Employment Success Story for Business Graduates

Employment success story for business graduates

Richmond's Robins School of Business celebrates career outcomes trend

Just three months post-graduation and 100% of jobseekers surveyed, with degrees from the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond, say they have landed a job. It’s quite the career outcomes achievement being detailed by Poets&Quants, which says Richmond is just one of two schools in the country to report such a feat for 2023.

Poets&Quants, the leading online publication for business school news, also ranks the Robins School among the top 20 Best Undergraduate Business Schools. 

While this achievement is big for the b-school, successful undergraduate employment rates have been a strong trend (see table). Dean Mickey Quiñones says the impressive outcomes have everything to do with student programming that goes beyond classroom lectures and includes real-world applications. Quiñones says Robins students are “Day One ready.”

“They’re able to roll up their sleeves and do what’s needed. They’re proactive.”

A degree that pays off almost as soon as graduates cross the stage may seem like the stuff of higher ed dreams, but Robins career outcomes are a result of strategic investment. The business school leans in hard on its liberal arts foundation to ensure students are prepared outside for future careers.

Quiñones says the secret sauce comes down to these truths: academic excellence plus small class sizes, hands-on experience, and a close mentorship with faculty and staff. Mix that with the broader curriculum, activities, and seminars, and you’ve got an impressive path to success.

Here’s a deeper dive on what makes Robins stand out

The Spider Business Hub exposes students to experiential learning. Richmond-area businesses and organizations in need of business solutions become clients of the school and work with students as consultants. The students research and recommend the best course of action for real-world problems like profits, staffing, sales, and marketing. The students gain experience for their resumes while the business or group gets skilled solutions free of charge.

There is also the Student Managed Investment Fund, a real-time lesson in securities analysis and portfolio management. Student managers receive exposure and experience with stock market trading by managing a portion of the university’s investment portfolio. Some of the current holdings in the SMIF portfolio include shares in Amazon, Apple, and Spotify to name a few.

Robins also exposes seniors to hands-on entrepreneurship programs like Bench Top Innovations, a year-long program in collaboration with the University of Richmond’s Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative. Bench Top challenges students to ideate, create, and launch a commercial food product to market. Sixteen students are divided into teams of four and compete in a bake-off to create a winning product that they will develop and ultimately manufacture and market in real-world spaces. Students retain 100% of the intellectual property of their ideas whether or not they win the bake-off, giving all of them the opportunity to create their own businesses after they graduate.

Q-camp is a two-day career readiness conference for Robins School sophomores and fall transfer juniors. Students experience interactive seminars that focus on interviewing skills, branding themselves, identifying their strengths, and networking. C-suite influencers, faculty, and alumni are on hand to conduct mock interviews and provide feedback.

“We have all the opportunities of a large school with the access of a small university,” said Quiñones. “We care about every student, and we care about their needs. We work hard to help them achieve their goals.”