At GW School of Business, the F. David Fowler Career Center is addressing those questions through its signature program, Careers360. The initiative, which gives students on-the-ground access to consulting projects, has become so successful that business organizations are coming back for more. Under the umbrella of Careers360, student experience is built out in three channels: Consulting360, Marketing360 and Finance360.
“Careers360 is a unique program. I don’t know another one similar to it,” said Cassin Dyson, the career center’s Blaser Family Endowed Executive Director. “Participating in the Careers360 program has a direct impact on internship and employment outcomes. This spring, students have landed in-demand roles at Oracle, JP Morgan, Gallup and DrFirst, to name a few.”
Careers360 is designed to complement the knowledge learned in the classroom with the practical skills needed to land top jobs in their industries. The pro bono projects every spring have given students something additional to put on their resumes, opened the door to internships and even resulted in students being hired by the companies with which they collaborated.
GlobalGiving Sees Professional-Caliber Results from Careers360 Teams
Asha Aravindakshan, BBA ’02, is chief operating officer for GlobalGiving and one of Career360’s clients. GlobalGiving provides the backbone technology that connects nonprofits to donors, enabling 2 million donors to support over 42,000 projects in more than 175 countries. The organization has raised more than $1 billion since 2002. Last year, two GW student teams partnered with GlobalGiving—one team focused on a marketing challenge and the other on a strategic finance challenge.
“They did fantastic,” said Aravindakshan. “One team did a landscape analysis of financial statements that are publicly available, and they produced a narrative around that work. Having been through GW Business as an undergrad, we got exposed to the financial statements of publicly traded companies—but navigating the nonprofit equivalent is a little different. It was really interesting to see their ability to analyze the financial statements.”
She said the other student team created a product marketing program with achievement milestones. “At every stage they were blowing me away with the level of secondary research they were completing,” she said.
Aravindakshan, based in New York City, met with students via videoconference every couple of weeks leading up to the teams’ final presentations. For those final presentations, Aravindakshan invited her CEO and other members of the executive team to take part in order “to give students exposure to the top people.”
Aravindakshan was so impressed with the students’ performance that she signed up her organization for another go. This spring, Career360 students worked on a project related to GlobalGiving’s employee advocacy program.
Connecting Business Students With High-Impact Client Work
About 60 students are selected for as many as a dozen pro bono projects each year, said Careers360 Associate Director Leila Collins, MBA ’95. The students receive no academic credit and they complete the projects while also keeping up with their normal classwork.
Collins works with alumni and other interested professionals to identify needs that can be developed into semester-long projects. Both undergraduate and graduate students can apply for the coveted slots in the program. The students work in cross-functional teams, usually of five or six people. Each team is assigned a program advisor within the Career360 leadership team. The advisors provide guidance to team, sit in on project updates and meetings.
Recent student teams have developed a scalable business model for a startup, mapped out a growth and monetization path for a small consulting firm’s podcast, put together a B2B strategy for a catering company and created a go-to-market expansion project for a nonprofit. In one project, students worked with LINK Strategic Partners on a global branding initiative.
A Testing Ground for Careers
Joseph Miranda has been instrumental in the development of the program. After retiring from Accenture four years ago, Miranda joined the School of Business, where he is currently the assistant dean for operations. For a time, he ran the Consulting360 program and also served as interim executive director of the career center. At the time, the career center had a program called Communities of Practice—a precursor to Careers360. Miranda immediately began looking for ways to expand it.
“After 30 years working at Accenture, I’d hired many students. I’ve seen students stumble over things that are very avoidable,” Miranda said. “When I came to the School of Business, I thought about what we need to do to build out the program so students could avoid these early hurdles, gain the skills to stand out from their peers at other universities and take their careers as high as they wanted.”
“Students don’t lack technical skills any more, they lack soft skills, the professional skills,” he said.
Miranda said Careers360 builds skills needed for any business career. He said the program is also a useful testing ground for students who haven’t yet decided what career path is best for them.
“If a student participates in Careers360 and decides this type of work is not for them, this is still a success because we’ve saved them a year going down the wrong path,” Miranda said.
Each project is tailored to meet the client’s needs. Although clients can come from all corners of business, alumni are one of the program’s key assets. “Sometimes alumni contact us and they want to get their companies involved,” Collins explained.
“What surprised me was how well the teams work together,” said GlobalGiving’s Aravindakshan. “The teams are a mix of undergrad and graduate students who are coming together for the first time. They each delivered content of the highest quality.”
“This is such a valuable opportunity for them to gain real world experience. They’re gaining transferable skills they need for the future,” she continued. “I wish I’d had an experiential learning opportunity like this as an undergrad.”