MBA Insider: Careers Q&A September 23, 2008, 4:58PM EST

Washington University Careers Q&A

A talk with the career director at the Olin Business School in St. Louis

Karen Heise
Washington University

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Karen Heise has served as the career director at Washington University's Olin Business School in St. Louis for the past six years. She studied business education at Eastern Illinois University. Before her current position, she worked in recruiting and human resources management for Capgemini and Towers Perrin.

Among the strengths of the MBA degree at Olin are its customized programs, Heise says, where students take only one semester of required classes. Once the students choose a concentration, in, say, finance or marketing, they are able to personalize the program based on their interests and enter the job market with a set of specific skills that helps them stand out in the job market.

Heise spoke with BusinessWeek's Andrea Castillo about resources for students at Olin and preparing MBAs for the job market. An edited transcript of their interview follows.

What are some of the strengths of the MBA program at Wash U? Are there any special programs or opportunities available to students there?

The strengths of the MBA program are the faculty, the curriculum, which includes critical thinking, innovation, leadership, and some new classes that are industry-specific, like entertainment management and sports management. We have classes that integrate all of the functions of business. Probably the most differentiating factor is that our curriculum is very customized. We only have one semester of required classes. Otherwise, students can take the classes that they want, based on their own interests, or where they feel they need to strengthen some skill gaps.

What are the advantages to specialization in an MBA program?

Everyone in the MBA program identifies a concentration. It gives people an area of depth, a function that they then can offer to the marketplace. In a finance concentration, the curriculum around that concentration will build specific skills relevant to finance, or marketing, or operations. Basically, all of our students concentrate in something, and it gives them a depth of ability in a certain function to offer to the marketplace. Some of our students have two concentration areas. Some choose a concentration called general management, which means they're basically going to be well-rounded and not specifically dive into any one function.

Have there been any changes or improvements to the career center recently?

We have new technology that we're implementing this year, CAREERlink. That is a new tool that supports on-campus recruiting, and it offers employers a one-stop place to post positions and have exposure to a broad population of students. We also have a career course that's not all that new, but some schools don't have it. It's a required career course that all MBAs go through their first semester that specifically helps students create a career action plan.

It's midsummer. What are the job and internship offers looking like this year vs. last year?

Salaries are above last year. Salaries are probably up by a couple thousand dollars as the median. The median last year was probably $86,000, and this year the median is $90,000 for MBAs. [The percentage of students] with offers is down probably by about 5% at the same time last year, so compensation-wise it seems pretty healthy. We don't see any changes, due by the market, in what companies are willing to pay for an MBA, but we do see fewer of them hiring our students in the normal cycle. We've still got some students who are available for employment.

Would you say that is based on the economy, or any other reason for this?

I think the economy is a big factor. We've had several situations where students had an offer and thought they were going to a company and then the company said: "We don't have it in the budget to have this position." I think some of it is in the market conditions, because the people that we still have available are really strong, so it's not because of the quality, it's more about the market being soft.