Were those consortiums instrumental in landing a substantial number of students jobs after graduation, particularly internationals?
I’d say that maybe 2% of the graduating students found job opportunities as a result of the West Coast Job Forum. But the majority of our placement was a result of on-grounds recruiting. (Editor’s note: Roughly 97% of the Darden student body is placed through on-grounds recruiting.) The majority of our international students are interested in working in the U.S., but none of them took a job as a result of their attendance at the international job fairs. Dan Nagy (the director of career services and placement at Duke’s Fuqua School) and I have been talking about putting together our own international job fair, targeted for this upcoming February (1999). You see, not a large percentage of U.S.-based companies are willing to go through the green-card process, so foreign students have fewer opportunities. I would say that roughly 33% of the companies that recruit are willing to sponsor our foreign students. Do those low returns signal that job fairs and consortiums are losing their luster,
