Associate Dean for Career and Industry Engagement Jamie Belinne weighs in on how Bauer students are prepared to face future crises in the business world.

More than ever, companies are investing in trained and experienced supply chain professionals to help them not only be more competitive, but also be better prepared for disasters or crises in the future.

Jamie Belinne
Associate Dean of Career & Industry Management

In early Spring 2020 we were beginning to see a slowdown in hiring as the energy companies, who had always been such an important part of hiring in Houston, scaled back their workforces.

We thought that was the worst of it, but by the end of the semester, the world had gone into quarantine, and students were seeing job and internship offers being rescinded, and nobody knew what the future would hold.

Since that time, we have weathered the conversion to a virtual world, including virtual learning, networking, hiring, and employment, and one of the worst unemployment rates our country has faced in years.

But these experiences demonstrated, once again, why Bauer College students are so well-known for their grit and resiliency, because they weathered this unprecedented job market experience with a six-month placement rate of 94 percent. And while the job market has been improving, this year’s outcomes are even higher!

The entire country received a lesson in the importance of effective supply chains during the past few years, which were skills our top-ranked supply-chain program had already been teaching. More than ever, companies are investing in trained and experienced supply chain professionals to help them not only be more competitive, but also be better prepared for disasters or crises in the future.

Along with this idea of better preparation for future emergencies, the ability to analyze, explain and make decisions with data are the skills most craved by businesses right now. While systems such as Tableau, Power BI, Python or R were often considered most relevant to accounting or finance coursework, employers from all disciplines of business are beginning to seek these skills among graduates.

In general, professional services are leading the industries with the most growth in hiring. Talented students pursuing careers in such fields as accounting, consulting and retail management are in high demand.

And throughout the economic ebbs and flows over the past few years, the ability to sell, whether it be products or ideas, remained a desirable and lucrative skill. Companies’ need for sales skills not only kept students in the Sanchez Program for Excellence in Selling in high demand, but also led to the development of an online Sales Academy at the college to train members of the Houston community to meet the need for technical sales skills. If you have the ability to analyze big data to make decisions, and the additional skill to effectively tell impactful stories with that data to persuade people to make business decisions, then you are the skillset of the future. So, these are the skills being developed in Bauer students.

Last fall, the Rockwell Career Center, which provides services to all Bauer students, not only brought back all of its in-person recruiting events, but also supplemented these with virtual events to support the growing online degree programs at Bauer. And despite the hiatus from on-campus programming, every in-person career event in the college was filled to wait-list capacity. So, despite inflation and ongoing economic uncertainty, Bauer students remain in demand.