How can business schools promote employability?

When choosing a business school, looking at the career outcomes of an institution's recent graduates is a useful way to identify a school which will be aligned with your personal goals.

To find out more about how a school promotes employability throughout its curriculum and provides invaluable career support to its students, we spoke to the careers services team at Nanyang Business School.

What careers services does your institution offer to students?

Nanyang Business School’s (NBS) Graduate Studies Career Development Office (GSCDO) offers high-touch customised career support to every post-graduate in all of our 10 master's programmes. Each student will be guided by a team of programme lead, sector consultants and career coaches on their journey of self-discovery to work out an actionable plan to reach their career goals.

This partnership starts when each student is enrolled with NBS and stays long after their graduation.   

What aspects of your careers services do you feel make your institution distinct from others?

Nanyang Business School is viewed as a key recruiting partner by many Fortune 500 corporations and social impact organisations. We work hard to prepare our postgraduate participants for the workforce.

A dedicated go-to career counsellor looks after each graduate programme, working with our participants in a multitude of areas such as career planning, job-hunting strategies and linking participants to industry and alumni contacts. All of our career counsellors hail from industry and they bring with them deep insights into, and strong connections within, industries of interest to our participants.  

GSCDO also curates a suite of career workshops, covering important topics such as professional etiquette, networking, resume writing and interview preparation.  These are aimed at ensuring that participants meet the high demands of employers and stand out from the competition.

Our efforts have yielded good returns – each year, we achieve high employment rates for all our programmes. Our participants have proceeded to join top companies such as Amazon, Apple, BCG, Deloitte Consulting, GE, GIC, Goldman Sachs, Hilti, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, P&G, PwC, Shopee, and Tencent to name a few.

How does your institution promote employability throughout its curriculum?

Our programmes are designed to prepare students for the workplace.  The application of classroom learnings to real-world settings is emphasised in much of the curriculum.  For example, in the MBA programmes, students embark on the Strategy Projects at Nanyang (SPAN). It is a 100-day live consulting project (together with three-four classmates) to help a real live business craft a strategy to help them overcome a business challenge. 

Taking the MSc Business Analytics programme as an example, students get to work with real live data from our corporate partners.  This ensures high relevancy to industry needs. 

At the end of the coursework, students in our MBA and specialised MSc programmes also have the option to continue with an internship module.  This gives our students the opportunity to gain real-world experience and apply what they have learned to the workplace.  

What support do you offer to graduates entering the workplace?

Each student is unique because they come from different backgrounds and have different career aspirations. Hence, much consideration and care are given while assigning career coaches to the individual student to ensure relevance in the area of coaching and the student’s career aspiration.  

Sector consulting is also made available to all postgraduate students to provide them the most relevant and current industry/company insights, helping our students make sense of the employment market, and preparing and positioning them for success in their job search through industry workshops and mock interviews.

What are the career outcomes of your recent graduates?

In our latest MBA employment report, 93 percent of our MBA participants found employment within three months from graduation, in 28 locations across the globe.  92 percent of MBA participants made changes in sector, geography or function.

Across our specialised MSc programmes, 96 percent of our graduates secured employment within three months from graduation.

What should applicants consider when comparing the career outcomes of different universities?

While short-term employment statistics are important, we should also look beyond that and keep in mind the long-term career advancement and impact of our alumni. 

Beyond that, it's important to understand how each university’s career office works with students – we believe that Nanyang Business School’s high-touch approach and our innate ability to understand individual students’ needs and work alongside them, is what makes the career development journey of each and every student fulfilling. 

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