MBA CSEA 2017 European Conference
 
Programme Information

Click here to view the printed brochure, which will be distributed on site.

New Member Welcome
Sunday, 26 March | 18:00-19:00 

If this is your first time at our European conference, or you are new to the organisation altogether, please join us! This session is designed to help you learn more about MBA CSEA, including resources available, opportunities to get involved, and tips for making the most of the conference. Welcome to the alliance!

0945-10:45 Opening Keynote Speaker Yvonne Agyei, Booking.com
Monday, 27 March | 09:45-10:45


Today’s Tech Recruitment Reality

As the technology industry continues rapid growth and innovation, recruitment teams are on a constant mission to keep pace. Yvonne Agyei, CPO at Booking.com, the world's leading technology company that empowers people to experience more of the world, will draw from her over 14 years’ experience in HR to deliver a dynamic look into the realities of today’s tech recruitment.
Through her personal and professional insights, Yvonne will give an inside look into the company’s perspective on the current recruiting market and the role that b-schools and graduate recruiters play within this. Introducing and expanding on the culture of innovation and experimentation at Booking.com, she will provide insights into the reality of how prepared (and unprepared) new recruits out of b-schools might be, what they need to do to start a successful career within a world class technology business and how recruits can bring their own disruptive learning to an already disruptive business.

About our speaker: As Chief People Officer, Yvonne Agyei is responsible for the overall employee experience at Booking.com. This includes overseeing the company’s global human resource efforts to ensure best-in-class recruitment, training and onboarding, employee engagement and relations, learning and development, performance management, and staff recognition programs for over 14,000 Booking.com employees in 187 offices worldwide.  
 
Prior to joining Booking.com in October 2016, Yvonne worked at Google, where she started her career in 2003, when the employee base was only 1,200, helping it grow to over 60,000. While at Google, Yvonne gained an understanding of the crucial role HR plays in the growth of a highly dynamic company. She was responsible for designing, developing and managing a variety of programs to attract top talent, including new graduate recruiting, internship programs, scholarships, alumni relations, participation in academic conferences and a variety of diversity and talent inclusion initiatives.  

Yvonne holds a BA in Psychology from Stanford University and Master’s degrees in both Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University and International Relations and Affairs from Tufts University – The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Employer Panel Session
Monday, 27 March | 11:15-12:30

Moderator: Paul Schoonenberg, Aston Business School
Nicolas Vout, ICRC 
Daniel Hunt, J&J
Cheri Hurtubise, Liberty Mutual Insurance
Catherine Kraus, Adidas
Pieter Ligthart, Russell Reynolds

The Brexit, new political powers, stagnating European economies and digital competition are shaping the future of MBA and Masters hiring. J&J, ICRC, Adidas and Liberty Mutual Insurance will share their insights on these important changes will effect business schools and recruiters. How can business schools help candidates set their expectations and acquire the right skills to navigate this uncertain environment? What changes are recruiters making in order to keep up with the shifts?

Breakout Session Round I
Monday, 27 March | 14:00-15:15
  1. RoboCons – the Future of Consultancy for MBAs?
    Don Leslie, Principal – Careers and Consultancy and Ewan Henry, Nottingham Universeity Business School): 

    The consultancy industry continues to grow. Digital transformation, FinTech, convergence with Creatives: all create opportunity for consultancies to sell their services, and require new hires to deliver them. But, for how long? New technology, a major prompt for clients to engage consultancy firms, is now itself posing a threat to consultants. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already being used by consultancies for research, data gathering and analysis, reducing the need for desk-based researchers and business analysts. Old industries will be reborn through the use of new technology such as robotics and 3D printing. New enterprises will come to market, existing companies will change, and all will need advice on business models, ways of working, and commercial shape. But will consultants for this new world come from Business Schools?

  2. How to Construct a Resilient Team, and Where can Business Schools Help?
    Maruks Dolder, ICRC

    The ICRC strives at all times to reconcile its operational goal of standing by the conflict victims and vulnerable persons with its responsibility towards its humanitarian aid workers. It takes every possible step to reduce risk to a minimum, and this starts at the selection level: recruiters start building teams of resilient and responsible humanitarians. How does the ICRC manage to recruit such particular skills, and how can schools help identify candidates suitable for a humanitarian career?

