It's been a busy spring for Gil Penchina. The senior manager for corporate development at eBay (EBAY) has made the rounds at three high-tech MBA conferences this year, "selling students on why eBay is a great place to work." It feels like every time you turn around, there's Gil.
Penchina estimates eBay hired a half-dozen MBAs last year in departments like marketing, business development and finance, and this year he expects the company to hire even more.
At one event, Harvard Business School's Cyberposium in February, over 1,000 MBAs networked with more than 120 companies - plus numerous student-run startups sprouting like kudzu across academia. "You are a marketable commodity right now," said Rob Schmults, VP of strategy at Fort Point Partners. "It's a great time to be you."
It's been a great time to be an MBA for a while. Back when The Standard first noted that MBAs were shifting from traditional careers in consulting and banking firms to Internet startups ["MBA Draft, March 29, 1999], the trend has accelerated markedly.
These days "safe" MBA destinations like McKinsey & Co. and Goldman Sachs are having so much trouble landing students from the top schools that they've started to prowl second-tier universities. It doesn't seem to be working. Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., reports that 43 percent of its MBA students have accepted positions at Internet-related companies, twice as many who are going into consulting and financial services.
Jennifer Lawrence, assistant dean for career services at Boston University (dossier) School of Management, estimates that about 25 percent of her school's MBAs are jumping into Internet-related careers this year, a huge increase from the previous year.
"Eighty-five percent of dot-coms are here for the first time," she says. "Most of them don't know what the hell they're doing." She remembers a recent call from Bill Peverill, a friend and cofounder at NetVentures, an e-commerce incubator in Cambridge, Mass. "Give me people," he begged. Lawrence says she now finds herself teaching dot-coms the basics of HR and "how to market yourself to talent."
At first-tier schools, many students have already locked up jobs in the Internet Economy - if they aren't starting their own companies. At MIT's Sloan School of Management, students are still going into traditional fields, but the real action's in the Net. Professor Nader Tavassoli, director of Sloan's e-business track, reports that 80 percent of entrepreneurs there want to go into dot-coms. "Even the students going into consulting are going into e-business consulting," he says.
All this activity doesn't mean everyone's hitting the exits for startups: Only two students have dropped out this year at Sloan. In fact, 20 Sloan students are starting their own firms, and all intend to graduate. At Stanford, about 17 percent of this year's class are starting their own companies.
At UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, 23 percent of the class of 1999 went into Internet/e-commerce/software. This year should be even higher: "The challenge is in figuring out which offer is the best, especially when you are dealing with startups that may or may not have a future," says Ilse Evans, executive director of MBA admissions and career services.
At every school surveyed, interest was high in b-to-b and "established" tech companies. "In my 30 years in education, I have never seen such a voracious appetite for talent," says Meyer Feldberg, dean of Columbia Business School.
Could there possibly be any MBAs left who haven't taken Net Economy jobs? "I am definitely seeing some career-planning maturity on the part of students following the timetable that's right for them, rather than allowing the 24/7 frenzy to sweep them away," says Lawrence.
To find these level-headed souls, The Standard scouted the world for Class of 2000 MBAs who are eager to play for team Internet and who are still on the market. With the help of professors at dozens of schools, we pared the list to five students who have the right mix of accomplishment, Internet experience and a damn good story to tell. We also selected a few runners-up.
We presented these all-stars to three of the nation's top recruitment experts. We even asked how much they're worth on the open market. The average price: $101,100 (up 7 percent from last year).
By no means are these students the "best" MBAs, but they're pretty close.
THE PICKS
Draft pick #1: Atif Rafiq
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Draft pick #2: Patricia Shores
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Draft pick #3: Dan Rapaport
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Draft pick #4: Emmanuelle Skala
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Draft pick #5: Ann Williams Alvez
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THE RUNNERS-UP
Edward Diffendal, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College
Krishnaraj "Krish" Inbarajan, London Business School
Lisa Pautler, Georgetown University (dossier)
Robert Rich, University of Michigan Business School
John Weiss, Florida International University
THE JUDGES
Cheryl Eisen
The president and founder of FindNetwork, a boutique firm in Manhattan, Eisen has been running new-media and Internet searches for seven years.
Jonathan Goldstein
From his office in Los Angeles, Goldstein conducts senior-level searches for Russell Reynolds Associates (dossier)' new-media practice. Earlier in his career, Goldstein placed graduating MBAs.
Jana Rich
As a principal in Korn/Ferry International (KFY)'s San Francisco office, Rich leads the new-media and Internet practice for Northern California. She has six years of recruitment experience, and works strictly on top-level searches.
Behind the Judges' Numbers
Students' scores are based on averages of the judges' individual ratings. The salaries listed are averages of the judges' estimates of each student's worth, in terms of base salary (not including signing bonuses and options) for Internet companies ranging from pre-IPO, seed-stage startups to well-funded, post-IPO companies.
Profiles by Mickey Butts and Deborah Giattina.
