Newmark's Door

"The New Criterion for MBA Admissions"

From Business Week, 7/9:

With company recruiters becoming ever more selective, B-school admissions departments are taking a closer look at how easily candidates will be able to parlay their education into a job come graduation. That means, among others, that they're seeking out candidates who have developed a workable career plan along with polished interview skills and a killer résumé. While admissions officers have always favored these qualities, increasingly—as the job market tightens—they're demanding them. 

Are "clever" ads effective?

For Burger King, apparently not.

A new poster child for the Law of Unintended Consequences

Dolphin-safe tuna are an "ecological disaster".

(The linked-to post also refers to "Hippie Hypocrisy: People who try (but fail) to help." I like it.)

"The Mystery of Cheap Lobster"

My late mother and father loved to eat lobster. On the occasions when they would each order a 1.25 pound lobster they'd talk about how filling lobsters of that size were. On one special occasion--a wedding anniversary I think--they each had 1.5 pound lobsters which they said were unusually big (and unusually good).

So the other night my wife, younger daughter, and I were eating out and the restaurant's special of the evening--the waiter noted, "You'd probably want to share this"--was a three pound lobster.

Three pounds. And I thought: what the heck's changed since I was a kid?

Turns out, the food blog of The Atlantic has the answer.

Another in Business Week's interviews with business-school admissions directors

This time its the admissions manager for the University of Oxford.

Irony of a particularly high quality

Quick: what country is "the second-most profitable market in the world for McDonald's"? Guess. Go ahead, guess.

More difficult question: why? Answer:

The wallet was no minor consideration. McDonald's appealed to budget-conscious students, of course, but with France's high unemployment and sluggish economy, it attracted people of all ages. Pensioners, for instance, were among the chain's most loyal clients. The food at McDonald's was cheap, and it was made cheaper still because its restaurants were officially designated as takeout joints. The value-added tax on meals at such establishments was just 5.5 percent, versus the 19.6 percent levied at "gastronomic" restaurants.    

How the collapse of DVD sales is affecting the movie business

Interesting. From the Los Angeles Times (5/18):

Even more alarming, especially for studios who've thrived on seducing moviegoers into seeing mediocre product, is the realization that audiences are becoming more quality conscious. In the past, if a forgettable action film hit pay dirt at the box office, it would perform correspondingly well in DVD, allowing studios in greenlight meetings to provide a conversion rate--i.e. that if a movie of a certain genre made $100 million in the theaters, that would equal X millions of units in DVD. But judging from recent DVD sales figures, films that had poor word-of-mouth--signaling significant audience dissatisfaction--were underperforming in DVD, even if they had enjoyed lofty box-office numbers. . . .

No one knows the answer, but in the movie business, executives are unsettled, unsure of what movies to greenlight if they can no longer be sure of which of their old economic models still apply. It's why studios are no longer making deals where talent gets first dollar gross--unless the talent is willing to wait until the studio breaks even first. In Hollywood, executives are a lot like great athletes--if they lose their confidence, they can't do their job well. It takes a lot of built-in swagger to roll the dice on a slate of $100 million-plus movies. But as the DVD numbers continue to slide, studio chiefs are finding it hard to take those big wads of cash out of their pockets. Right now, they're spending a lot of time looking for safe bets.  

Count your blessings

I assume that most of you reading this don't have to work "in Hell for $11 a day".

"15 Top MBA Employers"

No big surprises, I suppose, except maybe for Disney. (Fortune, last month.)

Another Business Week interview with an MBA admissions director

This time, it's the assistant dean and director of admissions at UCLA's Anderson School of Management.

How are the application numbers looking this year compared to the last few?

The application numbers are down slightly. Like many business schools, we witnessed an increased interest in the program early in the recruiting season, and this did flatten out over time. We have witnessed an increase in applicants from financial services, not surprisingly. We find that the quality of the pool remains very strong.

What are some of the things you're looking for in the interview that show you someone is a good fit for the UCLA program?

In the interview we look for authenticity, an ability to engage in a dialogue as opposed to a monologue, and an ability to be introspective. Many applicants tend to be very rehearsed and interested in impression management. Sometimes they just skirt the issues and look at them from a very broad, superficial level. It's the ability to actually let us get to know the individual and how they approach life and work experiences that is most helpful to us.

Is that the most common mistake people make in their interviews?

Being too rehearsed is one of them. The other is getting so nervous that they get really wedded to their resume or answers to questions that they've formulated in advance. They sometimes miss the cues of the interviewer or they miss subtleties of the question that vary from what they've been prepared for.