Strong Network Backs William & Mary Grads

At William & Mary's Mason School of Business, all students meet with career-services staffers at least once a month, and the number of intern recruiters who come to campus tripled in 2006. Career services has transformed itself in the last two and half years since Jeff Henley signed on as director. The office now focuses on offering students personalized attention and reaching out to employers, says Henley.

Henley says it's an exciting time to be at Mason. A new B-school building -- Alan B. Miller Hall, named for an alumnus -- will be ready in 2009. The business school was recently renamed for Raymond "Chip" Mason, chairman, president, and CEO of Legg Mason, who has made multiple large donations to the school.

Henley, a 1986 William & Mary alumnus, has served as associate director of career services at UNC-Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School and at Duke's undergraduate career services. He recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online project assistant Janie Ho. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation:

What are the strongest points of your career services?
Individualized attention and active outreach to both students and employers. Students meet with a director and have a functional alignment, so if they're interested in marketing, they meet with our associate director in marketing. We try to help students narrow their career focus before they start the program.

What's unique about the training Mason students receive?
Every student is matched with an executive partner who serves as a coach through graduation. Actually, 94 of the 100 executive partners are not alumni, they are people who retired to the Williamsburg area. In this Leadership Advantage program, each student can develop technical competencies and conceptual skills (see BW Online, 3/26/06, "Creativity Comes To B-School"). Also, in our Career Acceleration Modules, faculty and executive partners team together to teach second-year students for seven weeks. Students aren't taking any other classes during that period.

What do students do before they start the program?
We work with students to develop a result-focused résumé before they enter the program. The first week of orientation we have one big program, then we meet with...

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