's know that. It's complex. Financial institutions, encountering limited revenue opportunities and mountains of regulation, struggle to figure out, every day, what they want to be and how they are going to get there.  They ask themselves:  With thousands of rules to adhere to, with strapped balance sheets, with enormous requirements to maintain large capital cushions, and with none of the chances as before to do just about what they wished, how will they generate revenues and sufficient returns on capital?

If it's complex for financial institutions (including banks, broker/dealers, boutique investment banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, asset managers, and private-equity firms), then it might be overwhelming for MBA students in finance.

These times, nonetheless, are not the terrifying months of the financial crisis and recession.  These same institutions have cleaned up their balance sheets, siphoned off distressed assets, shut down non-performing operations, injected new capital, and sliced off much of what was proprietary trading. They have also rationalized every single business line under the CEO and continue to hunt desperately for ways to generate new forms of revenue to help find new earnings for all the capital they must now maintain.

This new class of MBA's in finance will have abundant opportunities to explore, spread out across many functions and regions. But gone are the days when a Consortium grad could study corporate finance, do an internship at Morgan Stanley, and then hop on board at Merrill Lynch and spend the next 20 years rising to the top negotiating with clients while doing deals.

What will this class encounter?

1.  Investment banking has been a long-time favorite destination of many finance MBA's from top schools.  The industry is in flux. Challenged by new regulation after having  been bowled over in the aftermath of the crisis, some banks have withdrawn from full-scale emphasis (UBS, Barclays, e.g.)  Others have decided to re-deploy resources, capital and talent toward commercial and corporate banking (Wells Fargo, e.g.).

The big bulge-brackets (JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have doubled down, will continue to hire large numbers, and are prepared to bang heads with each other chasing down many of the same headline deals, but willing to work arm in arm in transactions if they must.  Big banks will cross the country in search of new MBA associate, as long as the deal environment is brisk or predictable.  

2.  But the boutique banks continue to make their marks.  Big banks aren't threatened by them, although they certainly squeeze themselves into numerous advisory mandates. The roster of boutiques changes from time to time. The favorites these days are Lazard, Evercore, Greenhill, Moelis, Weinberg Perella, Soundview, and a handful of other small, but still relevant shops (M.R. Beal, Williams Capital, e.g.). 

They look for MBA talent, but their relationships with top schools are often limited and fleeting. Think in terms of founding partners focusing primarily on the few schools they attended when recruiting season rolls around. They covet MBA's from top schools, but won't jet across the country recruiting them.

2. Banks are facing a debt and commodities crisis this year--not from having highly leveraged balance sheets, but in managing debt-product units that are struggling to be profitable.  Debt sales & trading and many activities in the realm of what the industry now calls "FICC" (fixed-income, currencies, and commodities) are ransacked by regulation, low interest rates, and low profit margins. An MBA interested trading bonds on a debt is headed toward a dead end. 

M&A units are smirking these days.  It's as if they've found gold in their back rooms. What they've found are company CEO's and CFO's now confident enough to contemplate a strategic acquisition. They've found companies now willing to spend cash they wouldn't touch after the haunting, crushing blows of the crisis. M&A activity, however, fluctuates and swerves, and all MBA graduates should be forewarned.  For new MBA's, this might be the optimal time to secure a spot at a major bank or boutique.

3.  Few MBA's in finance head off to business school with an ambition of becoming legal, regulatory and compliance officers at major banks. And financial institutions have done a poor job in explaining the role or convincing students to consider these now visible, important functions.  However, banks everywhere are hustling to fill roles. They are tossing millions into budgets to build a long-term infrastructure to manage every aspect of compliance--from data accumulation, regulatory reporting, regulatory compliance, capital allocation, and risk-capital computations.  The functions exist far from the front lines of client banking, yet are getting maximum attention from senior managers and boards. 

4. New MBA's, especially those interested in proprietary trading, investments, and equity research, will aim for hedge funds, private equity, and venture capital at firms big and small.  But they'll learn quickly after they attend the first corporate-recruiting reception that the road to Blackstone, Carlyle, Citadel, Bridgewater, or Sequoia is far more treacherous than the road to Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan.

