Career support, and, ultimately, career advancement, is one of the most important reasons why you’ll pursue your MBA. While you’re learning about finance, marketing, data analysis, and accounting, you’ll also be learning about yourself and where you want to make your impact in the business world. Then, with your career goals set, you’ll take your next big step along that path into a role with new challenges and countless opportunities to put what you’ve learned to work.
We’re here to help. With expert coaching and career advice, we’ll help you chart a path for your career. With industry workshops and communications training, we’ll help you build critical skills you’ll use to market yourself to potential employers. And, with campus interviews, treks, and forums, we’ll help you meet recruiters from the numerous companies and organizations ready to hire UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA students.
Learn what it takes to join the UNC-Kenan Flagler Full-Time MBA program.
Chart your course and prepare to follow it.
Whether you plan to switch careers or simply advance the career you’ve already started, we can help you define your short- and long-term path and identify the next steps you’ll take to follow it. You’ll start by taking an introspective look at your skills, interests, and passions to match who you are to where you’d best fit in a professional role. You’ll next explore specific industries, roles, and employers to narrow your goals and focus your efforts. Finally, you’ll prepare to meet with company recruiters by refining your resume, perfecting your interview skills, and building industry-specific knowledge.
Career coaching
Our Career & Leadership coaches are experts. They know the industry and they know the recruiters who interview our students. And they know what it takes to lock in the position you’re after. You’ll work one-on-one with our team of career coaches to explore a variety of opportunities across industries and functions to ensure you have the information you need to choose the right career and make sure you’re fully prepared to pursue it.
Career & leadership workshops
Information sessions and training workshops on job search basics provide valuable insight for navigating your career search. You’ll learn from numerous experts in career management on topics related to:
- Professional communications: Writing an Effective MBA Resume and Cover Letter, Recruiter Correspondence, Interviewing, Communicating the Value of Your MBA, Marketing Yourself and Your Summer Experience
- Networking and your search: Job Search Strategies, How to Work a Career Fair, Preparing for a Successful Internship, and Salary Negotiations
Industry workshops
If you’re interested in a career in finance, marketing, or consulting, our industry-specific professional development programs in these fields offer career preparation essentials that will supplement what you learn in the classroom and ensure that you’re ready to hit the ground running when you start your new role.
In the finance development program, we offer seminar classes from Training the Street, the same organization that trains employees at top Wall Street firms. In the marketing and consulting programs, we work with key industry experts and organizations to offer unique and innovative opportunities for experiential learning.
Career mentors
Collaboration is central to the UNC Kenan-Flagler experience and our career mentors demonstrate this well. Each year, over 65 second-year MBA students serve as mentors to the first-year students, sharing their experiences and offering advice and mentorship through the career search process.
CareerLeader™ assessment
Developed with over a decade of research and leveraged by top MBA schools around the world, CareerLeader™ is an in-depth self-assessment instrument you’ll use to match your business-related interests, values, and abilities with specific business career paths. Your personalized report will also provide an evaluation of your entrepreneurial attributes and a recommendation on the organizational cultures where you’re likely to do your best work.
Additional resources
The Business Communication Center offers free consultations and workshops to strengthen your written and spoken communication, including assistance with creating an effective resume and cover letter, polishing verbal and written presentations, practicing interview skills, and planning and drafting papers or reports.
Firsthand enables you to connect with alumni and other working professionals for mentorship, career advice and career opportunities.
Vault provides career guides, employer descriptions and rankings, industry news covering the latest trends and issues, and profiles of leadership development programs.
VMock delivers instant feedback on your resume against a benchmarked score, which will help you identify areas for improvement.
“Having worked as a consultant before coming to UNC Kenan-Flagler, I originally thought consulting was the best option for me. However, I became more interested in marketing along the way. The Career & Leadership Coaches worked tirelessly to help me prepare for both consulting and marketing interviews. As a result, I was able to spend my summer in Atlanta as a brand management intern.”
Step forward into your career.
Once you know where you’re going, it’s time to make the move. With our help, you’ll make – and leverage – new connections, interview for positions, and, ultimately, negotiate an offer of employment.
The UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA Career & Leadership Team retains strong relationships with hundreds of companies across numerous industries: major corporations, family ventures, progressive startups, government agencies, nonprofits, and other organizations. You’ll benefit from these relationships as you start your job search.
Presentations and workshops
More than 100 companies that want to hire UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA students visit campus each fall and spring. They share information about career opportunities and hold receptions where you can network with company representatives. In addition, recruiters conduct career workshops and mock interviews and open themselves up to one-on-one conversations during company-specific office hours.
Interviews, fairs, forums and other opportunities
More than 280 companies hire our MBA students each year for internships and full-time positions, and we make it easy for you to review and apply for these opportunities.
Even companies that don’t visit campus hire UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA students for internships and full-time positions. To help you extend your job search beyond campus, we maintain an online directory of job postings and provide resume books to companies looking to hire our students. You’ll also have access to the complete UNC alumni network, including graduates from any program at the university. These connections run deep as you’ll find that alumni the world over are always willing to talk with fellow Tar Heels.
Finally, you can participate in invitation-only career fairs and national career fairs open to select schools, such as A Day in the Bay: The West Coast MBA Interview Forum, our own Sustainable Enterprise Career Fair, and fairs organized by the National Black MBA Association and Prospanica (formerly the National Society of Hispanic MBAs).
Networking forum
To maximize your one-on-one interactions with potential recruiters, we organize and host the MBA Networking Forum each September. At this event, you can network with companies who will return to campus later in the year to recruit our students. While other career fairs focus primarily on resume submission, the Networking Forum allows you to connect with key recruiters in a relaxed, conversational environment.
Student treks
Several career clubs at UNC Kenan-Flagler often visit prospective employers to get an industry-specific perspective. Recently, the Real Estate club travelled to Atlanta and NYC; the Technology club visited Seattle and San Francisco Bay Area; the Energy club went to Boston and Houston; the Finance club met bankers in New York; and the Consulting club took treks to Charlotte and Atlanta.
Additional resources
The UNC Alumni Directory is a great resource for personal and professional networking and includes contact information for more than 290,000 Carolina alumni and friends segmented by industry, job title, and location.
BlueSteps is the career management service of the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC). BlueSteps can help you advance your executive-level career, tracking your goals and increasing your visibility to more than 9,000 AESC executive recruiters globally.
Career Connections is the platform that allows you to search our UNC Kenan-Flagler job board, sign up for career management and leadership development programming, and schedule one-on-one coaching appointments.
Access to numerous third-party resources is provided to all students. Examples of these resources include:
- Firsthand (career advice from industry insiders via in-depth on-demand webinars)
- GoinGlobal (H1B visa information, an employer directory and career guides)
- MBA-Exchange.com (database of MBA job opportunities in countries around the world)
- The First 90 Days (advice on transitions strategies)
- RelishCareers (webinar-based company presentations and application platform)
Reciprocity agreements with many other business schools, such as Berkeley, Kellogg, Harvard, Stanford, Stern, Emory and Tuck, allows you limited use of their career resources, including access to their companies and jobs database, and more.
I’m interested.
Complete the fields below and we’ll be in touch with more information about our Full-Time MBA program. Fields marked with “*” are required.