Career Services Director Q&A

Clear Admit’s exclusive interviews with career services directors at the leading MBA programs around the globe.

Published: December 25, 2017

Career Services Director Q&A: Stanford GSB’s Maeve Richard

Earlier this month, Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) released its 2017 MBA Employment Report, revealing record-breaking salaries for the third consecutive year. The school’s most recent crop of graduates boasts average and median base compensation of $144,455 and $140,000 respectively—both up about $4,000 over last year’s all-time highs. (Incidentally, those figures are also higher than any other business school in the world.) The average signing bonus also increased by almost $3,000, setting a record as well at $29,534. Other guaranteed compensation, meanwhile, blew past last year’s all-time highs by close to $10,000 in Read more

Published: December 7, 2017

Career Development Q&A: Jeff McNish of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business

Sponsored Content We recently spoke with Jeff McNish, assistant dean of career development at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. McNish joined Darden to lead its Career Development Center in 2016 and hit the ground running. An expert in higher education and careers who most recently served as head of the career center at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, McNish and his team are devoted to student success, cultivating an individually tailored approach that begins before new students even step foot on Darden grounds. Clear Admit: What role does Read more

Published: November 26, 2017

Career Services Director Q&A: NYU Stern Assistant Dean of Career Services Beth Briggs

NYU Stern School of Business earlier this month shared highlights from its Class of 2017 MBA Employment Report, revealing that Amazon hired more Stern graduates than any other company. It marked the first time that a technology company topped the school’s list of leading employers and is reflective of an overall trend of increasing numbers of Stern MBA graduates heading into technology. In the past five years, technology placements have more than doubled, and they represented 16.8 percent of all hires last year—up from 10 percent the year before. Amazon was followed by Deloitte (No. 2), J.P. Read more

Published: December 11, 2016

Inside the Career Treks at McCombs

An MBA program that spends all of its time and effort only in the classroom is one that may leave its students at a disadvantage. The truth is that it’s the hands-on and out-of-class experiences that often make the biggest impression on MBA students, and that’s exactly why McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin takes its MBA students on career treks every year. These treks, led by the Texas MBA Career and Management team, take MBAs to various cities and companies around the nation for a unique learning opportunity. During each trek, MBA students learn more in-depth information about their favorite industries and corporations through presentations, Q&A sessions and networking opportunities. And so far, the treks have been a huge success. Read more

Published: August 17, 2016

Career Services Director Q&A: Julia Min Hwang of the Berkeley-Haas MBA Career Management Group

We are delighted to feature Julia Min Hwang of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in our series of Career Services Director Q&As. Hwang, assistant dean of the Berkeley MBA Career Management Group, has spent 10 years at Haas. Before taking over as assistant dean two years ago, she served as program director for the full-time MBA program. Before that she ran the MBA admissions process at NYU’s Stern School of Business. Our thanks to Hwang for taking time out of her busy schedule to speak with Clear Admit. Read more

Published: August 10, 2016

Career Services Director Q&A: Liza Kirkpatrick of Kellogg’s Career Management Center

Liza Kirkpatrick, director of full-time MBA programs for the Career Management Center at the Kellogg School of Management, has a long career in recruiting. Before joining Kellogg, she spent almost a decade with a staffing firm, helping to grow it from 12 people to five different offices in Chicago. When she came to Kellogg in 2008, she immediately had to prove her worth in a down market. Since then, she has held several different positions within career services but has always remained focused on student coaching, with oversight of the employer relations team, the coaching team and the operations team. In the interview that follows, she unpacks the recruiting process at Kellogg, shares some of the shifts she’s seeing in terms of employer hiring and student aspirations and stresses the importance of thinking about your career goals before arriving on campus. Read more

Published: June 26, 2016

Career Services Director Q&A: Cynthia Saunders-Cheatham of Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management