Opportunities will exist, because these are the best of times for venture-capital firms and favorable times in private equity. They all need finance associates to crunch numbers, run models, value companies, perform research and present conclusive findings. Every deal requires these exercises.

Meanwhile, hedge funds have stumbled in clumsy ways the past year or two. Some large ones have closed.  Hedge funds will still persist and will always be happy homes for market traders in all asset classes who insist they can out-perform broad markets.  They'll welcome MBA talent that in years past might have spent early years in apprentice roles on equity, debt, and emerging-markets desks at big banks.

5.  The corporate-finance function at non-financial institutions thrives, especially in a post-recovery setting where companies are finally confident about deploying cash that has sat dormant for years. They appear ready to use idle cash to expand, grow, and perhaps acquire a company or two.

In the past, pursuing a career in financial management or corporate finance at an industrial company or Fortune 500 corporation wasn't a preferred route for some MBA's at top schools.  MBA graduates chased the fanciful, more lucrative opportunities on Wall Street.  But after late-2000's turmoil, working as a financial analyst at places like IBM, Eli Lily or Pepsico was more attractive and offered a more stable, more sane existence.

Furthermore, the same companies have become shrewd and begun to bring more of its corporate-finance and corporate-strategy work in-house before they reach out to investment bankers to do some of the same.

5. The asset-management industry also presented itself as an oasis of stability, predictable revenue streams, and growth.  The industry welcomed MBA's and has successfully recruited them over the past decade.  Yet even this sector must fend off challenges.

Investors have low-cost options now, especially after the explosive growth of ETF's.  Some investors and experts question the value of hiring advisers to manage funds to try to beat market performance.  Why pay high fees when investors can push assets into a low-cost ETF's or similar portfolios that match the market? Why pay high fees when it is possible that managers' performance will fall shy of market returns, as they have done at many hedge funds the past year or two?

Asset managers won't concede.  They work hard to convince investors (individuals and institutions) that they have analytical tools to out-perform market indices and to reallocate funds quickly among different asset classes when market conditions encourage a reshuffling.

6.  Financial institutions that once thought they could escape the grasp of regulation must also adapt and comply with new requirements. Federal regulators, for example, can now parachute in, tap the front doors of non-bank institutions that had little to do with Dodd-Frank or Basel III, and wrap them under new rules.  Insurance companies like Prudential and AIG have been designated "systemically important financial institutions," or "SIFI's," institutions that have roles and market positions too large in financial markets not to be supervised like big banks.

New MBA's shouldn't fret.  The environment is not discouraging; it's merely complex, evolving. The industry harbors many forces, including forces that want substantial regulation and oversight and forces (applied by banks and hedge funds, for the most part) that don't want to be strangled too much in their desperate efforts to maintain earnings and returns.  The jockeying, pushing and pulling have been going on the past few years and will continue.

In an improved business environment, there's still room for the new deal, new client, new financial model, new investment, new discussion to acquire or merge or new financing to support new product lines--all promising signs for a new MBA in finance.

Tracy Williams

See also:

CFN: Consortium OP, Getting Psyched, 2012

CFN: Consortium OP, Alumni are Welcome, 2011
CFN:  Consortium OP, June is OP Time, 2010
CFN:  Finance, Still a Popular Destination, 2014

Finance: Still a Popular Destination?

Almost a third of Tuck's grads went into finance

Take a peek at the latest statistics.  At many business schools, they're out and available. MBA graduates from the Class of 2013 have launched their post-business-school careers, and they haven’t avoided financial services as much as the popular impression suggests. 

True, countless thousands who've entered and finished graduate business school since the worst days of the crisis opted not to pursue banking, trading and investment management or other financial-services paths.  The industry has endured transformation of all kinds (regulation, business restrictions, non-stop restructuring, and souring popular sentiment).  And it’s true, too, the industry had become a turn-off to some smart students who in years past would have pursued investment banking without a thought.

In current times, the rewards, comforts and predictable career paths in finance are still uncertain. Don't forget, too, the knocks on jobs and roles that had once been perceived as  prestigious and awe-inspiring on the cocktail circuit.  Many MBA students at top schools, so goes popular sentiment, will likely prefer more humane, more constructive routes in a long business career.

