{"id":8596,"date":"2015-05-20T13:04:44","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T13:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.prd.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/?p=8596"},"modified":"2015-05-29T13:52:31","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T13:52:31","slug":"high-satisfaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/high-satisfaction\/","title":{"rendered":"High Satisfaction"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Read<\/a>
Read McNamara<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last year, it was the end of March before full-time job offers for the Class of 2014 approached 72 percent. This year? In January, 72 percent of the Class of 2015 already had offers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s expected that by 90 days after Commencement, 90 percent of graduates will have full-time job offers, making this the third consecutive year Owen hit that mark.<\/p>\n

While members of the Owen School\u2019s Career Management Center are quick to credit an improved job market and employer optimism, they also acknowledge that the CMC\u2019s strategy of sharpened focus on employers and student coaching is paying off.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in our third year of what I would call a bull market,\u201d says Read McNamara<\/a>, managing director of the CMC and corporate affairs. \u201cWhat\u2019s changed radically from when I came here in 2010 is a greater confidence in the economy. I think we\u2019re now at a point where firms are finally confident enough to build back to their prior numbers in terms of strength and size of the workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

“We\u2019re in our third year of what I\u2019d call a bull market.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Add to that the quality and stability of the veteran CMC staff, and employer and student satisfaction levels rise. \u201cBeing able to attract staff who have succeeded in the corporate world gives them tremendous credibility when they approach students as coaches,\u201d McNamara says. \u201cRegarding stability, career management is a business that undergoes quite a bit of turnover and attrition. There\u2019s a lot of poaching in this field\u2014especially when you get into the top 20-30 schools\u2014so I pinch myself every morning. I am blessed to have one of the best staffs in the business.\u201d<\/p>\n

McNamara and Emily Anderson<\/a>, MBA\u201999, director of operations and coaching, also point to the quality of Vanderbilt students and the relationships CMC staff have with them. \u201cThe size of our student body allows us to know them and to track them over time,\u201d Anderson says. Those personal relationships aid the staff in helping the students identify and prepare for what paths they want to pursue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get a wide variety of backgrounds. Students have a varying degree of knowledge of what a business career path is. We try to help them figure out\u2014based on their experience, their skills, their interest areas\u2014what might be possible avenues for them and to understand the longer term career progression,\u201d she says.
\n<\/br><\/p>\n

Student prep<\/h4>\n

In addition to helping students discover their focus, Anderson and the coaching staff work on preparing students for successful internships and interviews. \u201cYou can have a good market, but students still have to go execute,\u201d she says. \u201cThey have to know what they want to do and then they have to be able to present themselves to the employer base in a way that makes their candidacy compelling. We work on that a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January 2015, 72 percent of the Class of 2015 already had offers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Job<\/a>
Students and recruiters value CMC programs like this career fair.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anderson says that they coach the students to understand what employers want and how to judge whether the organization\u2019s cultural fit is right. \u201cIs teamwork very important to that employer or is it pure horsepower and raw knowledge they want? If so, how do you go into an interview knowing how to perform in that environment?\u201d Anderson says. \u201cEmployers take recruiting seriously and they look for candidates that match their qualities. Sometimes it\u2019s circumstances, sometimes it\u2019s a cultural fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coaches and students do similar preparation for internships. Anderson says that all internships have a defined project or role over 10-12 weeks. \u201cThat allows employers to see how the students communicate, use teamwork or work independently,\u201d Anderson says. For many employers, the goal of these internships is to convert the internships to full-time offers. In 2014, 53 percent of internships converted to offers\u2014up sharply from less than 30 percent in 2010.
\n<\/br><\/p>\n

High satisfaction<\/h4>\n

McNamara\u2019s role includes engaging employers and recruiting new corporate partners. \u201cWe\u2019ve been able over the past five years to build up a constellation of reliable, consistent employers who are here in good times and bad, looking to not only hire a number of interns but to extend multiple full-time offers,\u201d he says. Five years ago, only two companies hired three or more students. In 2014, six companies hired three or more, with Amazon hiring 12.<\/p>\n

\"Emily<\/a>
Emily Anderson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe serve two customer bases\u2014No. 1, the students, and No.2, the employers. We\u2019re fortunate enough to have performance metrics for both those universes that allow us to objectively gauge and assess how we are doing,\u201d McNamara says. \u201cI\u2019m very proud that we have had four consecutive years of steadily improving student satisfaction\u2014an important measure which is now at an all-time high. Given the quality and quantity of employers who come on campus now, I am confident that we are meeting the talent acquisition needs of our employer base as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

That satisfaction isn\u2019t just with new hires. Employers continue to report high satisfaction with retention and success of Vanderbilt alumni within their organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know one of the most gratifying things for me is to hear Geoff Walker [MBA\u201994 and executive vice president of global brands] at Mattel saying, \u2018We did a study of retention and success, and Owen came out on top in terms of the MBA talent we recruited,\u2019\u201d McNamara says. \u201cDaVita, another key employer of ours, said \u2018Read, we went back years and looked at retention and progression of career, and Owen came out No. 1.\u2019 When I see tangible, concrete evidence of the success of our students at premiere employers\u2014when I\u2019m not shown platitudes but the hard, concrete numbers of how well our graduates have done in their company\u2014that is very gratifying.\u201d
\n<\/br><\/p>\n

What\u2019s ahead?<\/h4>\n

Sustaining that excellence is a top goal for the CMC. \u201cWhen you get offers and acceptances above 90 percent at 90 days after Commencement, there\u2019s not too much room to improve on those performance metrics,\u201d McNamara says. \u201cIf we can continue to operate at the kind of level we are now in those performance metrics while advancing our average salary and bonus numbers, through good markets and bad markets, we would have good reason to be pleased.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the CMC does have another future goal. \u201cRight now we have outstanding relationships with a number of firms who recruit on campus and who will provide us with a speaker for a club or participate in our Distinguished Speaker series, as well as companies who will sponsor case competitions. What we do not have are those comprehensive, all-encompassing company relationships that run the gamut from on-campus recruiting all the way to an executive-in-residence,\u201d McNamara says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dean and I have discussed that a top priority for me and the Career Management Center will be to play the pivotal role in developing strategic partnerships with key employers, the kind of relationships, for example, that the Sloan School at MIT has had for 50-60 years with General Motors,\u201d he says. Such strategic relationships can pay off for schools in sponsored research, corporate advisory board members and named research centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we sustain the level of excellence we have achieved in the key performance metrics we employ and we form those key relationships, I think the future of Owen looks very bright,\u201d McNamara says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strategic efforts earn the Career Management Center its best employment results yet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341,"featured_media":8602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8596"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9318,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8596\/revisions\/9318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}