In our continuing series of interviews with career services directors at leading business schools, we connected earlier this month with Cynthia Saunders-Cheathem, who heads the Career Management Center (CMC) at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Business. Saunders-Cheathem joined the CMC eight years ago and was promoted to executive director in 2014. Before Johnson, she worked in corporate marketing for 15 years at a range of companies including Hanes Underwear, Valvoline and United Technology. Saunders-Cheatham was generous with her time and went into great detail regarding Johnson’s career management offerings, trends in hiring and student career goals and how Read more

Published: May 23, 2016

Career Services Director Q&A: NYU Stern’s Beth Briggs

An English major with a master’s degree in social work, Beth Briggs brings an array of resources to her role as senior director of the Office of Career Development at NYU’s Stern School of Business. After devoting the first portion of her career to various forms of social work, she transitioned to a more formal consulting role at Mercer, where she spent eight years, initially as a team writer but ultimately as a principal in the firm. At Mercer, she worked with a range of New York City‒based clients across industries around their human capital needs. Coming to NYU Stern in 2008, she started initially at what has since become the school’s Office of Student Engagement, helping to run its NYC experiential learning programs, including Stern Consulting Corps, through which MBA students work with for-profit and not-for-profit organizations throughout New York City. Briggs left the Office of Student Engagement for the Office of Career Development in 2009, where today she leads the career coaching, relationship management and operations teams for full-time MBA students. Read more

Published: April 4, 2016

Career Management Director Q&A: Stacey Rudnick of UT’s McCombs School of Business

This week our continuing Career Services Director Q&A Series takes us to Texas, where we caught up with Stacey Rudnick, who directs MBA career management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Rudnick has been in her role at McCombs for 12 years now, a transplant from Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business. “I got into this because when I went to business school I had a really fabulous career advisor,” she told us. Though her jobs immediately out of business school—with Eastman Kodak and later in consulting with Viant—were not related to career advising, she kept in touch with that advisor from school, who eventually convinced her to come back and join Goizueta’s career services team, where she spent three years. Read more

Published: March 1, 2016

Career Services at Georgetown’s McDonough School: Q&A with Doreen Amorosa

Five years ago Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business convinced Doreen Amorosa to take over as associate dean and managing director of career services, despite the fact that she lived in New Jersey, not Washington, DC, and didn’t plan to move. She did commute for the first few years, returning to central Jersey to spend weekends with her husband. But they've since sold that home and divide their time between DC and Cape May. “The center of the universe has shifted a little bit,” she says with a laugh. Amorosa had spent all of her career working in New York City, including the first 22 years with Merrill Lynch. In her later years at Merrill, she migrated into running recruiting and retention for the firm, discovering that was what she really loved. She went on to head recruiting for a range of other firms, including American Express, traveling to the McDonough campus in that capacity to recruit MBA students. That’s how the school recognized her talents and eventually wooed her to its side of the fence. Read more

Published: September 28, 2015

Career Services Q&A: Sue Kline of MIT Sloan’s Career Development Office

What does the job search look like for MBA students? How does it unfold at each individual school? The Clear Admit Career Services Q&A Series is designed to answer those questions and more—and we’re kicking off the newest round with an interview with Sue Kline, co-senior director of the Career Development Office (CDO) at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Kline kicked off her own career working as part of Sloan’s CDO more than 30 years ago. Five years in, she left to pursue a graduate degree and then worked for more than a decade in human relations at Boston Consulting Group and Hewlett-Packard, learning the industry side of things intimately before coming home again to Sloan 14 years ago. Read more

Published: October 23, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: VK Menon of the Indian School of Business

