MBA Careers Q&A: NYU Stern

If you’re serious about undertaking an MBA degree, then you’re serious about advancing your career – improving employment prospects has consistently been the number one reason cited by international applicants for wanting to pursue an MBA. In addition, you’ll almost certainly want to expand your horizons and explore new career possibilities and opportunities, given GMAC’s recent finding that 73% of full-time MBA applicants see business school as a time for exploration.

This makes the services provided by business school career centers a hugely important facet of what you stand to gain by taking an MBA. In an effort to help prospective students gain a greater sense of the kind of career services schools provide, TopMBA.com has reached out to the careers offices of MBA programs around the world. In the following interview Q&A, Beth Briggs, senior director at NYU Stern’s Office of Career Development tells us about her team’s goal of helping “connect students with their goals and aspirations,” and how they work with the school’s admissions team to “help assess applications to determine fit from a career standpoint.” Read on to learn more.

1. Does the NYU Stern career services team work with the MBA admissions team during applicant assessment?    

We partner very closely with our admissions colleagues and meet prospective students during the applicant recruitment process. This past year, I had the opportunity to travel to a number of cities to attend information sessions and meet people who were interested in attending NYU Stern.

My team in the Office of Career Development (OCD) also partners with our admissions team each year on 'super interview days', where we have a chance to interview students. The team also creates and delivers programming at our annual event for admitted students, where we have an opportunity to get to know prospective students.

We are in constant communication with admissions to share feedback from our ongoing conversations with our employer partners about their MBA hiring needs and to help assess applications to determine fit from a career standpoint.

2. When do on-campus corporate recruitment events and interviews typically take place at NYU Stern?

For our first-year MBA students, corporate recruitment events that take place on campus start at the end of September and continue throughout the fall (autumn). For second-year MBA students, these events begin right at the start of the fall semester, while interviews for full-time roles begin in mid-October. Both events and interviews continue throughout the fall. Interviews for summer internships, meanwhile, start during the second week of January and continue throughout the spring semester. In addition to on-campus corporate recruitment events, there are many events that take place at the offices of recruiting partners who may not use a campus-based recruiting approach.

3. Are there particular skills that career services helps students to accentuate during job fairs and recruiting?

Our goal as a career office is to help connect students with their goals and aspirations and to assist them with finding the best next step in their careers. To achieve this goal, we provide students with early pre-orientation programming to get them thinking about their target company lists and the kinds of roles in which they are interested.

Overall, we want students to be able to clearly articulate what skills they already possess, what their interests are in a particular industry or company and what value they can provide to an organization.

Additionally, throughout any type of recruiting, being able to share your story or elevator pitch is an important networking tool. Indeed, building a strong network and connections is critical to career success for students during their time at NYU Stern as well as after they graduate and continue their career journeys.

4. How do career services help MBA students prepare for recruitment events? In what ways does the career center help match students with companies that will be a good cultural fit for them?

We offer a career preparation program called ‘Ignite’, which includes a number of different workshops including networking, informational interviewing, mock interviews, cover letter reviews, résumé development and more. This program is meant to support students during their MBA job searches and to serve as a foundation for their ongoing career navigation.

As part of our assessment workshops, we want students to think about their skills, values and goals. Doing a self-assessment early on provides a strong baseline for what industries and roles will fit best. We also help students to build out parallel short and long-term plans to see how current career choices can serve as stepping stones for future roles.

5. Are there any new companies recruiting on campus? Have you seen a change in industries?

Over the past few years, we have seen a growing diversity of companies coming to campus to recruit. One particular industry that is increasing MBA hiring of NYU Stern talent is technology. We are seeing more and more mature technology companies, such as Amazon and Google, participate in on-campus recruitment. Because we are in New York, we can also partner readily with growing tech firms such as e-commerce firm, Jet.com, and music streaming service, Spotify, to organize networking events and company visits.

In addition, we are seeing increased interest from entertainment and media firms as well as luxury and retail companies, such as NBCUniversal, Time Warner, and Michael Kors. Similarly, we partner with companies in these sectors to organize networking events and information sessions to accelerate the connection between our students and these opportunities.

6. Are there any changes to the way in which companies are recruiting?

Skype has become an increasingly common modality for interviews, particularly for first-round interviews for companies located outside of New York. We prepare students by conducting mock interviews using Skype and we offer workshops on how to successfully conduct a virtual interview.

7. What kind of contact does the NYU Stern career center have with MBAs after they graduate?

The team in the Office of Career Development continues to partner with our most recent alumni after graduation to offer support and guidance as they move into their first post-MBA roles.

We also engage with our alumni as they come back to campus to share information and opportunities with our current students – we are lucky to have so many alumni in the greater New York City area who are open to meeting with our current students to offer advice and ideas.

Finally, our NYU Stern alumni have lifelong career support through our Career Center for Working Professionals. In addition to offering one-on-one coaching, this team holds a wide variety of programming aimed at supporting alumni who are looking to advance in their careers.