Over the last few weeks, I have been trying, in my official role, to get together a group of top UK business schools to agree to a concept of MBA talent fair. Simply put, this concept builds on the strength of aggregation & shared services in the area of students career management. The fair brings together MBA students from top UK B schools on one hand, and some of the top employers on the other. Each school is required to bring in 1-2 of its employers relationship to the fair, thereby, resulting in a critical mass of employers on one side, and students on the other. The students win because in this economy, they get to meet with number of employers simultaneously. The employers win becuase they get to meet with students from all top B schools together, in a cost effective way, which they would be not be able to do it on their own. The schools win because they now offer real, immediate return to the financial investments made by their students, and get an opportunity to build relationships with more employers, in return for opening 1-2 of their existing relationships. Because an individual school or an individual employer would not be able to, or willing to, organize such an activity on its, for a variety of resons such as lack of trust, lack of resources or sheer inertia, a third party such as the organization I represent, would pull everyone together and project manage the entire activity. Everyone involved pays a nominal amount to cover the cost of the organization - the nominal payment required is less than the cost of meal for a group of ten, in an average London restaurant.

On the face of it, the concept made sense to everyone involved - the academic top brass at the business schools were escastic, not just because it was a very strong model to add value to the services provided by the business school, but also because it represented what the schools preach - outsource non-core activities and let a third party deliver it as a shared service, while the schools could focus on differentiating their students from the others. After all, what is the point in schools A, B & C approaching employers X, Y & Z independently for career placement - it only results in creating wastage in economy by deploying limited resources in a sub-optimal way. Would it not be better if employer X, Y & Z could meet the students of schools A, B & C together through a mechanism of shared career services, while the schools deploy their limited career resources in training & differentiating their students.

Alas, as it happens with most of the models, we forgot the human aspect of this interaction. The B school academic forgot that in their excitement to create a shared & outsourced career services, they will have to deal with objections raised by career /placement offices within these schools - if the employer interaction bit of career services is outsourced to a shared service group, with the 'true' focus of school career services on advisory & differentiation aspect, then most of the schools do not need such large career services department they have built up. What happens to the employees within this department?

As is the case with private corporations who leave the decision to outsource or not to those individuals whose very job is at risk due to outsourcing, the B schools left the above decision to career services department. And as is the case with private sector outsourcing initiatives, the career services decided not to participate in the above initiative because they did not feel the schools would get any value out of this. This decision will ensure that large organizations have no choice but to continue their expenditure of building expensive relationships with individual schools, when other options are possible; that MBA students continue paying higher tuition fees without understanding the tangible return in career placement; that B school academicians are still removed from the reality of the huge gap between what they teach the students and how they run their own schools; but will ensure that career services department at these schools continue to grow in terms of head count.