VK Menon has served as director of Career Advancement Services at the Indian School of Business (ISB) since 2004, a role in which he helps to build and strengthen relationships between the school and the corporate world. He leads a team of 30 executives who help ISB’s class of 770 students secure top jobs in India and elsewhere. Prior to joining ISB, Menon was a professor of marketing and sales management at SDM-IMD, a business school in Mysore. He spent more than a decade before that devising marketing strategies for some of India’s most recognized corporations, including BPL, Philips and Nelco. In the interview that follows, he outlines the recruitment process at ISB and talks about the valuable role alumni play as part of a program called Knowledge Transfer Sessions by Alums. Clearly, he and his team must be doing something right. The school had its best-ever placement record this year, with 425 companies making 820 offers to ISB students. Clear Admit: How do you view your role as director of Career Advancement Services? Is it to administer workshops? Counsel students? Counsel companies? Manage the entire office and oversee its various functions? All of the above? VK Menon: The primary objective of the head of Career Advancement Services is to manage three interests: 1) That of the recruiters, who would like to hire the talent that best fits their requirements; 2) That of individual students, who would like to get a role that they would love to work in, in a company of their choice, and 3) That of the business school, which would like to ensure that the entire class gets placed within three months of graduation. Read more

Published: October 21, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: Derek Walker of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School

Derek Walker has been leading the Oxford MBA Careers Services for the last four and a half years. He came on board a few weeks after the financial crisis, which he says can be viewed as either a terrible or a fantastic time to start. (He views it as the latter.) Before coming to Oxford, Walker worked in financial services campus recruiting. “It was really a buy-side to a sell-side move,” he explains. His favorite part of his job is working directly with students, particularly when they follow his advice, he shares. Read on to learn how he feels about open versus closed interview schedules, to hear the stories of recent Oxford MBA graduates who landed great jobs (and how they did it) and more. Read more

Published: October 16, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Amy Wittmayer

Our Career Services Director Q&A Series this week takes us to the southern United States, where we connected with Amy Wittmayer, director of the MBA Career Management Center (CMC) at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. Wittmayer joined UNC Kenan-Flagler in 2010. Before that, she had her own career coaching firm, worked at the University of Texas MBA Career Services office and worked for eight years in corporate finance and strategy. Read on to learn more about how Wittmayer and her team at the Career Management Center start their work with Kenan-Flagler students even before the arrive on campus. Prospective applicants – you won’t want to miss her advice for how you can hit the ground running when you arrive. Read more

Published: October 14, 2013

Clear Admit Career Services Director Q&A: Stacey Rudnick of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin

This week as part of our continuing Career Services Director Q&A Series, we touched down in Texas. Stacey Rudnick, director of MBA Career Services at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, took time to participate, and we’re so glad she did. Rudnick has been the MBA Career Services Director at McCombs for nine years, and before that she worked as a senior associate in career services at her alma mater, Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. “I got into this because when I went to business school I had a really fabulous career advisor,” she tells us. Though her jobs immediately out of business school – with Eastman Kodak and later in consulting with Viant – were not related to career advising, she kept in touch with that advisor from school, receiving more than one offer to come back and join Goizueta’s career services team. At the time of the second call, the job represented a perfect career opportunity at the right time in her life, and she jumped at the offer. Read more

Published: October 9, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: Gary Fraser of USC’s Marshall School of Business

Gary Fraser joined the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business as assistant dean and executive director of the Keenan MBA Career Services Center in the summer of 2012, culminating a comprehensive national search to fill the role. Fraser came to Marshall from New York University’s Stern School of Business, where he spent 12 years as dean of students and associate dean of MBA student affairs. During his tenure at NYU Stern, he oversaw the Office of Student Activities and the Office of Career Development and launched and directed the Career Center for Working Professionals. Before joining NYU Stern, he held several positions in brand management, including at Sara Lee, Cadbury Beverages and Kraft/Nabisco. As Fraser shares in the interview that follows, students at Marshall benefit from a full month of self-assessment and individual career development before employers arrive on campus since the MBA program begins in late July. Read on to learn more about some of the other things that make career services at Marshall unique, including the school’s small student body and its strong alumni base, the “Trojan Network.” Read more

Published: October 7, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: Karen Siegfried of the Cambridge Judge Business School

