IESE MBA News
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Published: December 29, 2013
Latin Americans Flock to Spain to Pursue an MBA
In growing numbers, Latin Americans are turning to top business schools in Spain – notably ESADE, IE and IESE – to obtain their MBAs before returning to careers in Latin America, the New York Times reports.
Spain’s own economy is still faltering, but business schools there say they are attracting more and more Latin Americans, many with international career experience, who plan to return to Latin America when they graduate, according to the Times report. They are drawn to Spanish MBA programs, according to the report, because the classrooms are more diverse than at schools in the United States and the business culture is a more familiar one.
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Published: November 3, 2013
European Business Schools Host Joint Asia-Focused Career Fair
Five leading business schools in Europe joined forces to host a career fair for companies seeking MBA graduates for work in Asia, the Financial Times reports. London Business School (LBS) hosted the November 2nd Asia Career Fair, together with HEC Paris, IESE, IMD and the Rotterdam School of Management. The event included company presentations, interviews and networking opportunities between students and 18 participating companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Bloomberg, Accenture and Shell.
“The idea is to make the life of the recruiter as easy as possible,” Javier Muñoz, MBA Career Services director at Spain’s IESE, told the FT. IESE hosted an earlier event in which the top European schools collaborated to connect students with recruiters from Latin America.
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Published: September 30, 2013
Career Services Director Q&A: Javier Muñoz of IESE
Our interview series with career services directors at top business schools takes us this week to Barcelona’s IESE, where we spoke with Javier Muñoz, assistant dean and director of career management. Muñoz knows IESE from many angles. He began there in 2001 as an MBA student himself, completing his degree in 2003. Upon completion, rather than return to banking, which had been his career path before business school, he accepted a position in the IESE admissions department.
“The offer [to join the admissions team] was very surprising at the beginning, but IESE is famous for bringing in MBAs [to its administration] every year,” he told us. After eight years in admissions, including five as head of the department, IESE offered Muñoz an opportunity to lead a different department – career services. He accepted and took over as assistant dean and director in 2011.
Muñoz had no idea when he came to IESE for an MBA that he would find himself working there for the next decade plus. “The only thing that I knew was that I wanted to explore different options apart from finance,” he says. He got several other offers, but when IESE came calling he answered. “I fell in love with the school, the MBA was such a great experience for me, they offered me a great position and I went for it,” he says.
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Published: August 1, 2012
One-Year MBA? Two-Year MBA? Pros and Cons
Preference for one-year MBA programs – common at European business schools, but traditionally less so at U.S. schools – is growing among prospective U.S. and Canadian applicants, according to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal. Lean economic times make the benefits of shorter programs, including lower tuition and less time and earnings lost while studying, appealing. But the WSJ article argues that these accelerated options may carry other costs that students considering them should bear in mind.
In 2009, 71 percent of U.S. and Canadian respondents to a survey by business-education research company QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd. preferred programs lasting 19 to 24 months, the WSJ reports. This year, that figure fell to 57 percent. Meanwhile, preference for programs lasting between 10 and 18 months rose, up to 29 percent of respondents from 21 percent in 2009. Some U.S. schools are responding to this increased demand, such as Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, which announced earlier this year that it plans to double the size of its one-year option. (Check out our Admissions Director Q&A with Kellogg’s Kate Smith for more on this.)
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