The Monroe Street Journal

Issue date: 2/11/08 Section: Administration

It's Sunday night at 11:00 PM. I'm getting through my LHC reading, accounting homework, and trying to prepare for the week ahead. Suddenly, my cell phone rings loudly from the other side of my bedroom. Engrossed in my work, I ignore it, figuring that I'll just call back tomorrow. Less than a minute later, the phone starts ringing again. I can't ignore it this time. I look at the Caller ID, and it is a number I don't recognize. I pick up the phone and - "Josh? Josh, it's me. I am freaking out. I have an interview with Goldman Sachs Investment Banking tomorrow, and I am blanking on valuations. Can we go through them one more time, please?" Calmly, I respond, "No problem," and for the next 15 minutes, I work through the various valuation techniques. I get off the phone and smile to myself, knowing that my fifteen minutes has made an enormous difference for one BBA Junior interviewee as she prepares for the biggest week of her academic career. This is the essence of being a career counselor - the feeling of personal satisfaction, the knowledge that I have made a difference in someone's experience here at Ross. This is what I signed up for.

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Working as a Career Counselor for the Office of Career Development has been the highlight of my two years here at Ross, and it is surely an experience that I will not soon forget. For BBA1 and MBA1 students considering pursuing a Career Counselor position next year, let me be the first to highly recommend it to you.

As a Career Counselor, I have had the opportunity to expand my personal network to new classes of students - the BBA Juniors and the MBA1s. For the first two semesters of business school, I oftentimes felt that my experience at Ross was isolated to Section 1. I found this to be limiting. I wanted to reach out and meet more students here, and career counseling has been a great way of accomplishing that. Over my semester and a half of counseling, I have worked with over 70 BBA1 and MBA1 students, advising them not only on internship interviews and resumes, but also on classes and extra-curricular activities and programs. I have learned about their goals both professionally and personally. Overall, this experience has afforded me the opportunity to meet many interesting and dynamic individuals that I would never have known otherwise, and for that, career counseling has been an enlightening and rewarding endeavor.

Another important reason why I chose to work as a career counselor was my proximity to the internship recruiting and interview process. Having just gone through the process last January, I felt that I could be the most helpful to BBA1 and MBA1 students as they prepared for their internship searches. As a junior, I remember how lost I felt at the start of the year. I didn't even know what investment banking was let alone how to find an internship. I remember my first appointment with a career counselor. I was sitting in a room on the third floor of Kresge, panicking because all of my classmates had already started networking with firms, and I needed direction and guidance badly. The counselor helped calm my nerves, taking a full hour to sit with me and explain the nuances of investment banking and brainstorming with me to help me decide whether this industry was a good fit. The personal attention he paid to me was unexpected but greatly appreciated, and I attribute my success in finding an internship to him. This was my main motivation for becoming a career counselor - I wanted to share the lessons I learned and the strategies I developed through the interview and internship processes. I have fulfilled this goal over the past semester and a half as a career counselor, and I have thoroughly enjoyed passing down my knowledge and experience to better prepare students for their internships and career endeavors.

Continued...

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