Reality Check

Ask one thing that's on the mind of the MBA students in our class today and, chances are, you'll get two replies: The Management Research Report and Career Placement.

We had an orientation from the Enrolment Management and Placement (EMP) department, a recently-formed unit during a reorganization of the Asian Institute of Management last January. This new unit integrates the old Career Management Services folks and is still part of the school's efforts to improve operations, including career placements. EMP head Prof. Eligio Santos led the orientation, along with career placement officers Mary May Pagkatipunana and Maybelle Funańoz.

The orientation really was more like a reality check for our batch as numbers were presented. The CMS success numbers have been rising like gas prices in the last three years, but it seems it has hit a little speed bump. The 2007 MBA batch was had averaged multiple offers, but the 2008 MBA averaged almost 1 per student only. Another interesting figure: The offers from the 2007 batch came from a pretty diverse set of industries like Consulting, Finance and Information Technology. But for the 2008 MBA numbers so far, a good chunk of those have been placed are in the Information Technology field, with Finance a far second.

There was a Q&A session after the presenation and most of the questions centered on companies limiting certain nationalities for their applicants, distribution of CV's and invitation of companies and the offering of electives that cater to a particular industry.

Prof. Santos was able to answer the questions but is aware of one thing: Reality. He said that they'll be doing their best to get companies to come, but it ultimately goes down to how the MBA student plays his career placement cards.

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