Mays feels the impact of economic boom, bust
BY LARA ZUEHLKE
Like their counterparts across the country, Mays Business School students enjoyed the economic explosion of the late 1990s and early 2000s that produced thousands of jobs. The aftermath of the bust left both students and career services staff members reeling. Mays students today are facing a much different climate.
It was high times for business students as the 21st century dawned. Eager to enter the business world, those bright-eyed talents were met at campus career fairs by recruiters ready to pony up large salaries and double-figure bonuses.
"It was almost as if you were breathing, you had a job," Graduate Business Career Services Director Jim Dixey says with a laugh. "In fact, if you were dead you had a job, and if you were breathing, you had four offers."
During the booming economy of the late 1990s and early 2000s, firms needed employees. Lots of them. Both undergraduates and graduate students found easy entrée into their careers. While that was great for placement numbers, it created a somewhat false of sense of reality, says Ashley Kinnard, outgoing career services coordinator for Mays' Undergraduate Program Office, who has served in the post since 2000.
"There was a sense of slight arrogance among students," she says. "Students didn't have experience, yet they wanted $50,000-a-year starting salaries."
Almost overnight, the tide turned. The dotcom bubble burst, and the economy buckled. Factor in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the downfall of large players like Enron and Andersen, and business students faced a new reality.
"We went from booming offers where companies increased bonuses the earlier students would sign to delaying start dates for as much as a year," explains Kinnard, adding that Mays Professional Program students, waiting to assume internships and full-time positions, were particularly impacted by the collapse of Enron and Andersen.
In hindsight, everyone across the board — students and career services personnel included — paid a very high price for those glory days, concedes Dixey. He believes that's largely because the dotcom era was built around "false assumptions and half-baked ideas." When the bubble burst, everyone suffered.
The recruiting roller coaster
Campus recruiting particularly illustrates the swing that occurred among firms from the late 1990s to now. During the boom, companies clamored to hire droves of business students.
"I remember talking to people on Wall Street," says Dixey, who was then assistant dean of career services at Georgetown University. "They told me they were hiring people they normally wouldn't hire because they needed bodies. It was very easy to get hired."
 |
Now, several years down the road companies still turn to campuses like Texas A&M for recruiting, but they have different strategies. After forced layoffs and delayed start dates, firms are making smarter hiring decisions, says Samantha Wilson, director of employment services at the Texas A&M Career Center.
"Companies are still recruiting on campus but they are not necessarily hiring such large numbers," says Wilson. "We have seen more companies move to just-in-time recruiting. Many have gotten to the point, with the economy and the global political climate, that it's more difficult to determine where they will be two years out."
While firms have scaled back on quantity, they have also become choosier about where they find talented new hires. In its 2003-2004 Executive Summary, the Graduate Management Admissions Council cites the number of schools at which companies recruited MBA students declined from 11 schools to 8 schools between 2001-2002 and 2002-2003.
Like many business schools, Mays also witnessed a dip in the number of companies recruiting on campus after the economy tanked. "Many companies now only visit five or ten campuses," Kinnard says. "Fortunately, we have been one that companies still visit. With our strong undergraduate program, companies have continued hiring from A&M but they just aren't hiring as many students."
With fewer jobs and tighter competition, the career services function at Mays has taken on even greater importance for students.
Careers need managing
During the hiring frenzy of the dotcom boom, students could afford to be passive about the job search process. After all, companies needed employees. But the recession forced students to rethink their attitudes about finding jobs.
"I think students are now more realistic and realize they have to work harder," says Kinnard. "Students play a huge role in getting placed with a company. The ones that are proactive get placed."
Providing students the tools needed to confidently compete in today's market is Dixey's main focus at the graduate level. He's quick to let new MBA and master's students know that Graduate Business Career Services (GBCS) isn't a placement office.
 |
"My philosophy is that career management is their responsibility, not ours," he says candidly. "They will, over the course of the years they work, face many career decisions. We won't be there for that, so career management is their personal responsibility."
So where do Dixey and his staff fit in? "Our number one priority is to educate them," he says, "so that when they leave here they have the career management skills and tools they can use the rest of their lives."
GBCS hosts a battery of workshops and events each semester that expose students to the nuances of career management — from effectively communicating through résumés and cover letters to proper etiquette in business situations. The center also consults with students one on one to assess their career goals.
Undergraduate students at Mays, and Texas A&M, are also groomed early on for the job search process. Mays' many undergraduate student and professional organizations, as well as the A&M Career Center, host résumé building programs and related seminars.
Because in today's marketplace, whether students have a BBA or MBA in tow, the key to landing a good job comes down to taking initiative — both in identifying companies as well as forming and tapping into networks, Wilson contends.
"I think that has been the thing that's helped students the most the past few years — using all of the resources at their disposal," she says. "Not just the on-campus interviewing we have, but they have made connections through The Association of Former Students and the professional organizations they are part of."
Clearly, business students and career services staff members have experienced their fair share of heartache over the twists and turns the marketplace has taken in recent years. And even though the chain of events shifted organizations' hiring strategies, firms still need those bright-eyed business students eager to go to work.
May the best candidate win. @
