Career Services Director Q&A

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ Three 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. Now she keeps a small apartment in DC and commutes back and forth each week, returning to spend the weekends with her husband. Until that point, 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. And that’s how the school recognized her talents and eventually wooed her to its side of the fence. Read more

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ Editor's note: In the time since we conducted this interview, Malone has returned to Columbia Business School, where he currently serves as associate dean for the school's MBA program. But because he shared so much valuable insight into the Kellogg School of Management career services process, we're running his interview here. We will update this series with an interview with Kellogg's new head of the Career Management Center in coming weeks. Michael Malone came to Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management to serve as managing director of the Career Management Center in January 2012 after serving as director for career education and advising at Columbia Business School (CBS) for six years. Describing himself as a “lifelong student-focused professional,” he explains that he has spent the past 20 years in higher education in roles that have helped him understand the different pressure points faced by both student and employer. “I am able to bring a level of understanding from both the student and employer sides to help them understand the other’s needs and build empathy between them,” he says.   Read more

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ This week we’re learning about career services at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. We had a great interview with Sheryle Dirks, associate dean of career management, who leads Fuqua’s Career Management Center (CMC). Dirks has been at Fuqua since 1998 and in her current role as associate dean since 2005. She came to career services from the MBA admissions world, having worked in MBA admissions in the Chicago area. “I loved the intermingling between the corporate world and the education world” that career services offered, she says, so when she landed a job in career management at Fuqua she was thrilled. Dirks manages the CMC’s 30 full-time staff members, as well as a small group of executive coaches and more than 90 part-time student career counselors. The CMC provides career services to all of the degree programs that go through the business school, which include the full-time MBA program as well as three executive-style programs in which students continue to work while in school and a one-year degree program for slightly younger students. Read on to learn how the CMC was reorganized last year to better align with the school’s strategy and resources. Dirks also shares her perspective on how the recruiting process has become less linear and more fragmented in the wake of the economic crisis, why passion is one of the most crucial elements of the job search process and more. Read more

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ Our continuing series of interviews with MBA career service directors takes us this week to Charlottesville, Virginia, where Jack Oakes of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business generously made time to speak with us. Oakes has been assistant dean and director of career management at Darden’s Career Development Center (CDC) since September 2010, leading all of the center’s activities, including developing strategy, managing a global portfolio of recruiting companies and coaching students. Oakes first joined the CDC in February 2005, but his connection to Darden dates back further, to his own time there as a student. He graduated with an MBA/MA in East Asian Studies in 1989, having come in as a career switcher looking to shift from finance to marketing. Upon graduation, he worked in a range of marketing roles, including in consumer goods at Procter and Gamble, before coming back to Darden and the CDC. “This is really just another version of marketing,” he explained, “because we help students market themselves to prospective employers, we help companies market themselves to students and we help Darden market itself to the world.” In the interview that follows, he encourages students to come to Darden having taken a close look at their own skills, characteristics and abilities so that they can take advantage right away of the resources the CDC provides to determine the right career path for them. He also gives some advice to prospective applicants preparing to approach the Darden application. “Here at Darden, what is most important is not what a student will learn but what a student will teach other students,” he says. “In the case method students are learning as much from each other as from a faculty member, so show how you will make Darden stronger.” Read more

~A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~ Moving right along in our Career Services Director Q&A Series, we had the good fortune today to connect with Damian Zikakis, director or career services at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Zikakis joined Ross in September 2010, bringing a range of experience that makes him the perfect person to lead the Ross Career Services team. Most recently, he served as managing director of the Michigan office of Boyden Global Executive Search, a retained search firm with 70 offices in 40 countries. Before that, he spent more than 20 years as a CPA and as a financial executive, including with Price Waterhouse in its Chicago, Tulsa and Detroit offices and at several small- and mid-sized companies in roles ranging from controller to chief financial officer. In the interview that follows, Zikakis provides a concise but comprehensive overview of his role, the career counselors who makes up his team, how the recruiting process unfolds at Ross and the resources available to help students prepare to interview. But that’s not all. If Ross is on your list of target schools, you’ll want to be sure to check out what he has to share.   Read more

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ In our continuing series of interviews with career services directors at top MBA programs, we recently spoke with Jonathan Masland, director of the Career Development Office at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. Masland, who worked as an entrepreneur and investment banker before joining Tuck, explains that most of his team also comes from business backgrounds. For him, the role offers a perfect combination of things he enjoys. “I like counseling, working with students, business – this allows me to do a little of all those things,” he says. In the interview that follows, he shares more about some of the other members of his team and how they all pull together to help Tuck students in their career searches. In fact, even Tuck Dean Paul Danos plays a hands-on role in helping students find the jobs they want, Masland tells us. Read on to learn more, including why Masland thinks that Tuck students benefit from interacting with companies and alumni starting almost as soon as they arrive on campus as first-years. Read more

