CA: What coaching and/or advice do you provide to students pursuing entrepreneurship?
LK: When you start coaching a student and they talk about entrepreneurship, they are often coming at it from one of two directions. On the one hand, you have students who say, “I want to start my own company. I have a problem I want to solve or an idea I want to pursue.” But then there’s another segment of students who want to work for a high-growth startup or something that is more early stage.
From the coaching perspective, it’s important to figure out which kind of student you are talking to. We offer entrepreneurship pathways for students, and our curriculum offers plenty of relevant coursework. The Kellogg Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative (KIEI) helps equip students to be able to be a business leader, whether in a large company as part of a discrete group looking at innovation or in a startup.
That student who wants to pursue his or her own idea will soon be faced with the choice of starting that idea versus everything that comes on campus. Oftentimes that’s an evolving story. A student may have an idea, but it might morph five times before it’s put to the marketplace. For the students who want to pursue a startup but don’t have their own idea, it may be looking at what type of startups resonate with them. More than 50 startups come to school to recruit students, so there are many different startup-type opportunities to choose from.
Our coaches are well equipped and prepared to help students through the startup interviewing process. Our coaches work with students to help them understand how to get on the startup companies’ radar to be hired and help them craft their story to show how they could be a good fit within a startup environment.
CA: In what ways have alumni been able to assist students wishing to pursue entrepreneurship?
We are uniquely positioned in that we have a very robust alumni career services and professional development team run by my counterpart Matthew Temple. The team offers free career counseling for anyone who wants to engage with them at any point later in their careers. That group has recently debuted a “How Do I Launch My Own Business” workshop in response to that growth.
CA: What other interesting trends or shifts have you been observing—both in terms of companies who are hiring more or less and student aspirations?
LK: We find that the demand is high for MBAs. The story that I see evolving is this: The MBA skill set is becoming more and more valuable as companies grapple with an explosion of data and a more complex business environment. Companies are finding that the MBA skill set is a way to move forward and set strategy. So we have been seeing strong employer demand.
We talked about tech earlier, and I would say that is a big element. But it’s not just tech, it’s also other industries that have been creating new positions for MBAs that haven’t traditionally existed before. A lot of these roles are around data, business operations and serving as a connector between data and business units. I think that is a really exciting time to be able to use your MBA skill set because the business environment is constantly changing and becoming more complex. Our students are well positioned to go out and have an impact very quickly in that environment.
CA: Have you seen a contraction in hiring of international students by top U.S. companies? How has this impacted the career services offerings you provide to students from outside the U.S.?
LK: We have increased our offerings for international students, creating a coaching forum unique to them. We don’t look at our international students as homogeneous – students who come from China/India/South America have had very different recruiting experiences to date. There has definitely been constriction in the H1-B Visa process, but we are fortunate to have employers that support and hire Kellogg international students. It is true that for international students in particular, having the ability to translate your background and compete in this marketplace is challenging. U.S.-based recruiting may be very different than previous home country experience, but we work to help these students prepare for that transition.
For example, we have increased our investment in interview prep and language support for our international students, including helping them understand the ways in which interview customs can differ from country to country. We have an English language consultant on staff who provides one-on-one assistance as well as small groups and drop-in hours. The goal is to provide students a resource that will help with their language abilities, which increases confidence in the classroom and in recruiting activities. We highly recommend that our international students take advantage of this resource, because it is simply a reality that interviewing at this level can be very stressful, especially when English is not your first language.
CA: How many incoming students do you see each year who are actually pretty undecided about their post-MBA path? What resources to you offer to help them hone in on a career path that suits them?
LK: I don’t have an actual percentage, but the answer to your second question comes out of individual coaching. The way we use our first coaching session is to get a feel for potential industries and functions of interest. We also are looking to understand how married they are to that plan versus how “squishy” that plan is.
The change and evolution from where a student starts and where they end up is such a transforming process. A student will come in — even the most resolute in his or her goals — and sit next to someone in class who held a job they have never heard of. And suddenly, they find themselves considered new and different ideas.
We provide the Career Leader tool, which students gain access to before they start at Kellogg. In addition to that, we really work one-on-one to help unlock each student’s path, recognizing that it might change over time. These changes are part of the process and part of the excitement of being at an MBA program of this level. There are so many opportunities and things to explore when students arrive.
CA: What do you lose sleep over with regard to the Kellogg Career Management Center and what it offers?
LK: I really feel like we are making the right investments. The demand for Kellogg MBAs has never been higher, and the people our students encounter here are unique in terms of really getting excited about someone else’s success.
I spend most of my time thinking about the individual student experience. Are they getting what they need? Are we creating the conduit to the best employers? What’s the next thing that will be coming down the pike?
We listen to our students to understand what they are interested in and who the hot companies they want to have on campus are. You get that by being engaged with the student body—being in a proactive position versus a reactive one.
We wholeheartedly believe in our students – We believe that they can achieve their career goal and we believe that our role is to create an environment in which they have access to information, advice and employers that is bar none. It is a privilege to work with students who are so motivated. We take it seriously and want to do everything we can to support their success. They own their success, but if they can have access to top employers, benefit from great advice and get support when the marketplace changes, we want to be here for them the entire way.
