Does the career services office work with executive search firms?
Merrick: We have been in a lot of conversations with executive search firms – but no, we don’t. 1-2% of our students get jobs through executive search firms each year. If you look at the current labor market, executive search firms are interested in people who have incredibly deep, deep experience in certain areas, and basically our students don’t profile for the executive search market. Period – they just don’t. We don’t think that is a good use of our time – I would rather spend that time targeting someone on our Key Account list than talking to executive recruiters. In addition, many executive recruiters have treated our students badly and I wouldn’t want to be endorsing any executive recruiters because they don’t have a reputation of treating our students well. Harbus: What is the update on the initiative to hire MBAs as full-time employees at HBS, the last I heard the goal was 10 MBAs per year? Merrick: I don’t have the specific numbers, but we did hire in the career services offi
