An Interview With IESE Dean Jordi Canals

One of the surprises is how the Class of 2012 from all three schools did quite well in the job market despite a very troubled Spanish economy. How was that possible?

In Spain, we placed about 21% of our graduates. The first thing to highlight here is that we have Spanish companies that are still growing and hiring people. Of that 21%, less than half were Spaniards. The other half were hired by Spanish companies for overseas operations. Europe, in terms of placement, has been doing quite well. You have high tech, pharms and consumers goods companies doing very well.

The challenge is that we now have 26% of our students from Asia. We are placing those students now. About 70% of them get a job offer from a U.S. or European company with interests in Asia. Around 30% get offers from Asian companies. Chinese and Indian students are increasingly willing to go back to their home countries because they have more opportunities. That is one of the challenges for western companies.

Job offers from companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever or Siemens do not have the same relevance to Indian students that they had five or ten years ago. It’s still nice to have those offers but many of these students would rather work for an Indian company. We need to work more with local, more entrepreneurial companies that don’t have the tradition of hiring MBAs or the experience to know how to integrate MBAs inside their companies. So the challenge for us is how we work with local companies in India and China to do that.

How much bigger will your MBA program get?

To add another section of 70 to 75 students, we need a couple of things. Last year, we got close to 1,800 applications for about 300 seats in our full-time MBA program. We think we need to generate 2,300 to 2,400 applications to add another section. Otherwise, your quality is going to get diluted. So our challenge is how we can grow the applicant pool in an industry that has excess capacity. We want to do that but it may be five years down the road. We are not in a hurry.

Ultimately, it’s not about how big you are. It’s about how unique and how good you are.

DON’T MISS: AN INTERVIEW WITH COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL DEAN GLENN HUBBARD or POETSANDQUANTS’ TOP 50 NON-U.S. MBA PROGRAMS OF 2012