  3. 7 Creative Ways to Build your Professional Network
    Catherine Kraus, adidas

    Catherine Kraus is a Senior HR Talent Program Manager at the adidas Group and the chair of the Global adidas Women’s Network. She holds an MBA degree from RSM and has been with adidas for 14 years, leading projects and initiatives across business functions, energizing concepts into action – from Global HR Talent to Brand Marketing and Global IT. Her motto is: “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door”! In this workshop, Catherine will talk about seven creative and unexpected ways to successfully build business relationships, which is fundamental to MBA career changers. You will learn new networking techniques and define an authentic approach to get the best out of each networking opportunity with confidence.

  4. How Assessment Centers Increase MBA Employment and Career Success
    Laszlo Avramov, ilovetobe. 2nd speaker Sabyne Moras, SDA Boccini School of Management

    An increasingly large amount of companies are successfully using assessment centers as the most powerful tool to select the best candidates, but also to identify training and promotion needs. Getting a clear picture of each MBA’s competencies and needs from Day 1, is especially crucial in times, when recruiters come every year earlier to campus to “fight for the best talent”. On the other hand, often MBAs rely on the business school’s ranking and start training for assessments when it is too late. Learn how using assessment centers can help you to assess your MBAs from Day 1 and how you can develop their competencies more efficiently and ultimately increase placements. In this session you will find out how you can implement assessment center simulations with minimum resource.
Breakout Session Round II
Monday, 27 March | 17:00-18:00

  1. The Right Candidate for the Best Leadership Development Programs: Sharing the Experience
    Daniel Hunt, Early Talent Manager at J&J and Zana Zidansek, Marketing & Events Manager at MBA-Exchange.com

    How do companies attract and select the talent they need? What can schools do to help students get into high-profile opportunities? This session will provide an insider look into the J&J's International Recruitment & Development Program and how it combined on-campus and virtual events to engage and attract the right talent for its program. It will open the conversation among participating employers and schools to share experiences and best practices to explore practical ways to achieve more with less.

  2. The Recipe for Career Success from a Headhunter's Perspective
    Ana Herranz, IE Business School and Pieter Ligthart, Partner Russell Reynolds 

    Based on his experience in executive search, leadership assessment, and counseling senior executives up to the level of CEOs, Pieter will share a simple and proven framework to help executives reflect on their career and define a concrete and actionable search strategy.

  3. Employer Session (closed session for employers only)

    Bring your burning topics to the table to share and get insights from others - for example: What new disruptive technologies are you using? To rotate or not to rotate? How do candidates with an MBA degree differ from non-MBA holders?

Standards for Reporting MBA Employment Statistics
Tuesday, 28 March | 08:00-08:50

Jamie Belinne, Assistant Dean, Bauer College of Business, University of Houston

Panel:
Jeff McNish, Darden School of Business, Isabella Pinucci, SDA Boccini, and Amber Wigmore, IE Business School

MBA CSEA manages the only globally-accepted set of Standards by which business schools collect and analyze MBA employment data. Join us for an in-depth and interactive discussion about the Standards, including how they can be used to help your school ensure your data is consistent, reliable and comparable.

Technology Employer Panel
Tuesday, 28 March | 09:00-10:30
 

Moderator: Sabyne Moras, SDA Boccini School of Management
Dee Clarke, Amazon
Benedetta Arese Lucini, Oval Money
Sara-Emily Oades, Booking.com

The fast-growing tech sector offers new business models, cool working spaces, flexible hours, innovation and creativity opportunities including co-creation. All of this greatly appeals to the latest student generation. How is the Tech industry recruiting MBAs and Masters students? What is new in the talent acquisition strategy of these employers? Our corporate panelists will answer these questions and more!


Breakout Round 3
Tuesday, 28 March | 11:00-12:15

  1. Demystifying CBI
    Dee Clarke, Amazon, Dora Harsfalvy, Amazon, Sabyne Moras, SDA Bocconi, and Natalia Milani, IE Business School

    As more firms move towards competency based interview (CBI) assessment, are your students ready to talk in real depth about their experiences? At Amazon, we believe the most accurate predictor of future performance is past performance in similar situations. Like a reporter, the interviewer will ask follow-up questions to probe and challenge the candidate to get the full story, including as many facts as possible. Performance, competencies and results are key differentiators that will provide the evidence and data points to substantiate and support a hiring decision. Come and hear more about Amazon’s leadership principle-based interview process, and brainstorm best practices with peers on how to help students prepare.