But the statistics are out for recent business-school classes, and they suggest MBA students continue to flock to certain areas in financial services.  Finance will still attract those who are inherently interested in finance, those who have finance in their bones, so to speak. 

Perhaps the numbers are not surging as much as they were pre-2007, but they aren't insignificant.  Or  perhaps banks, investment managers, and trading firms are doubling down to make special efforts to present themselves more fashionably to students, describing career opportunities better, and promising easier lives on the work-life-balance front.   

However, perhaps the industry is more defined, better understood after all the years of restructuring and gearing up for an environment ensconced in new regulation.  Of course, some hard-core students, fascinated by markets, deals, transactions, and cash flows, will head toward finance despite what they hear, see or are told.

Compensation helps, too.  It continues to be one attraction.  Data and anecdotal evidence suggest financial institutions still pay well, even if the industry pulled back and rationalized (and reduced) compensation after the mid-2000’s splurge.

Let’s take a look at Dartmouth-Tuck, a Consortium school. Its career-advisory unit recently shared data for the most recent graduating class after it received a sufficient number of responses from departing students. Tuck is a good example, because it has an outstanding history preparing graduates for Wall Street, has attracted large numbers interested in finance since its early days, and has a reputable finance division.  

The Tuck data indicate consulting is the hot spot these days.  MBA graduates are flocking to what is referred in campus jargon as "MBB"--McKinsey, Bain and Booz. In Tuck's Class of 2013, consulting firms hired 27% of the class (and offered the highest amounts in compensation).  In all, 33% are working in consulting roles, including those working at non-consulting firms or working in the consulting arms of the big accounting firms (Ernst and Deloitte, e.g.)

For some MBA students, consulting offers an experience, similar to what they might have received at an investment bank. They get to do extensive research and analysis.  They get to study corporate strategy and make recommendations regarding growth, expansion, and acquisition. They participate in “live transactions” and prepare exhaustive presentations for clients. They travel around the country. 

They also get to have meaningful contact with clients and sit in meetings with clients' senior managers.  Some become experts in the industries of their clients. Hence, while consulting has always been a favorite first job for MBA students, consulting might be swiping a handful of those who a decade ago would have marched right into Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley (or Lehman Brothers, back then) at the first whiff of interest on the banks' part.

Yet the numbers going into finance haven’t dwindled that much. MBA graduates at top finance business schools like Tuck (and arguably NYU-Stern, Michigan-Ross, Virginia-Darden, all Consortium schools) are finding their ways back to Wall Street, but perhaps in a variety of roles.  About 30% of the Tuck Class of ’13 headed to financial institutions, and about 35% are working in finance functions. In investment banking, 14% of the class went to work there; 11% are working in classic investment-banking functions (equity or debt underwriting, M&A, client advisory, etc.)—numbers that don’t suggest a lack of interest in  this generation of students.

Tuck’s statistics, nonetheless, show a dearth of classmates headed into private equity and venture capital (only 2%).  The small percentage stands out because many go to business school with expressed interests (and great enthusiasm) about private equity and venture capital. The numbers might reflect the scarcity of opportunity in such a fiercely competitive segment and the unorthodox ways some of these firms recruit.  (Blackstone and Carlyle may recruit at top business schools across the country, but Silicon Valley venture-capital firms may recruit informally or prefer to recruit only from across the street at Stanford).

The latest statistics may also reflect the lack of opportunities on trading desks at big banks, which have had to scale back because of new regulation.  MBA graduates interested sales and trading nowadays don’t have the chance to work in structured career pathways at a Credit Suisse or JPMorgan and will likely look for opportunities, if they exist, at hedge funds, many of which struggled last year and may not be swarming business schools this year. Some students interested in sales and trading can seek similar opportunities at investment managers (Blackrock, e.g.).

Tuck’s statistics show first-year compensation in finance hasn’t fallen into a sinkhole. But the range is as wide as ever, partly because the impressive, mind-shaking salaries and bonuses have been paid out primarily at the bulge-bracket and boutique banks in financial centers (New York, Chicago, San Francisco), and not always at the smaller, regional institutions. 