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ This week we head to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where Julie Morton, associate dean of career services, gives us a glimpse into the career counseling and job search resources Chicago Booth students have at their disposal. And there are many! Morton has been leading career services at Chicago Booth since March 2000. An MBA herself – she graduated from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business in 1992 – she worked in retained executive search and as a financial services and strategy consultant before joining Booth. Before Tuck, she was the director of admission at Mount Holyoke College. There is a lot to learn in the interview that follows about career services at Chicago Booth. For starters, Morton shares her office’s “mantra” – that at Chicago Booth students conduct their own job searches, but that they are not alone in them – and just what that means. Indeed, students have a huge team of professional career coaches, second-year career advisors, a career resource librarian and more at the ready to help facilitate their career management process. Read on to learn about Chicago Booth’s recruiting activities, its “trifecta” of interview training and steps Morton’s team has taken to better prepare students for job searches that increasingly include interviews via videoconference and Skype and networking via Linked In. Read more

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ MIT Sloan School of Management welcomed Ron Peracchio last year as its new assistant dean and director of career management. Peracchio came to Sloan from Harvard Business School (HBS), where he first co-directed Student and Academic Services and later directed the Business and Environment Initiative, a faculty research initiative. Before joining HBS, he was director of career development for Boston College. Though he has more than two decades of experience in higher education, Peracchio didn’t start there. “I was originally a mechanical engineer designing helicopters,” he reveals. Why the shift? For as much as he enjoyed being an engineering student, upon graduation he found the engineering work isolating. “I was always at my drafting table lost in the micro details of designing these helicopters,” he says. So he went to business school to broaden his skill set. Read more

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ A couple of years ago, Columbia Business School (CBS)’s Regina Resnick helped us kick off the Career Services Director Q&A Series, and she was kind enough to chime in again this summer with some updates on her office and the services they provide to MBA students. Resnick is associate dean and managing director of CBS’s Career Management Center (CMC), a role she has held since 1999. The CMC’s role has grown in the decade-plus she has been in charge. Once serving just full-time MBA students, the center now provides services to Executive MBAs and MS students as well. Read more

Roxanne Hori, associate dean for career management at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, is the most recent participant in our continuing Career Services Director Q&A Series. Hori has been in her current role for the past 16 years, so she certainly has some perspective to share. Earlier in her career she worked in recruiting for a range of corporations, including a Chicago bank. She first came to Kellogg as a career coach, a position she held for about five years before returning to banking. But ultimately she came back to Kellogg to direct the Career Management Center, where she’s stayed ever since. Read more

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 almost seven years, and before that she worked as a senior associate in career services at her alma mater, Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Read more

This week we’re learning about career services at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. We had a great interview with Sheryle Dirks, associate dean of career management, who leads Fuqua’s Career Management Center (CMC). Dirks has been at Fuqua since 1998 and in her current role as associate dean since 2005. She came to career services from the MBA admissions world, having worked in MBA admissions in the Chicago area. “I loved the intermingling between the corporate world and the education world” that career services offered, she says, so when she landed a job in career management at Fuqua she was thrilled. Dirks manages a staff of 22 full-time career management officers as well as six contract coaches who work with Fuqua both locally and in areas where the school has a lot of alumni. The CMC provides career services to all of the degree programs that go through the business school, which include the full-time MBA program as well as three executive-style programs in which students continue to work while in school and a one-year degree program for slightly younger students.  Read more

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ Next up in our Career Services Director Q&A Series, we turn to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Here we reconnected with J.J. Cutler, who we first interviewed for our Admissions Director Q&A Series in February 2009. Since that interview, Cutler has been appointed deputy vice dean of admissions, financial aid and career management for Wharton, with direct oversight of the MBA Career Management Center. So it made sense to speak to him again in his new role for this series. A lifelong Philadelphia resident, Cutler has deep ties to the University of Pennsylvania, where he got both his undergraduate degree and his MBA. After receiving his MBA in 1997 from Wharton, he worked for a number of years in healthcare consumer goods and marketing, including time at ARAMARK as senior VP of marketing, seven years at Johnson & Johnson and most recently as the president of Lindi Skin, a start-up offering skin care products specifically designed for people with cancer. Read more

In the second installment of our Career Services Director Q&A Series, we connected with 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 the recruiting process for all MBA students. Read more

~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~ It’s a new year, and we’re launching a new series here at Clear Admit. To kick off 2011 we’ll be sharing our exclusive interviews with directors of career services centers at each of the top business schools around the globe. In this new series we have asked a range of questions designed to help prospective applicants get a fuller sense of the career services offerings at each MBA program. As with our Admissions Director Q&A Series, we have asked the same questions of each director in order to give applicants the ability to make direct school-to-school comparisons. We hope the interviews will help you learn what to expect when you get to campus, understand the relative strengths of each school’s career services centers, get to know a little about the directors themselves and think about what you can do before you even apply to help ensure that you have the most successful job search possible. In our debut interview, we speak with Regina Resnick, assistant dean and managing director of the Career Management Center (CMC) at Columbia Business School (CBS). Resnick has been at CBS since 1996 and has led the CMC since 1999. The role of the CMC has grown in Resnick’s decade plus at the school. Once serving just full-time MBA students, the center now provides services to Executive MBAs and MS students as well. Read more