35◼SOLUTIONS BloombergBusinessweek March 23, 2020
in the workplace. “As environmental, social, and gover-
nanceinvestinghasincreasedin popularityandbecome
soimportantforassetmanagers,it becamea growing
partofmyworld,”Adornosays.“I’mlookingforanorga-
nizationthatis corporatelysociallyresponsible,thatholds
truetoitsmission,andhasa senseofmorethanprofit.”
RespondingtothedemandfromstudentslikeAdorno
andcommitmentsfromcompaniesandinvestorsaround
diversityandsustainability,HarvardBusinessSchool,
NYUStern,CopenhagenBusinessSchool,anda clutch
ofothertopuniversitiesnowofferESG-focusedMBAs
orindividualclassesontopicssuchascorporatesocial
responsibility(CSR).Butevenassuchcourseworkis
beingofferedmorewidely,thepeopletappingthepoolof
graduateshaveyettogiveadherencetoESGstandards
thesamepriority.Ina surveyofMBArecruiterscon-
ductedbyBloombergBusinessweeklastyear,1 in 4 said
theyvalueda candidate’sproblem-solving skills most.
Following ESG standards was ranked last, with only 1 in
every 500 recruiters saying it was the most important
skill. It was ranked in the top five by recruiters 1.2% of
the time.
That means a new graduate hoping for a career in
sustainable accounting or to land a CSR position in pri-
vate industry is probably still going to need to empha-
size more traditional expertise. For now, ESG seems
to be just a nice-to-have skill for job candidates. “If I’m
recruiting for my team, I want them to do the job I want
them to do,” says Jean-Philippe Verdier of Verdier & Co.
Corporate Advisory, which has recruited from Imperial
College London and London Business School. “ESG is
just one matter for me.”
Business schools may also be turning to ESG because
it’s an effective way to lure applicants. According to a
Bloomberg Intelligence survey, 77% of millennials are
interested in social-impact investing and ownership, more
than double the proportion of baby boomers. “Business
schools have to pay attention to their customers,” says
Lee Mergy, co-founder of Galt & Co., a management con-
sulting firm that works with Fortune 250 companies.
“Their customers are as much, if not more, the candidates
applying to those schools, as they are the businesses try-
ing to pull candidates from them.”
Certainly students at HEC Paris feel strongly about
ESG. When a manifesto was started 18 months ago,
about 400 out of the school’s 1,000 grande école grad-
uates signed it to declare that they would not work for a
company that wasn’t engaged in reducing its ecological
footprint. The number of signatories has since grown to
more than 35,000 to include those outside HEC, which
has a sustainability and disruptive innovation track on its
MBA, as well as a number of electives. Other schools
have acted on similar demands: Harvard Business School
developed an impact investing course in 2017, while*PERCENTAGESDATA:SHOWBLOOMBERGTHENUMBERBUSINESSWEEKOFTIMESA QUALITYB-SCHOOLSIS 2019 PRIORITIZEDSURVEYOF1-5RECRUITERSINA SURVEY.Problem-solvingskillsCommunicationskillsWorkcollaborativelyin teamsLeadershipskillsEntrepreneurialmindsetandpassionQuantitativeskillsContributetogrowthofthecompanyGetalongwithpeopleofdiversebackgroundsIndustry-relatedworkexperienceIn-depthknowledgeoffieldAdherencetoESGstandardsTHE BOTTOM LINE Students are flocking to sustainability-focused MBAs.
Until recruiters rank ESG standards higher, graduates will need to emphasize
more traditional expertise.17.2%15.41412.410.58.57.16.24.92.71.2Qualities of graduates considered critical by recruiters,
according to percentage of times ranked in the top five*New York University’s Stern School of Business in 2016
started the Center for Sustainable Business, run by Tensie
Whelan, formerly of the Rainforest Alliance.
As a master’s in sustainability grows more common,
businesses may be able to better discern the exact skills,
in the same way they do with a finance master’s. At the
moment, companies are struggling to evaluate them, says
Rodolphe Durand, professor of strategy and business pol-
icy at HEC Paris. “These new competencies, these new
themes, are not in their dashboard,” he says. “They don’t
know how to assess or quantify candidates.” Durand
recently met with a CAC 40-listed company in France,
which said bonuses of executives and managers are tied
to their ESG impact. Those companies are having their
human resources professionals develop ways to measure
ESG capabilities, he says.
Recruiters may have a role to play, too, in spurring
companies to give a higher priority to ESG expertise,
says Mary Francia, a recruiter with Odgers Berndtson
who works with European business school Insead. “It’s
my job to make sure a client realizes it should be on their
checklist,” she says. �Chris Stokel-Walker