Retooled career center, corporate relations yields big results

Good business is all about good relationships.

As a business school, building strong relationships means 14 companies will hire more of your graduates than they did the year before. A commitment to creating new relationships means another 15 companies will hire your graduates for the first time.

Both happened this year. And thanks to the efforts of our Weston Career Center, we saw even more positive results for our students and recent graduates. Internship recruiting is up. New firms are coming to campus to recruit our students. Alumni are engaging with our students in greater numbers than ever.

Nearly two years ago, WashU Olin began a massive overhaul of the WCC and our corporate relations efforts. Now, that work is yielding the results we anticipated when we began.

“We’ve been much more focused and targeted,” said Jen Whitten, associate dean and director of the WCC. “Everything has moved from a transactional to a relationship model.”

In the past 18 months, Jen and her team have consolidated the career center and our corporate relations operation so they work hand-in-glove. Jen, along with Dorothy Kittner, associate dean and director of corporate relations, have deployed Olin team members to the east and west coasts of the United States, into Europe, the Middle East and Shanghai.

Those moves acknowledge the common interests we share with corporate partners. Building those relationships means we gain insight into career trends and specific job opportunities for our students and alumni.

“Having the ability to collaborate in real time with the WCC really helps to connect the dots,” Dorothy said. At the same time, these moves create new opportunities for recruiters to gain exposure to our talented students.

We are really running on all four cylinders—and then some. We're helping employers rethink their strategies, creatively adapting to new ways of meeting students—bringing students to them, for example, or connecting them through live-streamed interviews.  

Dorothy Kittner

Indeed, our students regularly take career treks focused on technology, finance, accounting, wealth management and consulting—with access to big-name players in every industry.

Meanwhile, Jen and her team are empowered to “break down barriers,” persuading recruiters who have never visited to make a trip to Olin. “What’s the best way to plug you into Olin?” she asks. “We’ll figure it out.”

As any sound business would do, we leveraged external experts two years ago for insight into the next steps for our career center. Boston Consulting Group conceived many of the strategies we’ve implemented in corporate relations and career services. An interesting byproduct: BCG is now active on campus, working hard to further engage.

Placing corporate relations professionals in the field establishes that WashU Olin is serious about creating relationships. Empowering those professionals to proactively break down recruiting barriers builds those relationships. Encouraging those professionals to leverage our strong alumni network within those companies further cements those relationships.

Conventional wisdom has always been that without at least 200 MBA students, a business school cannot attract recruiters to campus. Jen has shown that conventional wisdom is wrong. We’ve had more employers engaging in a broader range of recruiting events than ever before. And we only see growth in the future.

Pictured above: Olin MBA students visit Cisco in Silicon Valley in October 2019, thanks to the help of alumni in the company and relationships forged through the Weston Career Center.