Olin Shows Students All Their Options

Undergrads at Washington University's business school earn credit with career exploration exercises, and experience via internships abroad

If you study at Washington University's Olin School of Business, you could earn credit for completing career exploration exercises. The school offers sophomores a for-credit class called "Managing Your Business Career," which about 80% of students take. A major point emphasized in the course is that the career search is not only driven by skills, but also by interests and values, says Jim Beirne, associate dean and director of the Weston Career Center at Olin.

For undergrads who enroll in the class, and even those who don't, personal attention from center advisers is stressed. Because of Olin's small size—there are only about 150 graduates each year—Weston's staffers can work closely with all students looking for help with internship search. Beirne says about 90% of students use the center at some point.

Beirne, who has been at Wash U. for about two years, has an interesting perspective to offer undergraduates. He worked at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in career development for about 10 years before going to the corporate side of the field. Beirne ran recruiting for North and South America at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and directed university recruiting at General Mills (GIS) (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/15/06, "B-School Food for Thought at General Mills").

Now, he's back in the academic world. "I had a chance at a really, really interesting university that's very, very, good [and] that wants to be even better, to take my experience and apply it to the school and career services and administration of the school," Beirne says.

Beirne recently spoke to BusinessWeek.com reporter Julie Gordon. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

A large part of the for-credit career class is self-evaluation. How is that performed?

We use two sets of tests and instruments that we believe very strongly in. One is called Career Leader. It was developed by a couple of career counselors at Harvard Business School over the last 15, 20 years. Career Leader is really good for future business managers—whether they're for-profit or not-for-profit—because it isolates those capabilities and helps people understand how their interests match up with people who have been successful in those types of careers. We also use something called the Strong Interest. It's much broader.

When you say "interests," do you mean outside hobbies such as playing soccer, or business-related interests such as working with people?

Interest in activities such as, are you more interested in counseling and mentoring or in theory development or managing people in relationships or influencing people through language and ideas? And the way these guys have worked this out is, it's kind of rank order. You can't just say, 'I'm interested in everything' or 'I'm interested in nothing.' Your interests are all relative.

The class is taken sophomore year, but is there any career preparation students should do freshman year?

The short answer is they should get accustomed to the whole college scene. We don't want to hit them on Day One saying, 'All right, you've got to think about your career.'

What misconceptions do people have about Wash. U. and Olin?

We've been ranked in the top 10, 11, 12 universities in the country for quite a while. And most people don't know who we are because our footprint is not that large. We're a medium-sized university and a very small business school.