B-School Buzz: A Future in Failures

This year, business school students around the country are all being taught one valuable lesson in particular: How to make lemonade when the markets hand you lemons.

"One thing we're saying to students is sometimes a difficult market creates opportunities," said Regina Resnick, assistant dean and managing director of Columbia Business School's Career Management Center.

And by "creates opportunities," Resnick means opportunities to sweep up after the parade — with jobs in the restructuring and downsizing businesses.

Resnick said there's been increased buzz around those fields on campuses these days, as blowups throughout the financial services industry create a need for top talent.

Columbia Business School held a panel a couple of weeks ago on corporate restructuring, and at a recent career services event, the Risk Management Association had a table and were talking to students about jobs in risk.

Maryellen Lamb, senior associate director of recruiting at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says that she too has seen increased recruiting for restructuring positions, as well as a growing interest from the students in those roles.

Lamb said Wharton's Finance Club even recently held an event on the subject.

Of course, that's not to say that private equity and banking are out of vogue just yet. Despite the turmoil on Wall Street, the luster still has not worn off of jobs in private equity, hedge funds, or banks at top B-schools.

Lamb says that she had been surprised this year by the students' lack of job-related jitters given troubling market traditions — until recently, when events like the collapse of Bear Stearns ignited student fears.

Roxanne Hori, director of the Career Management Center at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said Bear's fateful news broke during a break between academic quarters, but she expects students to return to campus with heightened concerns.

And to some degree, they're right to be worried. While top business schools say overall hiring trends are so far about even with last year, jobs at banks have been drying up a bit. That means many hopeful candidates will have to look elsewhere — that is, towards getting rich by picking up the pieces.

by Liz Gunnison