  2. Demystifying Case-based Interviews
    Marc Cosentino, CaseQuestions and Zoe McLaughlin, London Business School

    In a world where recruiters' selection tools are becoming ever more sophisticated, the case interview has endured as a key method of assessment for business school students. More and more employers beyond just the consulting sector are using business cases as part of their recruitment process, making it imperative that our students are equipped with robust case-cracking ability as part of their career skills curriculum. Recruiters, ex-consultants, contractors and sponsored students can all play a huge role in this case skills delivery, but as demand grows it makes sense for careers professionals to be able to support this training, even when they don’t have a consulting background or significant experience to date with business cases. In this session you will learn how to give a mock case interview with confidence, provide critical and substantial feedback, and deliver guidance and next steps with minimum time commitment.

  3. Recruitment Strategies for Startups: A Different Perspective
    Benedetta Arese Lucini, Oval Money

    When startup companies look for the best candidates to recruit, it is important to find not only the brightest but also those that fit the company culture. This is especially true for small teams and growing startups. Stock option plans are not enough to attract the best candidates, and fancy office space does not always translate into company culture. How do you know that a good person has the potential to be great at a startup company? How do we attract candidates that are not just looking for a new role, and that even if they can be good at it, they are not the missing piece to building a long term team? To which extent do a CV or a degree have an impact on the application success? What are the current trends in recruitment at startups? How do you identify the "startup profile"?

Closing Keynote Speaker Greg Searle, rower and Olympic Gold Medalist
Tuesday, 28 March | 05:00-16:45
On 2nd August 1992, Greg won gold in Barcelona at the age of 20.

In 2009 he came back out of retirement and set himself the vision of winning a second gold at the London 2012 olympics, to inspire a new generation. Greg started all over again as a 40-year old man, joining a team of seven other younger team-mates. 

The dream nearly came true at Eton Dorney when in the final 750m the British crew took the lead, but despite enormous home support couldn’t hold off the previously unbeaten German crew and eventually won bronze. 

Having spent 15 years as an executive and team performance coach, Greg had the self-awareness to know how to fulfil his potential in London 2012. He was able to change, to work better with others, to grow trusting relationships and to sign up to team strategy despite having other ideas. 

Greg is inspiring peak performance in teams and individuals by sharing the behaviour required to bring the enthusiasm he had at 20 coupled with the wisdom he has at 40. 
 

Breakout Round 4
Wednesday, 29 March, 0900-10:15

  1. Working with EMBA Profiles
    Jane Barrett, Career Farm, Sabyne Moras, SDA Bocconi

    The EMBA prepares candidates for a professional transformation, enabling the step up to general management and the c-suite. It can accelerate an existing career or develop a candidate’s skills set beyond a technical specialism, leading to more senior roles with broader responsibilities, or the development of their own business venture. In this interactive session, we will consider research on the most common challenges facing EMBA students. We will then look at case studies of successful Executive MBA career changers and discuss how we can we help future EMBA cohorts to achieve their career goals. 

  2. Managing the Transition from Applicant to Student
    Lauranne Bardin, HEC
    Bethan Drummond, Cambridge Judge Business School

    There is a grey area over the pre-arrival period where the handover of who is responsible for the incoming class begins. Admissions and Marketing teams start to look forward to their next cycle of applications/enrollment, while Programme and Careers teams are still working with the outgoing class. What techniques can we use to ensure that the incoming class still feels valued/engaged over that pre-arrival period and help our Admissions and Marketing teams ensure that candidates do not withdraw/defer/attend other schools? How can we ensure that they start the programme engaged and prepared for the careers events/courses that are about to start?

  3. How can Webinars Deliver the Right Content to help Career Center Services Teams?
    Neil Courtis, SensibleMedia and Sarah Jackson, Warwick Business School

    When students are not available on campus or prefer not to engage face-to-face, online seminars (webinars) can provide a great way to deliver careers content. However, making the technology work and deliver on this promise is a challenge. This session draws on data and feedback from more than 50 careers webinars to investigate how careers teams can get the most out of this format. In particular:
    • Strengths and weaknesses of different platforms
    • Common technology and production disasters and how to avoid them
    • How to communicate and market to students
    • Different ways to make webinars interactive
    • Online event formats that work (and those that don’t)
    • How to get external speakers cheaply or for free
    • What makes audiences happy and what drives them mad
    • How to generate actionable feedback
    • How to repurpose webinar recordings for later use.

  4. Director's Session

    Moderator: Isabella Pinucci, SDA Boccini School of Management

    Career Service directors discuss the hot topics that keep them awake at night and gain insight, advice and support from their peers.