Still, in a post-crisis era, compensation doesn’t seem to always drive MBA graduates’ career decisions. Indeed these are different times. MBA graduates know the time they spend at Bank of America, Aetna, or UBS right out of school won't last decades. Furthermore, they seek flexibility and a life on weekends or seek some comfort that when the next crisis occurs, they won’t appear on a bank’s long reduction-in-force list.

Tracy Williams

See also:

CFN:  Are MBA's turned off by investment banking? Oct-2012 CFN:  Who's headed into finance, 2012? June-2012 CFN:  MBA job-hunting: No need to panic yet, Feb-2012
CFN:  Who's headed into finance, 2013? June-2013
CFN:  MBA's: Eye on summer '14, Nov-2013
CFN:  Where do you want to work? Feb-2013
CFN:  Today's bulge brackets, Jan-2013
CFN:  Goldman tweaks the banking ladder, Sept-2012

Yale SOM Gets a New Look

Yale SOM's Evans Hall opens up in January (NH Register photo)

Yale School of Management, one of the Consortium's 18 schools, is opening up a new campus facility, Evans Hall, in New Haven in mid-Jan., 2014.  The school will launch the new state-of-the-art building with receptions, lectures, presentations and celebrations of what has made Yale SOM special and unique among the panoply of business schools. The week's theme is "Leadership in an Increasingly Complex World."

The new campus will feature the marvels of business-school technology and covers 242,000 square feet, at a cost of $240 million, much of which was made possible by benefactor Edward Evans, who was an undergraduate student at Yale and later CEO of Macmillan, Inc., the publishing house. Besides interview rooms and three libraries, it will even have a student gym and entertainment space.

Yale's dean, Edward Snyder, migrated to Connecticut in 2011 from Chicago's Booth School of Business. In the midst of Chicago's Gothic maze, Booth is a modern, self-contained business school campus, the kind of campus Yale SOM students and faculty might have envied.  Once Snyder arrived in New Haven, he spearheaded the completion of a new campus, a new facility featuring the latest business-school bells and whistles. And his experience in helping to open Chicago's new doors no doubt got many SOM faculty, alumni and students excited about a new campus for Yale.

Building modern facilities is a frequent occurrence at top business schools.  They know that to attract top students, schools must pay attention to their physical being. Facilities, campus and amenities sometimes rank as high as innovative course offerings, curriculum, career placement and notable faculty when students decide whether or not to attend.  While Yale SOM attracted top students over the past decades, many alumni and school leaders felt that an impressive, separate campus was necessary to lure the student that might otherwise be more interested in attending Wharton or Harvard.

Yale and Chicago are certainly not the only schools with new campuses.  Stanford now has its new Knight Management Center, home to its business school since 2011, featuring courtyards, magical classroom technology, chic ambience and sunlit, outdoor cafe settings.  Wharton and Consortium school Michigan have also opened new campus facilities.

Yale SOM has had a colorful history. When it was launched in the mid-1970s, it wanted to be different from other schools. It offered a management-education mixture of the public and private sector.  The degree it certified upon its graduates then was the "MPPM"--a master's in public and private management, arguably a combination of the MPA and MBA degree. Graduates would be steered toward Morgan Stanley, the World Bank or Capitol Hill. At one point, the "O" in "SOM" stood for "Organization."

At times, alumni, recruiters, employers and other constituents interpreted the degree in many ways. And at times, new deans pushed the emphasis one way or the other. Eventually SOM settled on the MBA degree, and it has tweaked the definition of what that means from time to time. In its first three decades, Yale SOM didn't have a separate facility, but existed in a pleasant, neighborly network of "houses" on Yale's Hillhouse Ave.

The new Evans Hall reinforces the notion that Yale SOM has become a top business school in a classical way, although the school, more than many others, tends to walk and run to its own drumbeat by remaining small and enjoying experiments with new ways of instruction or new approaches to the MBA experience. Its integrated curriculum is its latest novel approach.

Yale joined the Consortium in 2008 and has graduated dozens of Consortium MBA's since then. 

Yale being Yale, the school and new facility will seek to fit in well with the rest of the Yale campus.  Evans Hall, with blue hues, courtyards and exquisitely selected artwork, wants to be identifiably Yale, circa 2014.

Tracy Williams