BNET: How do millennials first reach out to Haas?
Johnson: They often listen to our podcasts, which we started about three
years ago. The idea to create one was suggested by someone in our marketing
office. I said, “I can’t imagine anyone listening to
this.” But after two weeks, we found out how many people listened,
and the figure was almost a thousand. Being a non-millennial and a skeptic, I
made our tech verify the number for me three times. When he did, podcasts
became an imperative.
BNET: What’s on the podcasts?
Johnson: They’re about the admissions process, financial
assistance issues, program content — that kind of stuff. We try to
make them conversational. We still regularly get 1,000 unique visitors a month.
We also have students writing blogs; the bloggers are given guidelines like
“don’t use profanity,” but we don’t
censor them, even though I was initially resistant. Now I know it was the right
thing to do. If you censor a blog, it sounds like a marketing message, and the
millennials can read right through that. We’ll probably be adding
video blogs.
BNET: Blogs, video blogs, podcasts — aren’t
you going a little overboard? Can’t you just send potential MBA
candidates a catalog?
Johnson: It’s not enough to have a printed publication.
They’ll never look at that anyway. You can’t use a single
information channel with millennials, because that’s not how they
gather information. Our solution is to push out our message through more and varied
channels.
BNET: You made the move to online applications about five
years ago. What else is different about the application process?
Johnson: The admissions office gets about a dozen calls per week from
applicants before everything is due. In those phone calls we get a lot of very
specific questions, like what kind of work experience should they go out and
get that would be most attractive to us. Or, they’ll call telling us
they have a couple of potential answers to one of the essay questions on the
application, and could they ask me what I think works best.
BNET: They ask you to help them with their
application? That takes chutzpah.
Johnson: At first it was a shock to have that question posed. I
would’ve never dreamed of calling a director of admissions when I was
applying to school, because I’d fear that he’d think I
couldn’t think for myself. Millennials are accustomed to having
things explained to them in great detail. They’ve always been told,
“If you don’t know, ask.” We’ve created
an entire generation of kids who’ve always been told exactly what to
do and how to do it.
BNET: So obviously they’re not always
thinking for themselves. As the gatekeeper for an MBA program, does that scare
the daylights out of you?
Johnson: Look, they’re smart people. Whether I think
it’s good or bad really doesn’t matter; it’s
clearly a generational issue and a market condition that I have to respond to.
I like to think of it as an opportunity to help develop people who have a
different style of communicating. Everyone who has contact with folks of this
generation should view it as an opportunity to help develop them into the kinds
of leaders we want. The transparency that allows them to brazenly ask all of
those questions is the kind of transparency they have about everything. In
regards to government and corporate America, this generation’s values
are a very good trend. Hopefully it’ll have an enormously positive
impact.
