Selections Interview with Mark Case, Director of Career Development, Yale School of Management

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Selections: Has the economic downturn affected the kinds of questions you get from applicants or students? In what ways has it affected the admissions process?
Case: The current downturn has arguably produced more concern from applicants about their occupational well-being after the business school experience. I would couple that with my observation that anyone who is considering an MBA program to ride out a recession is most likely is applying for all of the wrong reasons. Because people who think they can escape the fluctuations in the markets are only kidding themselves. Going to business school is not about escaping the marketplace; it is about learning how to function more effectively in the marketplace and that is a recession-proof objective that I would challenge anyone to try to achieve during their business school experience.

Selections: Are you seeing applicants who look like they are just trying to ride out the recession?
Case: There always are those. They come in various sizes, shapes, and disguises, and that is why interviews are so revealing of this characteristic. If an individual is committed to the learning-how-to-lead process, that will inevitably spill over into the kinds of career goals and objectives they are able to articulate. And if that is missing, then there is typically a suspicion that the individual may be looking at business school for perhaps not the most sound reasons. There is no foolproof mechanism here, but oftentimes, if an individual begins to falter in the way they describe themselves futuristically as a leader in a culture or in a particular professional climate, then that sometimes is a good indicator that these people have not begun to think through what they want to gain from this experience.

Selections: How does the economy affect the relationship between the admissions and career services departments at your school? Do you feel there is a symbiotic relationship between admissions and career services that grows stronger or closer in a weak economy?
Case: Every year, admissions and career services works closer and better because these are relationships that are crucial to developing successfully for the betterment of then-entering classes. We really view ourselves as input and output, and if input and output are not reading off of the same page, it is a cause of concern for everyone. They need to read off the same page.

The trend seems to be that admissions and career services are working together more closely. But that is not the case at all schools.

There will be that difference. Primarily, it is based upon the length of time that both the director of admissions and career services has spent in the business, and how many battles they have fought successfully, and what their learning experiences have been, and what their values are [and how] those mesh with the goals and objects of the school.

A lot of it, too, is the chemistry between the two. Do they share the same approach toward assessing talent? Do they respect and support each other’s objectives in the process of assessing that talent? It is healthy to disagree. It is healthy for input and output to disagree occasionally, because that stretches both sides’ scope of what their mission is. But at the end of the day, do they essentially agree on the same principles? That is what drives so much of the positive chemistry and, in turn, will radiate the mission, passion, goals, and objectives that they can put out there for public consumption.

At Yale, the director of admissions and I both report to the dean. We have a very good working chemistry. It helps that we worked together at the University of Michigan and stayed in touch over the years. I helped Jim to get networked into Yale. We make the changes collaboratively. Jim and I will disagree on certain candidates. We do that all of the time, but it is a healthy kind of disagreement. In many cases, we will have in-depth discussions about a candidate’s potential to succeed or not succeed here, and that is incredibly important—to be able to say, “Here is why I don’t think this person is a good fit” and know that your rationale will be taken with a degree of seriousness and with a degree of understanding. It teaches tolerance. No two classes will look alike. Even though the reputation of the school will be “X” and we try to get this type of a class brought in, there are never going to be two classes exactly alike, and that is due largely to the philosophy that we will be flexible about criteria and risk taking in certain circumstances. When we see the result that we do, we know that it works. That the formula works. //

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