SEARCH AND EMPLOY
How do Stanford MBA students find those great jobs? In addition to traditional on-campus recruiting interviews, students searching for jobs this year can use a number of tools. They include career forums, open houses, Web listings, and receptions as far away as Hong Kong. More than 140 students paid their own way to receptions in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles during winter break to meet with 125-plus firms that typically don't come to campus. Corporate open house programs in New York were held at Viacom, Hearst Multi-Media, ABC/Disney, and the New York Times.
CMC Director Sherrie Gong Taguchi expects about 240 firms to recruit on campus this year, up 3 percent from 1995. In response to the job market and student interest, the CMC is developing recruiting relationships with firms in high technology, manufacturing, entertainment/multimedia, and venture capital/principal investing, and with small companies and nonprofits.
Students can sharpen their search skills in CMC advising sessions and mock interviews. The CMC also offers 40 workshops during the year and maintains a resource library.
Tech talks
If sheer volume of activity is any indication, GSB students are consumed by the possibilities of high technology. Over nine days in January, the High- Tech Club sponsored speeches by eight movers and shakers of the cyberworld. On January 22, Michael Nevens, leader of McKinsey's worldwide electronics practice, spoke about electronic commerce. He was followed by Richard Christner and Rob Norcross, of Mercer Management Consulting, on the convergence of computing, communications, information, and entertainment; Vince Tobkin, Andrew Klein, and Steve Ellis, of Bain & Company's high-tech and telecom practice group, on building technology businesses; Ed McCracken, MBA '68, chairman and CEO of Silicon Graphics, on the relation of business to the World Wide Web; and -- on January 30 -- GSB lecturer Andrew Grove, president and CEO of Intel Corporation, on the good news and the bad news about the Internet. The students then rested until February.
What becomes a legend most?
Think of a Business School institution. The Arbuckle Award? No. The GSB Building? No. Friday afternoon LPFs? No. MORE of an institution. I don't know. I give. Are you sure? Yes. Okay. It's Paul Johnson, MBA '58.
Johnson, a 1953 graduate of Stanford, served three years in the U.S. Army and then returned to the University as an MBA student in 1956. Forty years later, he left the School, after serving as director of case development, director of alumni relations, and associate dean for administration. Before his retirement in January, Johnson developed a masterful game of tennis -- which will no doubt see him through many fruitful and happy years ahead with his tennis partner and wife, former accounting officer Carol Domenico, who retired last year after a mere 25 years at the GSB.
WOMEN'S WORK
GSB alumnae (and alumni, for that matter) will meet at the School April 12 and 13 for a two-day conference, GSB Women: Working Toward Solutions. The conference will follow the pattern of the SBSAA's first women's conference in 1994 but will offer an entirely new menu of speakers, workshops, and panelists.
Keynote speaker will be Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst, a nonprofit research group that works to advance women in business and the professions. Interactive workshops will introduce strategies for building personal credibility in the workplace, working on a board of directors, and negotiating a favorable employment package, among other subjects. The weekend will begin and end with panel discussions featuring alumnae Farah Champsi, MBA '85; Maryellie K. Johnson, MBA '75; Jennifer Bowman Lawrence, MBA '95; Barbara West, MBA '72; Sheila Penrose, SEP '84; Carolyn Ticknor, MBA '77; and others. For further information and reservations, call Geri Gould at 650-723-2694 or fax 650-723-1322.
But will it fly?
To the folks in business who use the term, "helicoptering" means viewing things from above where one can take a strategic, high-level view rather than getting caught up in details. But to students enrolled in Integrated Design, Manufacturing, and Marketability (IDMM), helicoptering involves getting down and dirty in the machine shop to learn the details of manufacturing a viable product.
Students in the joint GSB-School of Engineering course compete as four-person teams, each of which is assigned a specific product to design, manufacture, and "market" (by means of a computer analysis). The competition is judged solely by the bottom line, which is determined by such real world factors as how the products are positioned in the market, how they are priced, how much they cost to produce, and how much they appeal to the customer.
Before they could produce this year's product -- a collapsible camera tripod -- the students spent four consecutive Saturdays in Stanford's machine shop learning how to operate the tools they would need. In the process, each student built a miniature helicopter. In January came the class's first exam. The choppers flew. The students passed.
This is an official Stanford Graduate School of Business webpage
Copyright © 1996 Stanford University - Graduate School of Business