Anne's Arrival Boosts AGSM Placement
AUTHOR: Lachlan Colquhoun[CR] DATE: 01.09.05 ISSUE 2, 2005
When Anne Burley arrived at AGSM earlier this year as the new Director of Placements, she came with a mandate to “shake things up a bit.”Several months into the role, Burley is delivering to her mandate with a range of innovations including a greater focus on Asia, and a revamping of initiatives such as Careers Week and the student’s CV book.
Burley, who arrived at AGSM after a career in the recruitment industry in both Hong Kong and Australia, says one of her ambitions was to “get the students to think regionally.”
ILLUSTRATION: Gregory Baldwin
“We have a number of students who come from Asia or are interested in developing careers in Asia, so when I moved down here I realised we didn’t have sufficient connections up there for the careers side of it.
Burley has quickly rectified this through the appointment of a Hong Kong based recruiter, specifically charged with representing AGSM to Asian employers and recruitment firms, and also to encourage students to look to the region as a place to build their careers. So far, there have been several seminars for AGSM students based in Hong Kong and seminars for Asian companies wanting to promote themselves as potential employers.
“There are a lot of opportunities in Australia for AGSM students but there are also exciting opportunities in the region,” says Burley.
“The idea of students at the age of 29 or 30 going up to Hong Kong and Singapore and getting some global experience is one I am sure many of them would like to take advantage of.”
Another of Burley’s innovations has been to strengthen AGSM’s club scene, with the addition of new industry clubs in the technology, bio-technology and Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) areas.
“Having seen how student clubs work at business schools in other parts of the world, particularly the big US schools, I saw that they are very much a conduit for employers to target students as potential employees, and I really wanted to set up something similar here,” says Burley.
“The three new clubs have all been set up by students who have experience or an interest in the particular area, and it is proving quite beneficial because the clubs are taking ownership of that sector in terms of contacting speakers or companies and encouraging them to come in.
“If a bio-tech company targets AGSM for recruitment, then we can say talk to the bio-technology club, and then we can devolve it down to the club president, and I really see that as a way of empowering the students.
“It also gets the students thinking much more about their careers in the commercial world pretty much from day one, and for those of them who don’t have any local work experience or haven’t been to Australia before it puts them in touch with Australian companies as well.
"I want the students to be able to get their job offers tucked up so they can concentrate on their studies and really enjoy the social life of a student perhaps for the last time."
Burley says the new clubs are functioning well, attracting quality speakers and “getting a few leads” in the relevant industries.
Burley’s efforts have also extended to recent graduates. She organised a ‘roadshow’ for students who finished in June this year and were interested in the resources and energy sector, to visit companies at their headquarters in Melbourne and Brisbane.
“Those companies got to know a bit more about who we are, and as a result we have some of them coming to our campus recruiting this year,” says Burley.
All of those companies also want to see AGSM’s CV book, which now – for the first time – also includes information on part-time MBA (Executive) students.
The hard copy version of the book is distributed to companies and is also sold to recruitment firms, while the online version can be updated “at any time, so it is a living and breathing thing.”
“The vast majority of the part-time students are already working so what we do is ‘blind’ their CV’s, with contact details removed and current company details replaced by a generic description,” says Burley.
“The book also includes a number of Hong Kong students too, who are also largely part-time.
“We are in discussions as to whether we should extend the online book to the alumni, so if they are open to other opportunities or have been retrenched they can be searched by class and year as well.”
| "I wanted to get the students focused on their careers and have a starting point in the middle of the year.” |
Perhaps the biggest impact of Burley’s arrival, however, was at the recent Careers Week, which she restructured from a number of disparate activities held across a term into a dedicated week, during which teaching was suspended.
More than 20 leading companies, from consultancies such as Bain, Boston Consulting Group and AT Kearney to multinationals such as Unilever and Rio Tinto made presentations to the students.
“I wanted to get the students focused on their careers and have a starting point in the middle of the year,” says Burley.
“If you are half way through your academic studies you’ve got to start thinking about life beyond, so the purpose was to have a very condensed period and have lots of companies coming in on the same day with back to back presentations to really get the students into thinking about their careers.”
The new format, says Burley, created a “huge competitive spirit” among the companies which can only benefit the students.
“They all wanted to be in first and wanted to do their interviews pretty much by the second day,” she says.
“I want the students to be able to get their job offers tucked up so they can concentrate on their studies and really enjoy the social life of a student perhaps for the last time.”
After “banging the drum” for a few months, Burley said she even had to turn away several companies who wanted to participate.
“They were doing it more for their own promotional reasons rather than because they wanted to hire MBAs,” says Burley.
“Careers Week is not really the right forum for that – my message to the companies is that we want them to hire people.”