Getting Up to Speed at Kelley

Undergrads at Indiana's Kelley School are required to take two for-credit, career-related courses, says career-services officer Mark Brostoff

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Mark Brostoff
Indiana
Kelley School

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Career development is valued so highly at Indiana's Kelley School that all business majors must take two job-related, for-credit courses. One is taken during sophomore year and one during junior or senior year.

The sophomore class focuses on self-assessment, while the later one stresses actual internship and job-search strategies, interest in various industries, and the importance of leadership experience and academic preparation (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/8/06, Slide Show: "Cruising Around Kelley").

"The unique thing about Kelley and its career education is that we try to force the students to recognize that it's a real continual process, not just simply a date down the road that they should be targeting," says Mark Brostoff, associate director of undergraduate career services at Kelley.

Brostoff, who has been at IU since 2000, recently spoke to BusinessWeek.com reporter Julie Gordon. Here is are edited excerpts of their conversation.

How does career coaching work?

Career coaching is a program that we established four years ago. We recognized that in this day and age, the millennials are looking for more instant gratification in terms of the services that are offered on campus and within the Kelley School (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/18/06, "The Best Places to Launch a Career").

We offer one-on-one, private, confidential coaching by myself, the director, and a number of part-time career coaches that we hire. If it's an entrepreneurial-type student, they would be directed to myself and if the student's interested in finance or investment banking, then the director. We just don't say, "Here's a coach. Go talk to them." We try to qualify who would be the best coach for the student. That's what's a little bit unique about ours [as opposed to] some other schools, which would simply be whoever is next in line, you would get.

You owned your own business before working at Indiana. What kind of company was it?

I owned a catalog company pre-Internet for 10 years, and then sold my catalog company and went into retail until it just became too much work to teach and be in a career.

What type of help is available in the career-services office for students who want to start their own businesses?

We try to get students to appreciate the fact that even though they might be majors in entrepreneurship, how important it is to get a job and to work within the industry or within the field to develop your networking and financial expertise. So many of our entrepreneurship majors will intern with a business. They might intern with a medium- to large-sized business, gain some experience, and work for five to eight years before venturing out on their own.

However, we've had some very successful former students who are out now with an entrepreneurial venture. We have two students who while they were juniors opened up a business in town that's doing very well.

What types of companies recruit on campus?

The types of recruiting companies on campus obviously include all of the Big Four accounting firms. We also include the major Wall Street investment-banking firms, like Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Deutsche Bank (DB).