A Candid Career Discussion with IMD
IMD (International Institute for Management Development), based in Lausanne, Switzerland, is recognized for its hands-on, leadership-focused approach. With a highly selective, intimate MBA program and an Executive MBA option, IMD adapts its curriculum to the needs of the job market and develops globally minded, impact-driven leaders.
In this conversation, Christian Dummett, Assistant Dean and Director of Career Development at IMD, shares insights into how the school prepares its students for the demands of today’s job market, the transformation of its career services, and why IMD offers a unique value proposition for MBA candidates.
MBA Pathfinders: Thanks for joining us, Christian – we appreciate your time! Could you share a bit about your background? We understand that were at London Business School for several years and also spent time in industry. What brought you to IMD?
Christian Dummett: I spent 27 years in finance, which I loved, eventually ending up in a sales role. Wanting to shift gears, I took a five-month contract at LBS to work with finance students and ended up staying for 11 years. I ran the Career Centre for about six years and served as Interim Associate Dean of Degree Programmes for one year. I was considering my next move when the opportunity at IMD came up.
IMD is unique in that it’s predominantly an executive education institution, rather than a degree-based business school. That business-centric environment was a big draw for me.
I also saw an opportunity to rebuild the Career Centre. IMD had kept pace with the business world overall, but the career services hadn't evolved at the same rate.
MBA Pathfinders: That sounds like an exciting challenge. We understand that the MBA curriculum has also recently undergone revision. Was your team involved in that?
Christian Dummett: The core changes happened before I joined, led by Omar Toulan. But he definitely considered career outcomes in the redesign. The new curriculum is centered on what he calls “transversal skills” – what I would call transferable skills. These are the competencies employers are actively looking for, and the program helps students apply academic knowledge in real-world business contexts.
One advantage IMD has is its flexibility. We don’t have rigid subject areas or “protected” teaching slots. That allows us to quickly adapt to changing business needs, including the integration of AI and other trends.
MBA Pathfinders: That’s such a critical point. Business education needs to be responsive, and we don’t think everyone realizes how quickly AI is going to change things.
Christian Dummett: Exactly. IMD’s business model isn’t reliant on degree programs in the same way many schools are. That gives us more freedom to evolve quickly.
MBA Pathfinders: When you joined IMD, what were your top priorities for the Career Centre?
Christian Dummett: Initially, I wanted to understand how we were doing things. At the time, students didn’t engage with careers support until the third month of the one-year program – which is far too late.
We’ve since expanded the team from five to eight, brought in new expertise – people with deep experience in coaching, law, finance, and corporate engagement – and restructured our approach.
I have somebody who is a trained lawyer, has worked in finance, has been an executive coach for 15 years, and has supported people into employment across Switzerland for more than 15 years. I've just recruited somebody a Director of Careers & Alumni Relations from IE business school who basically originally worked in as a a commercial trade marketing director for 15 years, then worked for IE working with alumni and corporate engagement. Really senior, impactful people. I've also just hired somebody an individual from Bain to lead our consulting practice sector, who also happens to have an IMD MBA.
Those are the sorts of people that we're bringing into the team who can really complement the existing skill sets that we have. We're really going from strength to strength. As an eight-person team, this is really buzzing.
This feels like an entrepreneurial business, and we're pushing boundaries, we're innovating, and we're very close to our students. For example, we now meet students in their first week of the programme and dedicate time early on to developing their career strategy and understanding sectors.
We also bring real professionals onto campus to speak with students. For example, we brought a really successful local entrepreneur in to talk about her journey setting up a company, how she'd leveraged others, how she worked with others, how she drew up on prior experience.
We're really engaging with that, with a view to encouraging the students to truly understand what it would take, how much effort they would need to put in to achieve what they want to achieve, but also to keep an open mind as to what else might be out there, and really to explore.
MBA Pathfinders: That early engagement seems especially important given today’s employment market.
