Get Smart Part Two: Recruiting Report

Part One: Admissions Report
Part Three: Curriculum Report

Alysa Polkes winces at the punch line she's endured like a recurring kick in the shins this year: What do B2B and B2C stand for on business-school campuses today? Despite the hype, Polkes says that "back-to-banking" and "back-to-consulting" are oversimplifications of a fascinating era in MBA recruiting.

"A student who would have worked at Homestore.com last year is not going to pursue corporate finance at Morgan Stanley this year," says Polkes, director of the MBA career center at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. "Most of the students heading into banking and consulting this year were never interested in dotcoms in the first place."

Anderson is one of many American business schools monitoring seismic activity on the recruiting landscape. Fewer Internet startups are tapping business schools for interns and full-time employees this year, which is not shocking considering the dismal fates of Pets.com, Go.com, eToys, and countless other Internet pure plays in the past six months. And considering the 15,000 people who were laid off from Internet-related companies last month, it stands to reason that fewer students will pursue career opportunities at the dotcoms left standing.

Holding Steady

The more shocking news is what's not changing at places like the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and Columbia Business School. According to Glen Sykes, director of the University of Chicago's office of MBA career services, the class of 2000 pursued jobs in consulting and banking with more fervor than many previous classes. In the midst of last year's dotcom euphoria, 34% of Chicago's graduates entered investment banking, and another 32% entered consulting -- the highest percentages in recent history. Likewise, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania reports that 17% of last year's graduates entered the high-tech field while more than 50% pursued careers in either banking or consulting.

"Last year, we saw a large number of students go the traditional route at established firms," says Regina Resnick, director of career services at Columbia Business School, which placed more than half of its students in the financial-services industry last year. "I smile when people ask whether our students are returning to banking and consulting. Returning? They never left!"

However, high-tech and Internet companies did garner more interest on the West Coast last year. The Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley saw 25% of its 2000 graduates enter high-tech careers; the Stanford Graduate School of Business saw 24% of its students do the same.

Abby Scott, director of MBA career services at the Haas School, is quick to point out that the high-tech sector comprises large and small, dotcom and non-dotcom companies alike. In fact, the dotcom crisis has not curbed interest in the high-tech industry at large. Haas expects a majority of its 2001 graduates to remain in the tech-heavy Bay Area regardless of regional economic changes.

Bandwidth Bandwagon

Though it's fallen out of favor with venture capitalists and media critics, Silicon Valley remains ground zero for many second-year business-school students. Late last month, about 200 students from the Sloan School of Management at MIT traveled to northern California for the school's annual Tech Trek -- a weeklong research and recruiting trip that made stops at Silicon Valley stalwarts like Oracle, Sun, and Intel. Grace Webber, a second-year Sloan student who attended Tech Trek, says that her colleagues were most interested in visiting the less sexy, infrastructure companies that form the backbone of the Internet.

"The backlash is not against Silicon Valley," Webber says. "The backlash is against startups -- particularly e-retailers -- that have neither a differentiated business model nor the leadership needed to dominate their market space. Today, students are looking to the high-tech companies that deliver the bandwidth, technology, and speed that makes the Internet tick."

Indeed, Resnick expects Columbia students to gravitate toward high-tech jobs at more established companies in Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley this year. "The Internet is not going away," she says. "High-tech recruiting will remain steady this year, but our students will turn their focus from content to conduit and from e-commerce to infrastructure."