BusinessTN

There has never been a better job market for Tennessee students graduating with their master’s degree in business administration, according to a recent press release from the University of Tennessee’s College of Business Administration. And more students are graduating with MBAs than ever before, providing potential employers with highly educated candidates for corporate level positions.

Given the ready availability of MBA-toting job candidates, are Tennessee’s big corporations giving short shrift to potential employees without graduate business degrees? Not so, say recruiters from some of the largest companies in Tennessee, where corporate executives hiring for high-level positions reiterate that while an MBA can open doors, it is not necessarily a requirement except in the most specialized positions.

Senior recruiter John Leech with Federal Express in Memphis says FedEx definitely is interested in candidates with MBA degrees for positions in marketing, finance and information technology. FedEx, headquartered in Memphis and with satellite facilities and companies worldwide providing supply chain, transportation and related information services, employs approximately 30,000 people in the Memphis and Shelby County area alone. “We have relationships with schools in Tennessee and the Midsouth, as well as nationwide, Leech says, “and we do a lot of work with intern programs, both undergraduate and graduate. The value of the candidate is in the combination of the individual and his or her education.”

FedEx recruits in a number of ways, including sending teams of recruiters and hiring managers out into the field to do on-site campus visits at career fairs and through individual interviews. Also, much of the work of recruiting is done online. “We have an initiative with our operations research group that spans several different departments within FedEx to find schools with candidates that have the qualities we’re seeking,” Leech says. FedEx offers an online application process for candidates at schools such as the University of Memphis, the University of Tennessee, the University of Alabama, Georgia Tech, MIT, and many of the Ivy League schools.

Does the lack of an MBA preclude a shot with FedEx? “Not at all,” Leech says. “We’re looking for a combination of the master’s degree and the experiences—what candidates have done while in school, including projects, theses, processes they’ve led, and things they’ve done in other jobs that are applicable to the work we’re looking for them to do.” Skills a person has acquired, combined with education, make for the best candidate, according to Leech. “FedEx is actively hiring,” he says. “We strongly encourage all interested candidates, with or without an MBA, to check out www.FedEx.com/US/careersonline.”

Robert Farnsworth, president and CEO of Chattanooga-based Playcore Holdings, concurs with Leech that while an MBA degree is not an absolute requirement at his company, he believes that MBA graduates do bring valuable experience in research and from their internships. Playcore, a leading playground equipment and backyard products company with both commercial and consumer products divisions, does not actively recruit on college campuses, but the company has participated in U.T.-Chattanooga’s MBA programs through “senior work” and internships, working with students on various projects.

“If we are looking at candidates with MBAs, it is important to look at what they’ve done while they were in school,” Farnsworth says. “The MBA is sometimes a requirement, especially in a position such as a strategic analysis, but it isn’t often that it is the only requirement.”

At Cumberland Trust & Investment Co. in Nashville, Joseph Presley, president and CEO, agrees that larger corporations typically do require an MBA for positions that require a lot of financial analysis, but with a company such as Cumberland Trust, most employees already have post-graduate degrees in such areas as law or accounting. “We do hire MBAs,” Presley says, “but we look at different backgrounds to determine what makes sense for our organization from a trust perspective. Not having an MBA wouldn’t be a deal killer—it’s an added plus on a résumé but not a requirement.”

Presley tends to differentiate job candidates by their personalities rather than by their graduate business degrees. “It is really a matter of who the individual is,” he says. “You could have an applicant with an MBA who is very analytical, or an applicant with an MBA who has excellent people and management skills, and depending on the position you’re hiring for, one MBA candidate may work better than the other.” Presley notes that while an MBA adds an elevated level of business knowledge, in a business like his, where most of the staff has post-graduate education, it may not be the most pertinent quality.

"An MBA is often the entry price,” Marty Dickens, president of BellSouth Tennessee, says from his Nashville office. ‘’Because the job market is so very competitive these days, with a lot of young people out there vying for the same opportunities, an MBA affords the employer a way to weed out those with less schooling and, perhaps, less practical experience. An MBA degree usually means a larger body of business experience and knowledge.” But post-graduate degrees are not essential to beginning a career with BellSouth, Dickens says. “The complete package is what we’re looking at when we hire. I don’t mean to take away from the importance of pursuing graduate degrees, but experience is meaningful.”