Christian Dummett: It really is. We encourage students to explore widely, even beyond their initial goals. Not everyone is going to land in a traditional MBA role, and sometimes they discover that their dream job isn’t the best fit after all.
Our job is to is to really say “Don't be limited by your dreams.” The problem with dreams is that dreams are limiting, right? Dreams are based on your past experiences and things that you know, and what you should be really doing is going beyond your dreams. The point is to expand their opportunities, not narrow them. A good business school increases your set of opportunities at point of graduation.
MBA Pathfinders: That’s a really great point about expanding opportunities. Speaking of which, what are you seeing in terms of job opportunities and hiring trends?
Christian Dummett: With a small class – 80 to 100 students – it’s hard to draw broad conclusions because even one person moving into an industry can shift the stats. But what we do see is that traditional MBA hiring programs are declining, especially in Europe. More students are competing in lateral markets, not MBA-specific ones.
That means they need to stand out based on the impact they can deliver, often using transferable, rather than technical skills. We support them in identifying and articulating their value in those environments.
Many consulting firms, for instance, have moved from mass MBA-level hiring to more selective, office-specific recruitment. Also, internal mobility and hiring is up across Europe, often due to employment regulations and political uncertainty.
MBA Pathfinders: And we imagine employment timelines are shifting too. What are your thoughts on that trend and managing expectations?
Christian Dummett: Yes. Students are still finding jobs, but the process is taking longer than the traditional “three months post-graduation” benchmark. That’s why we’re cautious with employment statistics – we want to avoid misleading prospects with numbers that don’t reflect the full picture.
I've always believed that there's always a market for talent. I think the great thing about the IMD brand is that people know this is where corporates and their executives are trained, so they know the students have had an executive level training at an MBA level. It’s for the students to really figure out how they sell themselves, what kind of impact they can have, and we support them in that across the market.
So, it's a longer process, and you're seeing this in employment numbers across all business schools. Students are finding jobs – they're just taking longer than three months post-graduation.
We’re helping people compete in lateral employment markets. We're giving them the best insights, the best connections, and helping them really realize and believe in the potential that they have and the impact that they've made in their prior lives, such that they can articulate that to other people. That's our job.
We do that by reaching out to as many organizations as possible, understanding what's going on in the world, collecting the information through the contacts that we have across the broader executive education business, and using all of those insights for the benefits of students.
MBA Pathfinders: Does your team play a role in admissions as well?
Christian Dummett: Definitely. We collaborate closely with the recruitment and admissions teams to assess employability and set realistic expectations for applicants. We also connect with prospective students before they even arrive – through calls, workshops, and one-on-one conversations. This helps them hit the ground running. That’s our job, right?
We look at their CVs and we get involved very early on. I have a call next week with students for the next round. Also, I'm actually having a conversation about career aspirations with a student tomorrow who's interested in coming on the program. Because we're small and intimate, we really are very, very close to our students, right from the outset, before even beginning on the program. We did three career sessions with them in October, November, December last year, before they even arrived.
MBA Pathfinders: Is there anything else prospective students should consider when evaluating IMD?
Christian Dummett: The benefit of IMD is that it's right at the heart of Europe, I've traveled a lot around Europe, and I've lived in different parts of Europe, and Lausanne is probably the most multicultural, multilingual city in the whole of Europe.
There are certain cities which are very local in terms of their language and their culture, which makes going to a business school there a very unique environment to their particular culture, which means it doesn't necessarily translate across Europe.
Switzerland has always been a country which has been much more broadly European, and Lausanne in particular, is the most European of all the Swiss cities. I think that gives us a significant benefit in terms of accessibility to the rest of Europe.
For students who are thinking of European business schools, I think Lausanne has some real unique advantages which other cities don't have, unlike locations don't have. That's one of the reasons I love living here and I love being here.
MBA Pathfinders: It sounds like an amazing place and opportunity! Thanks so much for your time and insight, Christian.
Christian Dummett: Thanks again. It was a pleasure.
Learn more