Our continuing series of interviews with career services directors took us most recently to Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, where we caught up with Karen Siegfried. Siegfried is currently serving as interim head of career services, resuming a role she first held in 2010. Her permanent role, though, is as MBA executive director for Judge, with oversight for a team responsible for not only careers but also marketing, admissions, program and projects. Below she describes the MBA Career Services team, including the addition this year of several sector-specific career consultants. She also explains how her team encourages students to remain flexible in the short term – with regard to their first post-MBA job, for example – as a means of reaching their long-term goals. She also shares more about the several ways Judge alumni take an active role in the recruiting process, and she provides some valuable advice for prospective applicants in terms of what they can do now to be better prepared for a successful job search when they arrive at Judge. So read on… Read more

Published: October 2, 2013

Clear Admit Career Services Director Q&A: Stephen Rakas of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University

Stephen Rakas has been in career services with the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon for the past 10 years and in his current role as executive director of the Career Opportunities Center (COC) since 2011. His previous experience includes four years in career services with the University of Pittsburgh and an additional decade of experience in general management and sales in industries ranging from healthcare to high-end retail. “I discovered earlier in my career that serving as a conduit between the academic and business environments was a strong match with my skills and interests,” he told us. “I’m passionate about higher education, and the opportunity to help students transition their academic achievements into the world of work is very rewarding.” Check out the interview below, in which he describes the comprehensive Base Camp Orientation all Tepper students undergo before classes even begin, explains why all the members of the COC team devote time both to counseling students and to maintaining relationships with employers and more. Read more

Published: September 30, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: Javier Muñoz of IESE

Our interview series with career services directors at top business schools takes us this week to Barcelona’s IESE, where we spoke with Javier Muñoz, assistant dean and director of career management. Muñoz knows IESE from many angles. He began there in 2001 as an MBA student himself, completing his degree in 2003. Upon completion, rather than return to banking, which had been his career path before business school, he accepted a position in the IESE admissions department. “The offer [to join the admissions team] was very surprising at the beginning, but IESE is famous for bringing in MBAs [to its administration] every year,” he told us. After eight years in admissions, including five as head of the department, IESE offered Muñoz an opportunity to lead a different department – career services. He accepted and took over as assistant dean and director in 2011. Muñoz had no idea when he came to IESE for an MBA that he would find himself working there for the next decade plus. “The only thing that I knew was that I wanted to explore different options apart from finance,” he says. He got several other offers, but when IESE came calling he answered. “I fell in love with the school, the MBA was such a great experience for me, they offered me a great position and I went for it,” he says. Read more

Published: September 25, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: Fred Staudmyer of Cornell’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management

Assistant Dean of Career Management Fred Staudmyer has been leading the Career Management Center at Cornell’s Johnson School since September 2009, and he brought decades of executive recruitment and human resources experience with him to the role. Just prior to joining Johnson he led the Garrett Sayer Group, an executive search firm focused on the technology, financial services and consulting industries, and he held a range of other senior positions focused on human resources and recruitment before that. In our interview, Staudmeyer shares his most important objectives as head of Johnson’s Career Management Center, his plans to expand his team of career advisors – including to support a new MBA program in New York City as part of the Cornell Tech Campus – and the book he recommends all Johnson students read to best structure their independent job searches. Read more

Published: September 23, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: Regina Regazzi of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management

In its new director of the Parker Career Management Center, UCLA’s Anderson School of Management has found someone with unique insight into the school’s alumni base, as well as extensive recruiting and career consulting experience. Regina Regazzi graduated from Anderson herself with an MBA in 1997. After a stint at Bank of America in leasing she decided to switch gears to executive recruiting, turning to the Parker CMC for help in her own job search. She landed a job at an executive search firm and ultimately went on to launch her own firm, Artume LLC, in 2008. All the while, she remained actively involved with Anderson as an alumna, serving in several roles of the UCLA Anderson Alumni Network and winning the 2005 Outstanding Alumni Service Award. She was ultimately elected president of the Alumni Board of Directors in 2009, responsible for representing the school’s 37,000 alumni. Read more

