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No job, MBA grads turn to support groups for solace

By SiliconIndia | Thursday, 24 December 2009, 01:43 Hrs | 3 Comments

No job, MBA grads turn to support groups for solace

Bangalore: Needing encouragement in this shambled job market, MBAs are now turning to B-School support groups. In the last year or two, dozens of job search support clubs, often called "job accountability" groups, have sprung up on MBA college campuses across the country. Some are official school-sponsored ones organized by the career services offices at business schools, while others are student-generated and student-led meetings, reports the Business Week.

Gillian Mager was in the midst of updating her MBA job club members on her networking efforts last June, when she broke down in tears. Like most in the support group at the University of California at San Diego's Rady School of Management, her job search had extended beyond graduation and she spent her days sending out resumes, often getting no response back. "I remember talking about it and I just started crying hysterically," she says. "My friend just hugged me and was like, You know what, everything is going to work out." Thus, to help out Gillian, for the rest of the hour-long session, her business school classmates discussed what might have gone wrong during her job interview, critiqued her resume, and gave her ideas on what she could do differently next time. The group's encouragement and advice paid off; by August she landed a job as a marketing data analyst at Petco. Gillian said, "I just think if I were doing it alone, it would have been a lot harder. Having that shoulder to lean on really helped."

Students are banding together to help each other more than ever before as they navigate one of the most dismal MBA job markets in years. While the format of the groups can vary - they take place in campus cafeterias, students' apartments, or via conference call - all of them share a common goal - to help keep students motivated and upbeat while hunting for a job in a brutal market, career services officers say. In some cases, alumni from the MBA class of 2009 who are still job-hunting are participating. The groups can become a lifeline of sorts for students, who can easily get discouraged and frustrated as their job search drags on, says Robin Darmon, Director of Rady's MBA Career Connections office, who launched several job clubs for students last year and plans to do so again this winter. "Keeping their morale up is a huge part of this, so we kind of act as cheerleaders. We talk them through it and say, 'This too will pass'. Most of these students are doing everything right, and in a good economy they would have had four or five job offers."

Also, the dreary job climate is what motivated the MBA students from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business to set up about 10 student-led "accountability groups" for full-time job-seekers, who are members of the Net Impact chapter, a business-oriented environmental club with about 370 members. Each group has anywhere between five and seven students and all of the sessions are led by a student facilitator, who helps classmates build a timeline for their job search, provides guidance, and leads discussions.

Kip Harrell, Board President of the MBA Career Services Council and the Director of the Career Management Center at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz, said, "Employment is a lagging indicator even if the economy is showing signs of recovery, it could take six or even seven months before MBA employment comes back to what it was before March 2008."

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Reader's comments(3)

1: core intention of MBA is not to make candidate search for Job, but make him create jobs, dont understand why still this kind of discussions pop up.

Posted by:vinay - 25 Dec, 2009