(BusinessWeek, May 2003 Edition) May 30, 2003 - Next up on Degnan's agenda: Reshaping Wharton's bewildering campus recruiting routine. Many investment banks want first crack at Wharton's talent, and try to show up at the same time. "Having 20 investment banks come to campus on day one [of recruiting season] creates problems," says Degnan. He has seen top students cram a dozen interviews into a single day, often dashing from a downtown Philadelphia hotel back to campus in 15 minutes for another interview. This system worked itself out during the 90s boom, when job seekers were confident that they'd get job offers and could afford to miss company presentations or ditch interviews. That's no longer the case, and next year, Degnan plans to make order out of chaos.

For example, during Wharton's dedicated interview period (DIP) week next February, he'll set up a four-day schedule for investment banks, which typically like to whittle down their prospective hires through successive rounds of interviews. One set of banks will do their first round of job interviews on Monday and a second round on Thursday. Another set of banks will do first rounds on Tuesday and second rounds on Wednesday. Scheduling interviews for the school's 800 grads each spring has become so complex that Degnan has hired an optimization expert to sort it all out.

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Date: May 30 2003