Timothy Butler is a senior fellow and director of Career Development Programs at the Harvard Business School (No. 3 on BusinessWeek's top-30 list of B-schools).

Butler arrived at HBS in 1984 and has spent the last 18 years researching the relationship between personality structures and finding meaning in one's work. He's the man behind CareerLeader, an Internet-based self-assessment tool that's used by more than 240 B-schools and corporations worldwide.

Discovering a career that brings out your passion will keep you engaged and content, Butler says. He recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online project assistant Francesca Di Meglio. Here's an edited excerpt of their conversation:

Q: What's your philosophy on building a career?
A: When I work with students, they learn about the research that has been done on the relationships between three types of personality variables: deeply embedded life interests, work-reward values, and business skills, and how these three variables relate to the satisfaction between one type of career path vs. another. We place a lot of emphasis on deeply embedded life interests because my research has shown that this is the strongest predictor of career satisfaction over a long period of time.

We work on developing where you want to be five to seven years after graduation. I don't just mean industry and function, but I also mean organizational culture, geographical location, setting of your life. You can then begin to work the job question backward. If you're able to develop a vision for five to seven years out, then you can say: "what job, what experience, and what knowledge do I need to be hired into my vision five years from now?"

Q: What are the most innovative services you offer students in the job search?
A: In the required course I teach, Career Development, students learn that there's a rigorous, analytical way of thinking about how individual differences affect career choice and satisfaction. There's also a whole series of workshops, panels, and seminars.

I have trained between 20 and 25 coaches -- mostly graduates of the Harvard Business School who have significant experience in a wide range of industries --- to work as consultants and meet one-on-one with any student who asks. Coaches help with the basic assessment process, developing a career vision and strategy, and tactical issues such as interview skills, networking, or even negotiation.

Our marketing outreach to 163 companies that were not currently recruiting at Harvard generated 53 new recruiting partners in 2004. And these 53 companies generated 100 new opportunities in our job bank.

Another resource is the 65,000-strong, HBS alumni network. Of the business schools, we have the largest alumni network by far. About half of our alumni have volunteered to be alumni career advisers, who welcome telephone calls and e-mails from current students.

Q: What advice do you have for entering MBAs or those who are still in the workforce?
A: Each one of them came here for a different reason. In the MBA environment, it's too easy to get caught up in the herd effect. Where is the group going? What are the growth industries? Who's spending the most money on campus for recruiting efforts? Those are powerful forces, and the message that no one came here for the same reason is a very important one.

There are a lot of things that students can do when they're employed before they come here. They can identify people who they admire, who they see as strong leaders or simply whose job seems exciting. It's an opportunity to network with those people and spend time with them.

Q: How do you set your MBAs apart from the others?
A: When you think of a Harvard MBA, two words come to mind: leadership and analytical ability. We have a very serious mission of training leaders, and the coursework here is rich and robust.

Q: How well did the Class of 2004 do in job placement?
A: In 2004, 94% of MBA graduates who were seeking employment had a job offer by graduation. That number last year was 88%.

Q: What's the average starting salary for HBS students?
A: It certainly looks like a trend upward. [First], when we talk about starting salary, we're talking about base salary -- no bonuses, no moving expenses. That number for the class of 2004 is $99,900, vs. $94,700 in 2003, and essentially the same in 2002. Those two, in turn, were a drop down from 2001, when the average base salary was $102,800. Obviously, 2001 hit the MBA job market significantly.

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