Top MBA Recruiters: Unilever
A job is possible for any determined MBA graduate. Obviously, the ideal job differs from graduate to graduate, but if you’re into sustainable choices for consumers, Unilever might be right for you. The company specializes in household products like soap, shampoo, and even iced tea. Well-known brands like Lipton and Dove are also underneath the Unilever umbrella.
The corporation consistently makes it on Forbes‘ top companies lists. Currently, Unilever is 103rd on the Global 2000 and 87th for America’s Best Employers. In 2013, it also came in 63rd among Innovative Companies. While students who study health and medicine rank the company highest, business and commerce students ranked it 12th in terms of attractiveness, according to Universum data. Broadly, LinkedIn ranked Unilever 8th in the world in a list of attractive employers.
The company employees 169,000 people with 46 percent of its managers women. With an MBA, maybe you could be next.
Why Unilever?
Unilever’s been around since 1930. It made bar soap a thing. It also helped popularize margarine, fish fingers, and frozen vegetables. The company truly revolutionized the modern age. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a legacy?
Unilever is also global: Its Indian branch, Hindustan Unilever, was ranked one of the world’s most innovative companies this year by Forbes for how it broke up the country into clusters to cater to different regions appropriately. The company has branches in Africa, throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. So a job at Unilever can take you anywhere in the world.
The corporation isn’t like most. It has a clear mission, one dedicated to health and well-being. It’s launched campaigns around the world to help bring facts around nutrition to developing countries. Unilever is currently working on halving the environmental impact of its products.
According to Glassdoor, Unilever offers some competitive salaries. Associate brand and finance managers can expect to make $95,000 a year, on average. Once a person reaches the finance or brand manager (without the associate), the salary increases by about $20,000. Overall, the ratings are high on Glassdoor, where employees are known to be brutally honest.
The company also boasts the ability for graduates to continue learning while at Unilever. It’s a place that allows individuals to grow and build upon their career—the ideal environment for a recent grad.
Working at Unilever
It may not be much of a surprise, but a lot of people want to work at Unilever. LinkedIn compiled a list of North America’s top 100 in-demand employers in 2015, with Unilever coming in 25th: ranked higher than Fox, Warner Bros, and Whole Foods Market.
The company has a global MBA recruitment channel where it looks for MBA holders who have at least three years experience in finance, marketing, or supply chain. The channel connects applicants with available openings for which they’re qualified, like an associate finance manager position with Ben & Jerry’s, another one of Unilever’s brands. Or what about a production support engineer? Unilever offers a variety of positions relevant to MBA graduates.
This is perfect because MBA students have been clear that they’d like to work at Unilever. It sat 34th on a list of 100 employers where MBA students said they’d like. MBA candidates from NYU Stern, the Wharton School, and Rutgers Business School have gone on to work for Unilever.
What Bain & Company Looks for in MBA Hires
Bain & Company—widely considered one of the most elite consulting firms in the world—is a coveted post-MBA destination for students at top business schools in every part of the globe. Headquartered in Boston with 53 offices in 34 countries around the world, Bain employs more than 7,000 people and counts as its clients leading Fortune 500 companies, as well as nonprofit and government organizations. And business is booming.
According to Keith Bevans, Global Head of Consultant Recruiting, the company has grown at a rate of 15 percent a year for the past 20 years, with no slowdown in sight. “We hire a little over 400 consultants a year—and that growth comes from the top business schools in the world,” he says. While the company primarily targets top-20 schools for MBA recruiting, it hires from more than 60 schools around the world and is committed to finding the best talent wherever it can.
Bevans is a Bain-lifer. He started as an associate consultant out of MIT, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering. He left Bain to get his MBA at Harvard Business School but returned upon graduation and has been there ever since. For much of his career, he was a client-facing partner in the firm’s Performance Improvement practice, with a focus on processes to improve effectiveness and efficiencies. Now he’s putting that expertise to work for his own company, and he couldn’t be happier.
His allegiance to the firm is clear, and it’s based in great part on his intimate understanding of its culture, which he describes as steadfastly collaborative and supportive. And he’s not alone. Bain frequently tops the “Best Places to Work” lists for Glassdoor, Vault and Consulting magazine, with employees praising its “great people and culture” and calling it “an incredible place to learn” and “the best place to start your career.”
It’s people, too, set Bain apart, Bevans agrees. “They are very smart, very passionate, maniacally focused on making a difference in whatever they are doing—and they wrap all of that in a layer of humility, which I think is very rare to find.”
Bain Partner Keith Bevans, Global Head of Consultant Recruiting
But interns alone are not enough to keep up with Bain’s growth. “It varies from year to year in terms of how many of our full-time hires are former summer interns, new full-time hires or former consultants. But the internship program never fills up the whole group.”MBA graduates are a big and important part of the company’s hiring, and many start out as interns in the 10-week summer associate program between their first and second years of business school. “It’s definitely an important on-ramp,” he says of the internship program, adding that it’s also a valuable opportunity for both Bain and its interns to determine fit. Notably, 90 percent of interns return to work for Bain full-time, Bevans adds. And there’s not a maximum cap on intern hires. “Our summer program is limited only by how many great students we can find,” he says. “We don’t have a target—rather I like to think of it as a minimum. If we find more great people, we will always go over whatever we set out for.” Which means there are opportunities for second-year students who may not have targeted Bain or consulting in their first year.