Published: September 18, 2013

Clear Admit Career Services Director Q&A: Pamela Mittman, NYU Stern School of Business

Next up in our Career Services Director Q&A Series is Pamela Mittman, assistant dean of career services and leadership development at NYU Stern School of Business. An alumna of NYU Stern’s full-time MBA program, Mittman brings both a student and alumni perspective to the role. Before joining Stern as an administrator more than 10 years ago, she worked in consulting and financial services. In her current role at NYU Stern, she oversees career services and leadership development for all MBA students. In answering our questions, Mittman helps to describe the very personalized career development process students will encounter at NYU Stern, including a special program known as IGNITE, which begins as soon as students arrive on campus. She also urges students to give careful thought to their personal brand, even when it comes to casual postings on social media pages. Check out more of what she has to say… Read more

Published: September 16, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: London Business School’s Fiona Sandford

Career Services Director Fiona Sandford joined London Business School (LBS) in October 2010, after serving for nearly a decade as the director of career services at the London School of Economics. Since arriving at LBS, she has been helping to develop a new model to more seamlessly integrate soft skills development into the school’s career services offerings. In the interview that follows, you’ll learn more about that new model, as well as who makes up Sandford’s team, how the recruiting process at LBS unfolds and what students can do before arriving on campus to position themselves well for the job search they will conduct there. So read on! Read more

Published: September 11, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: Yale School of Management’s Julia Zupko

Julia Zupko joined Yale School of Management (SOM) as assistant dean and director of the Career Development Office in March 2012, bringing with her more than a decade of career services expertise honed at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. At Chicago Booth, Zupko helped expand career services into several sectors, including nonprofit and government work, and directed career management operations at Booth’s campuses in London and Singapore. In her first full year at Yale SOM, Zupko restructured the organization of the Career Development Office in an effort to improve efficiency and strengthen recruitment. Under her helm, the school’s annual SuperWeek in January drew a record 11 investment banks to campus. The overall number of companies coming to recruit Yale SOM students throughout the year also increased. Read on to learn from Zupko herself about how Yale SOM teaches “career skills for life,” how her team helps students steer clear of the “herd effect” and more. Read more

Published: September 4, 2013

Career Services Director Q&A: INSEAD’s Mary Carey

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ American-born Mary Carey stepped into her current role as director of the INSEAD Career Development Center in September 2012, but she was not new to INSEAD nor to France. Before last year, she was executive director of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Center, and before that she worked in career development at another leading European business school, HEC. She began her professional career in southern California, working as a CPA with KPMG as well as in financial services before heading back to school to study leadership development and career development. When she had the opportunity to come over to France, she jumped at it because she wanted the international experience. “It really opens your eyes to the world,” she says. That was seven years ago, and she’s still there. Read more

MBA Applywire

December 18, 2024 11:38am ET

Applying: Michigan / Ross, UNC Kenan-Flagler, Vanderbilt / Owen

Intake Year: 2025

Pre-MBA Career: Held various positions in Finance and Accounting in a healthcare institution

Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting, Other Companies: BCG , Deloitte , Other

GPA: 3.0

Years of Work Experience: 11

Location: International

Notes:

I am passionate about healthcare enhancing patient quality care. So exploring in that field is what I would love. Got a 72k scholarship from Vandy and named Forte Fellow. UNC 50k. I'm having a hard time deciding though my heart is leaning towards Owen

December 18, 2024 10:23am ET

Applying: Arizona State / W.P. Carey, Indiana / Kelley, Ohio State / Fisher

Intake Year: 2025

Pre-MBA Career: Facility management

Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting

GRE: 309

GPA: 2.8

Years of Work Experience: 3

Notes:

