Welcome to the Business Career Center

Who WE ARE

The Smeal Business Career Center is a team of dedicated professionals coaching undergraduate business students to develop professionalism and employability skills to support talent pipelines for our valued employer partners. See our employability statistics here: https://careerconnections.smeal.psu.edu/employment-reports-and-student-data/

How we do it

  • Staying expert: Our team is connected to industry professionals, professional organizations, employer partners, research, and media outlets to ensure up-to-date coaching techniques are employed and that relevant employer feedback is shared in a timely manner.
  • Adapting with purpose: The recruiting landscape has been changing with additional accelerated changes through-and-post-COVID. Our flexible and innovative team has strategically pivoted when needed to provide the best holistic career services to our stakeholders while also providing scalable resources.
  • Valuing collaboration: We aim to partner within the Smeal College of Business, across Penn State University, and with our external employer partners to build programs and resources of value with minimal inefficiencies.
  • Placing a high emphasis on customer service: We aim to serve our students, employer partners, Smeal colleagues, and University Career Services team members equally with a keen awareness of the importance of being responsive, inclusive, and assuming positive intent.
  • Taking an individualized approach: We individually coached ~4,500 students in the 2021-2022 academic year by valuing each student and their unique circumstances and adapting our coaching interventions to provide optimal empathetic support. Similarly, we work with individual employer partners to offer consultation to support specific hiring needs in a complex landscape.

Values

  • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: we support DE&I by offering a wide variety of programming, partnering with Smeal’s Office of Diversity Enhancement Programs, and infusing diversity topics within BA 297 curriculum and workshop learning objectives. Learn more about diversity recruiting here: https://www.smeal.psu.edu/corp/recruiting/diversity-recruiting
  • Creativity and Innovation: we consistently seek to innovate and partner with vendors that provide scalable and timely resources. In an effort to be proactive, we are exploring externally and having internal conversations to predict and prepare for new and emerging trends.
  • Wellness: in addition to supporting our own work/life balance, we encourage students to seek out employment opportunities that maximize their wellness, collaborate with employers to highlight their wellness initiatives, utilize strengths-based coaching techniques, refer to crisis and ancillary resources when needed, and support ongoing College wellness initiatives.
  • Collaboration: we partner with our employer partners, University Career Services colleagues, those in our professional organizations, the Penn State Corporate Engagement Center, and within the Smeal College of Business, including: the Center for Supply Chain Research, Real Estate Boot Camp, the Nittany Lion Consulting Group, the Tarriff Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility, the Center for the Business of Sustainability, Smeal Development and Alumni Relations, Smeal Diversity Enhancement Programs, faculty, Undergraduate Education, and Professional Graduate Programs.
  • Integrity: we consistently infuse discussions around job search ethics into curriculum and coaching appointments, ask our students to sign the student-initiated Smeal Honor Code, and hold students accountable for unethical behavior.

NACE Competencies

We actively seek to connect NACE’s Career Readiness Competencies with our work as instructors and coaches while also being an advocate outside of the career-services space for academic integration/adoption.

Career and Self-Development
Communication
Critical Thinking
Equity & Inclusion
Leadership
Professionalism
Teamwork
Technology

Want to learn more about what we do? Watch the video below!