Business schools team up with companies on programs in which students play the role of consultants – often at little or no cost to the organization.
Management consulting is a very popular career choice for graduates. The “Management Consulting Club” of Harvard Business School, for example, is one of the largest professional clubs on campus. It aims at providing face-time with consulting companies. Monthly cocktails with senior consultants in an informal setting allow for extensive networking opportunities.
Pretty much the same happens at University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, where the “Management Consulting Group” is committed to providing students with a wide range of networking opportunities. Bain, Booz, BCG, McKinsey, Berger, Deloitte, Accenture and the other usual suspects of the consulting industry are gold and platinum sponsors of a variety of activities like the “lunch ’n learn” luncheons with leading experts in consulting and strategic planning.
But Booth goes even further with programs in which students play the role of consultants. "We're bringing together several faculties, and a larger number of MBAs are put on a project than by many private consulting firms," said Jonathan Frenzen, who leads the program. At Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business and Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, the programs are free; others – according to the Wall Street Journal – charge the company anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000 US dollars.
Green Mountain Coffee for example sent Tuck students to Nicaragua, where they developed business strategies to improve coffee quality at the source. Harman International’s consumer-audio division used Booth students to examine and research a forecast model, acquisition possibility and potential brand repositioning while at General Electric Co. and Harman. Wharton students worked with Urban Outfitters to examine environmentally friendly initiatives, such as alternative-energy sources and packaging methods.
In Europe, the ESCP Europe features the “Company Consultancy Projects” as a practice-oriented form of teaching, which effectively combines management theory and practice. Four students go for four weeks on a single assignment. “Companies act as clients of highly motivated and productive students practicing their skills as junior consultants,” claims the school. The list of clients features big names like are Arvato, Beiersdorf, Bombardier, Deutsche Telekom, EnBW and Vodafone. The team is tutored by ESCP Europe staff throughout the project and the assignment ends with a presentation of tangible recommendations to the client. Since 2005 when the programme started the ESCP students have successfully finalized 100 projects.
In London, a group of MBA graduates founded MBA & Company to create jobs during the economic downturn. Two years down the road it has evolved into a means for companies to gain access to MBA talent. MBA & Company takes advantage of the surplus of top-tier talent from the world's leading business schools who haven't yet found their dream job by using a web site to match up graduates with projects. MBA & Company has 6,000 experienced candidates in more than 100 countries in the database.