Graduate GPA -3.869

December 18, 2024 2:57am ET

Applying: IESE, INSEAD, MIT Sloan, U. Chicago Booth

Intake Year: 2025

Pre-MBA Career: Engineering

Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting, Technology, Undecided Companies: Amazon

GMAT: 690

GPA: 3.26

Years of Work Experience: 4

Location: Chile

December 17, 2024 6:19am ET

Applying: Columbia, Dartmouth / Tuck, Duke / Fuqua, Georgetown / McDonough, Harvard Business School, Michigan / Ross, MIT Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, NYU Stern, U. Chicago Booth, UPenn / Wharton, UT Austin / McCombs

Intake Year: 2025

Pre-MBA Career: Registered Nurse

Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting Companies: Bain , BCG , McKinsey

GRE: 326

GPA: 3.5

Years of Work Experience: 3

Location: Colorado

Post MBA Location: Chicago/NYC

Notes:

25F, lgbtq
Education: Bachelor's degree in Nursing (GPA: 3.5) from a top 2 nursing school
Work Experience: 3 years as a high-risk OB Registered Nurse at a major hospital, with leadership roles in various healthcare initiatives and patient care management.
Additional Experience: Currently working as a GP
Operations Specialist at an early-stage healthcare/tech-focused venture capital firm, where I optimize operational processes and support investment decisions in the healthcare sector.
I understand my background is somewhat non-traditional for an MBA program and that my stats are about average for these schools, but I believe my experience in healthcare and VC provides a unique perspective and skill set. Which M7 or T15 schools do you think I should realistically target, especially those known for strong consulting programs? With my stats and experience do I realistically have a shot at admission to a top program? I have a particular interest in Kellogg and Booth, as I'm planning on pursuing a career in healthcare consulting.
Additionally, I would love any guidance on how to present myself as a competitive candidate and effectively showcase my strengths and experiences in healthcart and venture capital. Thank you for your help!

December 17, 2024 12:03am ET

Applying: Columbia, Dartmouth / Tuck, Duke / Fuqua, NYU Stern, UCLA Anderson, UVA / Darden, Yale SOM

Intake Year: 2025

Pre-MBA Career: Worked in Tech vertical at Barclays

Post-MBA Target Industry: Investment Banking Companies: Goldman Sachs , JP Morgan , Merrill Lynch , Morgan Stanley

GRE: 335

GPA: 3.2

Years of Work Experience: 2.5

Location: India

Notes:

With an experience of 2.5 years and a promotion to mid-managerial level as a data analyst, I look forward to MBA for a broader global exposure and be in the decision making position to see how my work brings a real time impact for the organisation.

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MBA LiveWire

December 19, 2024 9:36am ET

Accepted to NYU Stern

Round: Round 1

Received via phone on December 17, 2024

GPA: 3.97

Program Type: Traditional Two-Year

Target Career: Technology

Application Location: Midwest

Note:

Portal update by this afternoon!

December 18, 2024 9:45pm ET

Accepted to Columbia

Round: Round 1

Received via email

GPA: ~3

GMAT: 735

Program Type: Traditional Two-Year

Target Career: Finance

Application Location: Mumbai

Note:

130k scholarship

December 18, 2024 7:47pm ET

Accepted to NYU Stern

Round: Round 1

Received via phone December 18, 2024

EA: 155

Program Type: Traditional Two-Year

Application Location: Brazil

December 18, 2024 4:28pm ET

Accepted to NYU Stern

Round: Round 1

Received via phone December 18, 2024

GPA: 4.44/5.0

GRE: 327

Program Type: Traditional Two-Year

Target Career: Technology

Application Location: Nigeria

Note:

Got a call with the news a few hours ago. Portal will update with full details tomorrow by noon.

December 18, 2024 1:38pm ET

Accepted to Columbia

Round: Round 1

Received via portal on December 10, 2024

GPA: 3.7

GRE: 335

Program Type: Traditional Two-Year

Target Career: Entrepreneurship

Application Location: San Francisco

Note:

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