B-School Blues

Jimmy wants to hire an MBA.

He read in the Economist that thanks to the recession, business school enrolments are up and recruitment is down. He thinks that this means he can hire an MBA on the cheap.

This is a typical piece of Jimmy logic. He starts with an established fact, puts a unique spin on it, and reaches a conclusion that dovetails with his own wishful thinking. Of course, his conclusion is nonsense. A glut of supply in the MBA market simply means that the pool of available recruits is likely to be of a much lower quality, on average, than in previous years. And if we offer a slave wage, we are guaranteeing that we will get only low-quality job applicants.

Besides which, we are a trading firm. Our very existence depends on our ability to find value and acquire it at a low price; or to find excess and sell it at the top. There is no way we should be hiring people who think it makes economic sense to invest two years and two hundred thousand dollars on a content-free degree in the middle of a recession.

But this argument won’t cut any ice. Jimmy has had enough of the motley mix of math, science, econ and finance geeks that make up our workforce (with degrees ranging from community college to Ivy League Ph.D.s). He thinks this variety of experience is messy.

And he can’t understand what these rocket scientists are doing anyway; therefore it must not be very useful. No; it’s time for a ‘professional’ workforce, and that means hiring MBAs.

Actually I can’t say I’m surprised. MBAs are shallow, self-congratulatory, pompous and conformist. Just like Jimmy in fact.

Still, there’s one saving grace. Jimmy has put me in charge of the hiring committee. This will be fun.

Postscript: Later -- much later! -- I found out the truth: this was all done in order to impress the alumni relations committee at Jimmy’s alma mater. Jimmy wanted nothing more than to be able to swagger back into his old school, disbursing largesse in the form of a plum hedge fund job. Small man, small victories.