Career Resources for Students and Alumni

Terry Shannon: Right now, we’ve got about 120 executive partners, former senior-level execs from every industry and every functional area. And they bring to the table an incredible amount of experience and background, but what we ask them to do when talking with a student is to use that background and experience to ask questions versus set direction. So we use a phrase, ask, don’t tell. Whenever you find yourself about to say, “This is what you need to do,” step back and say, "What are the risks in that choice? What’s the competition gonna do in that kind of an opportunity?" But then we’ll also wear that mentor hat, and somebody wants to learn and understand about my background in the food distribution industry and the steps that I took along the way. You often hear about career paths and career ladders, and that sounds reasonable, straightforward kind of stuff. Reality is, careers are like rock climbing walls. If you think about it, you’re reaching, you’re stretching. Sometimes you’re reaching around that blind corner, hoping for something different to hold on to. And I would venture to say that the majority of the students who are coming back for their MBA are reaching around that blind corner, hoping there’s something different to hold on to.



Sometimes you have to go down to go up, right? To find a new path. Sometimes you need that mentor to throw you a rope and pull you to the next level a little bit. And sometimes you fall off the wall, and you have to figure out, okay, what’s my next step along the way? Every one of our executive partners have lived careers on the rock climbing wall. So sure, they can share the good, the bad, the ugly along the way. But if, for example, somebody is looking at a career change and moving to a new company, there’s some likelihood that one of our executive partners maybe was at that company at one point. And what better way to find out about the true culture of a company than to talk to somebody who has been there, done it? And that’s a phenomenal kind of conversation. And we work very closely with the Graduate Career Management Center and support the students via mock interviews. If you give me your resume and a job description of something you’re applying for, I can run you through a pretty good 45-minute mock interview just to help you get more comfortable with your answers, how you’re coming across, the responses you’re giving, and what works for you and what doesn’t.



The funnest part about those kinds of conversations is that you may have been working with somebody through a series of interviews that they’re going through for a job opportunity. And after a while, you get a phone call, and it’s them calling to let you know that they got the job offer. And you know they called mom or dad or significant other first, and that’s okay, but they’re calling you to let you know. And when you hang up the phone from that kind of a conversation, that’s where you just light up and say, "Wow, I made a difference. I made an impression." And sometimes the conversations are, “I got an offer from company A, but I’m waiting to hear from company B. What do I do with company A?” Been there, done that along my career along the way, and all of our EPs have been. So we can give you some recommendations, some ideas to think about, some approaches to take to be able to make it work most effectively for you.