No. 1

IMD tops Economist Intelligence Unit's MBA rankings, but are the good times about to end for business school graduates? http://mba.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=2008rankings

IMD has been ranked the first in the world in the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest survey of full-time MBA programmes. It is the first time the Swiss school has topped the annual ranking. IMD took the number one slot from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, which drops to third, while Spanish school IESE claims second place. Stanford and Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business round off the top five. The highest ranked Asian school was Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 11th.

IMD is one of the most international business schools in the world. Ninety-seven percent of its students come from abroad—with around half of those from outside of Europe. One of the reasons for the school's triumph has been the success of its careers placement service. IMD students can expect to earn a basic salary of US$130,000 a year on their graduation—compared with pre-MBA salaries of US$79,000.

Indeed this year was a bumper year all round for MBA salaries. Columbia in New York, for example, reported an average leaving salary of US107,000, while London Business School's graduates can expect US$120,000-a-year. But with the banking crisis leading to job losses in financial centres around the world, this might be the best it gets for business school graduates for some time.

Bill Ridgers, editor of Which MBA? commented: "The financial services industry has for some time competed with consultancies to be the leading recruiter of MBA graduates, offering huge salaries along the way. But with recent failures, a lot of talented bankers are suddenly out of a job. It is likely that current students are likely to find themselves graduating into a buyers' market and salaries will start to reflect this."

To add on to this press release, we just had a 2-week first round on campus interviews with some 60 global companies in altogether 822 interviews for the entire MBA class. A big thank you to our fabulous Career Service team. Bonne Chance!

from Under-prepared to Over-prepared...

Since last Sunday, I had altogether 12 interviews with 9 organizations (focusing on Marketing or Strategy function) and it was only the first week of our On Campus Recruiting. Before that, I actually had an informal interview with an Executive Board Member of a leading industrial company based in Switzerland. It was not only informal, but also unusual. The setting was an bench at the meadow where we had outdoor lunch buffet at IMD, the weather was sunny, and the timing was after lunch. The interview was centered around my motivation & interest, or rather how have I aligned both, one of the trickiest question and the dynamics was not leading to enough "chemistry".

After the interview, I immediately contacted my career coach, an alumna graduated 10 years ago and now a seasoned Executive Coach (of course, she's assigned by our fabulous Career Service Team). She quickly responded and arranged a debriefing session with me, analyzing the interactions of the interview, giving feedback, pushing for preparations, and of course, I was under-prepared. My coach extended the session for an additional 30 mins to help me practice. I was really grateful for that and felt ready for the coming interviews.

Some companies already notified us about the results of 1st round interviews, both good & bad news. One of the rejection letter I received saying that I was a bit "over-prepared", in context of the particular company / headquarter country culture.

The lesson learned, preparation is always necessary & good, but execution has to be adapted according to the context. Look forward to the week II interviews!