Alumni

Placement is extremely important to our students and their parents, particularly given the rising cost of attending college. Fortunately, this is the area in which alumni can be extremely helpful to our students, often with minimal time or effort involved. You and your network of contacts can open a host of opportunities for a student looking for an internship, a co-op experience or a full-time job. Some opportunities for you to assist us with placement include the following:

1. Encourage your company to visit and recruit at Virginia Tech. There are a number of excellent ways for you to meet with potential candidates on campus and spread the word about the opportunities available at your company:
   1. Participate in the Business Horizons job fairs that are held each fall and spring semester, as well as the Connections job fair for internships and co-op positions, which is held annually in the spring semester.
   2. Host an evening information session for students.
   3. Have your company reserve a table in the Pamplin atrium for a day during the recruiting season.
2. Visit campus and hold a talk for students about opportunities and career paths in your area of finance. You could also do a talk about an aspect of the placement process, such as interview preparation.
3. Post internship, co-op and full-time job opportunities that are available at your firm on "Handshake", a job posting website operated by Virginia Tech's Career Services office. This is the primary website that students use to find available opportunities. Using this site enables you to collect resumes from a large pool of qualified students.
4. Ask for resumes of qualified students from the Finance department or Pamplin's placement office. Once you receive the resumes, circulate those to your division and the human resources personnel. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to Mike Kender (mkender@vt.edu), the Finance Department's primary career advisor. You can also reach out to pcobcareers@vt.edu, Pamplin's placement office. Employers in the Financial Planning and private wealth management areas should contact Jesse Lineberry (jrl3rnt@vt.edu), who head's our Financial Planning curriculum and career advisory efforts.

In addition to learning from their professors, students like to get an insider's perspective from practitioners who can provide them with additional knowledge and advice about diverse areas of finance. There are a number of ways that you can meet with Virginia Tech Finance students:

1. Speak to one of our finance classes: Talk to students about topics from your experience that match the syllabus of the course. Discuss the application of the academic content in the real world.
2. Speak to one of our career classes: The Finance Department currently offers two courses for students that are specifically designed to increase their knowledge of the career opportunities available in finance and how to effectively pursue those opportunities.
3. Speak to a student organization: We have a number of student organizations that welcome speakers who can share their wisdom and experience. Examples include BASIS (bond investment group), SEED (equity investment group), the Finance Club, the Financial Planning Association, the Consulting Club, and Innovate (student entrepreneurship group). The topic(s) of the talk are up to the visitor and the organization hosting the event.
4. Hold a workshop on a topic of interest to students: A recent example was a workshop on interviewing skills organized by an alumnus who recruits regularly on campus.
5. Host students for a visit to your company: Some of the student organizations affiliated with the Finance Department organize trips to visit employers in metropolitan areas such as Charlotte, Richmond and New York.

We are always looking for ways to improve the curriculum so that students are ready to be productive in the workplace once they graduate. We need your help in constantly introducing new course content based on the changes occurring in the business environment. You know what worked for you and what didn't, as well as what knowledge and skills are critical for success in your area of finance. Why don't you share that with us? You can arrange to speak to our department head or a faculty member that teaches in your area of interest.

Faculty are always looking for unique data sets that can be used to answer interesting questions, perhaps, about a topic that is important to your company. These databases help the faculty conduct and publish high quality research, which helps expand the academic reputation and visibility of the department.

If you require expert advice or require someone to research a particular topic, faculty members are always ready to take on those special projects. Whether it is a consulting project, a research project, or a teaching assignment (training program or management development program), you can find a faculty member at Virginia Tech who is an expert in your field of interest. Feel free to contact us at fin@vt.edu.

Financial contributions are critical for helping the Finance Department to achieve its mission of providing excellent teaching, research and service. Financial support from alumni, corporate sponsors and friends has become especially important during the past decade, as reductions in state support have made it more challenging to cover the rising costs that the department and the university have had to face. To visit the webpage that provides additional information about department's needs and detailed instructions about how to make donations, click Here.