But interns alone are not enough to keep up with Bain’s growth. “It varies from year to year in terms of how many of our full-time hires are former summer interns, new full-time hires or former consultants. But the internship program never fills up the whole group.”
Don’t miss Clear Admit’s exclusive interview with Bevans, in which he talks about the firm’s commitment to employee training and support, goes into detail about Bain’s MBA recruiting process, shares where he looks and what he looks for in MBA hires and more. Our thanks to Bevans for making the time to share more about Bain with the Clear Admit audience.
Corporate Recruiter Q&A: Bain & Company’s Keith Bevans
Clear Admit: What sets Bain apart—not only among other consulting firms but also as an employer or company overall?
Keith Bevans: There are a couple of things about Bain people that set us apart. In my role, I have had the opportunity to travel to offices around the world hiring people, and what I have found is that Bain people are passionate about both the work they are doing and the things they are doing outside of work. They really jump right in with both feet. When you align that around our goal of having our clients be successful, you can really see the passion Bainies have for their clients—it just oozes out of them. We are having a big impact on our clients, and we are hiring people who are really energized by that.
With that as our starting point, we put them in an environment where we really do act like one team and do everything we can to support them in their professional life. From our global training programs to our onboarding program to the career counseling we provide—it’s all aligned around helping them be successful and be the best they can be. Bain people are people who want to have an impact.
Relative to other firms I think we are different in the sense that we have a very collaborative culture. We also have tremendously deep expertise in every major sector of the economy, and we bring that to our clients. “We’ve studied this and analyzed this, but why don’t we marry that with your expertise?” we’ll say to clients. We are not trying to prove that we are smarter than our clients but to work collaboratively with them to position them to succeed.
CA: How important are MBAs in your overall hiring? How many MBAs do you hire each year, both interns and full-time? Are you continuing to grow at the 15 percent rate you’ve enjoyed for so many years?
KB: MBA talent is a big and really important source of talent for us. For the last 20 years, we have been growing on average at a rate of 15 percent per year. That makes for a phenomenal slide when I put it in front of recruits. We hire a little over 400 consultants a year, and that growth comes from the top business schools in the world. The bulk of our targeted efforts focus on top 20 programs, but we have hired from almost 60 different MBA programs around the world.
With our growth, our primary focus is to make sure we are finding the most talented people out there. The breadth of schools from which we’ve hired shows that we are continuing to do innovative things through the Bain Passport and Webinar series to connect with students wherever they are. Our intern program this summer is once again—for the third or fourth year in a row—the largest we have run as a firm. It is definitely an important on-ramp, if you will. And 90 percent of the MBA interns who come for the summer return to Bain afterwards. We find the best, bring them in for the summer and very often they start their careers with us.
As for the 10 percent who don’t return—most of the time it’s actually more of a mutual thing. Maybe they tried consulting and decided it’s not a fit for them. And here’s another example of the supportive part about Bain: Even the interns who don’t come back often get support from the people who worked with them at Bain. They help them identify what parts of the internship were the right fit, and what roles might be a better match and then they help connect them with people who can help. After all, they are still Bain alums and still part of the Bain family.
Hot MBA Jobs: International Business Consultant
International business consulting is one of the world’s fastest growing industries. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hiring rate of management consulting (the overarching job category) is increasing much faster than average, with an expected rate improving around 14 percent until 2024.
And there’s no doubt that the international side is growing even more quickly due to the globalization of the world economy, the emergence of new markets and explosive economic growth in countries such as India and China. Not to mention the fact that the world is smaller than ever and that almost every business across the world conducts business internationally—even many small and medium-sized companies. So, as more and more companies embrace the global mindset, international business consultants will be more valuable than ever.
As for MBAs, consulting is still one of the most sought-after career fields. According to the 2015 Prospective Student Survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), consulting topped the list of intended industries for both millennial and Gen X respondents (41 percent and 27 percent respectively).
But before you make the decision to become an international business consultant, let’s take a look at what your career would look like. Continue reading…
Top MBA Recruiters: General Electric
In an age of start-up culture and hip, millennial driven neo-corporate American companies like Google and Facebook, General Electric (GE) has become a bit of an afterthought in the minds of some younger business students and MBA candidates. Continue reading…
10 Websites to Find an MBA Internship
Ah, the summer internship. Anyone who’s ever gotten their MBA will tell you that their internship a) was crucial in the process of pursuing their degree, b) was critical in helping enhance their credentials, and c) ultimately played a major role in landing their first full time job. In fact, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers Experiential Education Survey, employers extended job offers to nearly 70 percent of their interns. Continue reading…
