One of the perks of business school job boards is that they often contain exclusive postings that hiring companies don't post anywhere else, meaning a smaller candidate pool. And while there are a lot of job postings offered by IE's Career Services department, they can't possibly be exhaustive. Students looking to tap into another source of career leads should remember that IE maintains reciprocal agreements with several other schools, allowing IE students to use those schools' job boards.
I recently took the opportunity to arrange to use London Business School Career Centre's job board, and I was pleased with the outcome. The process was as follows: I contacted my IE Talent and Careers rep, who put me in contact with the person at IE in charge of these reciprocal agreements. That person, in turn, arranged things for me. In the case of LBS, IE students are restricted to using the job board only while physically on the LBS campus, in LBS's Career Centre, making a visit to London necessary. The date and time of my visit was coordinated by IE on my behalf, based on the dates I indicated I would be visiting London. From there, it was just a matter of navigating to LBS.
Upon arrival, it turned out that the person responsible for reciprocal visits was no longer with LBS, but the staff at the Career Centre provided me with a desktop computer and logged me into their board. LBS uses the same portal as IE: Symplicity. For one and a half hours, I was able to browse several hundred postings - less than I expected, but many of interest, and which I could tell hadn't been posted elsewhere.
The LBS staff instructed me to save details on each job I was interested in, up to a maximum of ten, and they would provide me with instructions on how to apply, given that the logging information was for a general profile, not my own, so I had no resume in the system and no contact details. In some cases, jobs provided an external application link or an email address, making this unnecessary. But for nine jobs, the only way to apply was via the portal.
Unfortunately, because the original staffer I was to meet wasn't with LBS, there was some confusion. I provided the nine jobs to the person who had been helping me, who later informed me that I wouldn't be able to apply at all. This was disappointing, but I was able to apply through other means to about eight other jobs, and received one interview.
Despite the kinks, the visit to LBS was worthwhile. If you are seeking to land a job in a city where a business school with which IE has a similar reciprocal agreement exists, it would probably be worthwhile to see if you can find time to visit and use their job board. Contact your Talent and Careers rep for more detail.
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