Dickens does not want to discourage the pursuit of an MBA because he is cognizant that the degree puts candidates in a better position to be noticed in the slush pile of résumés the company receives. According to Dickens, if there are ten potential candidates for a position, and six of them have MBAs, and of those six, three of them have excellent grade point averages and work experiences, those candidates naturally will garner more consideration. “The MBA can be used as a process of elimination.”

On the internal career track, acquiring an MBA does help over the long haul. “In our marketing and sales groups, we do hire a lot of people right out of college with only their undergraduate degrees. If, while working, they make the commitment to go after their MBA degrees and achieve that, it helps them in their careers with BellSouth and gives them an edge on their résumés if they leave the company.

BellSouth is always interested in top students with MBA degrees applying to the company, but they do not have a specialized program in place to recruit MBAs from area universities. “We don’t recruit from particular schools,” Dickens says, “but students with MBAs are certainly given consideration, and we are always interested in young people from Tennessee.

James Green, executive vice president of corporate affairs with King Pharmaceuticals, says his company is definitely interested in applicants with MBAs. “We often have positions that require MBA degrees or where an MBA definitely would be beneficial,” he says. Positions requiring an MBA include business development, strategic planning, corporate communications and financial communications.

King Pharmaceuticals, headquartered in Tennessee and with facilities in six different states, does not recruit actively on college campuses. “We usually work through a recruiting firm,” Green says. “We need MBAs in positions in our corporate headquarters in Bristol; in our sales and marketing offices in Princeton, N.J.; and in research and development in Research Triangle Park, N.C. There are always excellent employment opportunities at King,” Green says. “In fact, we have a position open right now for a candidate with an MBA degree.”

“Amongst MBA candidates, we automatically assume an education that gives them more in-depth knowledge about the business world,” says Jerrie Lytton, senior vice president of employee services division of First Horizon National Corp. While she maintains an office in Johnson City, Lytton is responsible for corporate recruiting efforts nationwide, including all positions that are found in a financial services company, from clerks and tellers up to specific positions in the audit, accounting and finance departments, investment and lending, and mortgage and retail banking.

"Do we actively recruit MBAs? ‘Actively’ is the key word,” Lytton says. “We don’t go out looking for an MBA, but it’s a plus if we find one.” First Horizon doesn’t have any focused college recruiting programs in place, but uses recruiters with their own network of contacts. Also, Lytton says the corporation has relationships with almost all of the colleges within Tennessee, as well as many colleges around the country.

Some specific positions within the company require an MBA, including those involving analysis, financial processes, statistics and statistical analysis. For positions not requiring an MBA, Lytton says that a candidate’s drive, work ethic and social skills have to work in tandem with an MBA. “If the candidate with the MBA does not have the whole package, then a candidate with an undergraduate degree and with those important social skills might have a leg up,” she says.

Lytton says that while students who have worked hard to achieve their MBAs expect to be able to command more money in the marketplace on the front end, that is not always the case. “As a rule, the MBA does increase your earning potential over the long haul—as long as you’re high-performing and show potential. You have to do the work and demonstrate your potential before the dollars come,” she says.

While an MBA degree is impressive, Lytton says that the sheer numbers of MBA graduates coming out of schools these days makes a difference. “Ten to fifteen years ago, an MBA degree was something that not everyone had, but there are exponentially more MBAs coming out of school now than there were a decade or more ago—and that makes the competition tighter.”

Across the state, executives in many of the larger corporations agree that just as with other aspects of business, the hiring of MBA graduates is one that reflects the law of supply and demand. With more applicants on the market than ever before who have already acquired their MBA degrees, it is not difficult to fill most positions with candidates possessing post-graduate degrees. Long-term corporate opportunities for MBA graduates are available when candidates exhibit all the qualities essential to the success of a company. An MBA can open the door, hiring executives agree, but now more than ever, it is up to an applicant to prove his or her worth to a company above and beyond the degree.