Meet Me in St. Louis

Jim Beirne is associate dean and director of career services at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis (No. 23 on BusinessWeek's 2004 list of best B-schools). Before arriving at Olin six months ago, he spent 10 years leading recruiting efforts at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ) and General Mills (GIS ). Before that, Beirne had worked for a decade at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also directed career development and placement.

His arrival at Olin comes at a turning point for the school. Olin Professor Mahendra R. Gupta has just been named dean of the school to replace Stuart Greenbaum, who will retire July 1 after 10 years in the top spot.

Under Gupta's leadership, the school is looking to win more attention from recruiters, potential students, and the business community beyond the Midwest. And career services should be a major player in reaching that goal.

Beirne recently talked with BusinessWeek Online reporter Francesca Di Meglio about his strategy. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:



Q: What is Olin doing to attract recruiters outside of the Midwest?
A: If we can deliver world-class job search education at the beginning of our program, the world will be our student's palette. Then we won't have to wait for companies to identify us as a place to get great talent. We've decided that we're going to teach students how to find the right job regardless of whether a company comes to campus. It's an education that students can take with them, not only now but for the rest of their lives.



Q: Which recruiters do you attract?
A: Students get offers from traditional companies like McKinsey, Bain, Deloitte Consulting, and AT Kearney. A number of students go into the financial markets at places like Merrill Lynch (MER ), Citigroup (C ), Lehman Brothers (LEH ), Credit Suisse First Boston (CSR ), and AG Edwards (AGE ). Some of our local companies like Emerson and Anheuser-Busch (BUD ) are doing exceptionally well with recruiting this year. Then there are the traditional industrial players like Ford (F ), Gillette (G ), Frito-Lay (PEP ), IBM (IBM ), Wrigley (WWY ), Guidant (GD ), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ ).

Q: Are there any industries you're looking to break into for your students?
A: A large number of our undergraduates go to Wall Street, and we'd like to see a proportionate number of MBAs go there as well. We've also seen more interest in hedge funds and global opportunities. One of the things that surprised me is the large number of students who go into consumer packaged goods.

Q: How do you pitch the school's culture to recruiters?
A: We have the academic excellence that many of our peers have and a culture of caring conducive to our small size. It's a strong research school with great teachers. It's intimate and intense.

Our students get more exposure to the faculty, administration, and certainly the dean than those at larger schools. If we can help students identify who they are and what they want early, then they can take electives inside and outside of the business school that will help them better prepare for the jobs they want.

Q: How have your MBAs fared recently?
A: Jobs for full-time MBAs are up about 10% over last year's market. About 70% of our 2005 graduates currently hold jobs. Salaries are improving, but it depends on the industry. Investment banks and consulting firms, for example, are paying more than they did last year. Overall, salaries are up about 5%, but I'd be cautious with these figures because the data are incomplete at this time.

Recruiters tend to be more and more discriminating because it's still a buyer's market. And the job search tends to take a little bit longer than it did 10 years ago. Companies want to make sure they've got the right students, and that they're in it for the long haul.

Q: Are you doing anything creative to garner more attention?
A: We just built a brand new executive education center that includes our career services offices, space for informational sessions and interviews, and hotel rooms for recruiters. We'll happily pay for the expenses of new recruiters to stay here because we know St. Louis isn't on everyone's list of stops.

Q: What is your philosophy on building a career?
A: I think it's critical to understand your own motivations and values and how you reached this point. You need to understand the opportunities that companies have -- beyond the hype -– so that you can best match your needs to theirs.

Q: What kinds of services do you offer students?
A: One of the keys to the school's success is the intense personalization that students get from faculty, the dean's office, and career services. What we're starting to do now is use that intense personalization to build the world's best job-search preparation program.

Starting this fall, the career services office will be teaching and staffing Career Navigator, a for-credit career course that is required of all first-year students. The majority of our students will find their jobs through off-campus searches because we don't have as many companies coming here as some of the larger schools. We want to prepare students and give them the best network possible to find the right jobs.

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