Olin Business School Is Reaping Benefits After Rejigging Its Career Center

Career centers at business schools, or any university for that matter, hold the utmost importance for a lot of students. The first step towards landing a job or an internship at a reputed company, Career Centers are essential in developing relationships with prospective employers and bring them on board to hire graduates from their business school. Today, we will look at the career center at Olin Business School, Washington University at St. Louis.

Overhaul of the Weston Career Center

Olin Business School of Business, which is a part of the Washington University in St. Louis, began an overhaul of its career center, the Weston Career Center, in 2018, and is now reaping the benefits of the move. Internship recruiting has gone up, new companies have been a part of on-campus recruiting, and the alumnis are more in touch with the students than ever before.

Talking about the overhaul, Associate Dean and Director of the Weston Career Center, Jennifer Whitten says:

We’ve been much more focused and targeted. Everything has moved from a transactional to a relationship model.

Ever since the beginning of the overhaul, Whitten, along with Dorothy Kittner, Associate Dean and Director of Corporate Relations, have strategized the working of the career center and corporate relations operation for much smoother functioning. Deploying Olin team members to the east and west coasts of the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Shanghai has enabled the business school to develop and consolidate relations with new corporate partners.

Having the ability to collaborate in real time with the WCC really helps to connect the dots. 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 about helping recruiters gain access to Olin Business School’s students. 

With a focus on getting more recruiters on-board to visit Olin, the WCC is putting more emphasis on creating relationships, and has worked in tandem with Boston Consulting Group to create strategies for implementation in corporate relations and career services. The move has also led to BCG becoming an on-site recruiter at Olin Business School, and the firm is exploring options to engage further.

Employment Statistics

As per the employment reports published by Olin Business School for the Class of 2018, 25% of the graduate students went into a career in Finance, and 22% each in Consulting, Marketing and General Management. The Internship Statistics for the class of 2019 have 27% students working in Marketing, 22% in Finance and 21% each in Consulting and General Management. Companies that have employed students from the business school include Amazon, Deloitte, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, PepsiCo, and many more.