On The Right Path
Bauer Alumni Share Experience With Career Coaching
Network, network, network — it’s often the advice you hear in a graduate business program.
What you may not hear is how to make those important connections that can lead to personal growth and professional opportunity.
For students in the C. T. Bauer College of Business, it’s clear from Day One that they’ll navigate networking with plenty of support in the form of a “dream team” of career counselors from the Rockwell Career Center Graduate and Alumni Career Services team.
We recently spoke to three Bauer alumni to learn more about their experience with career counseling as students and how the support helped to shape their career journeys for years to come.
Lydia Liou (BBA '17, MBA '21)
Relationship Manager
Trinity Legacy Partners, LLC
With a background in the hospitality industry, Lydia Liou (BBA ‘17, MBA ‘21) didn’t immediately see a career path to her desired field of finance.
After meeting with a career counselor and making use of Rockwell Career Center services, she quickly discovered that her seemingly unrelated experience could apply to a range of jobs, as long as she knew how to frame it.
“Based on how I crafted my interview and my story, I had a lot of flexibility,” she said. “Kelly (Collins)’s team helped me tremendously because they were the ones who sat with me through mock interviews, gave me feedback to tailor my résumé and changed my perspective on my experience and how that could benefit any company that I was interested in.”
But it was more than just interview prep, Liou said. The team also paired her with a mentor through the college’s flagship Executive Mentoring Program, which marks its fifth year this spring and creates mentor-mentee pairings of Bauer graduate students and members of the Bauer College Board.
“I was invited to a Bauer event by my mentor (Insperity retired president and board of directors member) Richard Rawson (BBA ‘72), who I was matched with in the executive mentorship program,” Liou said. “I sat at a table he sponsored and unbeknownst to me, I was seated next to people who would become my current co-workers and boss at Trinity Legacy Partners, LLC.”
Liou’s mentor-mentee relationship was more than a by-chance connection — it was based on a deep understanding of each participant by the Rockwell team.
“I don't know how they did it, but they have such a good intuition of knowing who would click with who,” she said. “They connected us, not necessarily on our background, but because they understood us as individuals, as students, with the same understanding of each mentor, too. That's the kind of care that they took when they got to know us as students.”
Alejandro Sanoja (MBA ’17)
Founder & Personal Branding Consultant
Latinpresarios
Some may liken their career counselor to a magician, but Alejandro Sanoja (MBA ‘17) sees it more as a partnership where you get as much as you give.
As an international student, Sanoja came to Bauer College planning to complete an MBA in finance but ultimately discovered a passion for marketing after being mentored by Matt Avery (MBA ‘16), who was a year ahead in the program and ultimately worked with him after graduation in a consulting company.
Although Sanoja changed career tracks, he put in the work necessary to find success by using the tools the Rockwell team provided.
“I think there's this expectation that because you’re a student, everybody's just going to help you and go the extra mile,” he said. “Well, that's not the case, because you also have to go the extra mile, and you have to show that you have the qualities and skills to be that person that they feel comfortable sharing with their network.”
Now as the founder of his own company, Sanoja helps others to develop their own personal brand, crediting the career guidance he received from Bauer for helping him to put knowledge into action.
“It is a misconception to think that if you give them your résumé, they are going to magically create a job for you, but they are there to coach you, to guide you,” he said. “They are your Gandalf or your Dumbledore — they have some magical powers, but it's you who must go and do the steps and do the work.”
Maryam Amini (MS Finance ’24)
Operational Risk Associate
Wells Fargo
Working with Bauer career counselors led Maryam Amini (MS Finance ‘24) to receive not one, not two, but three job offers upon graduation.
Amini, who immigrated to the United States in 2022, came to the Bauer MS program with a background in industrial engineering and a master’s in supply chain management, along with a work history in finance.
Even with that well-rounded experience, Amini said she wanted to leverage the resources available from the Graduate and Alumni Career Services team to sharpen her skills.
“They were like a consultant for me,” she said. “They helped me with my soft skills by providing interview prep, and they introduced me to some of the harder skills. For example, if I wanted to know about anything related to Excel, I asked, and they referred me to someone who knows about it."
Amini met weekly with senior career development specialist Erin Sweeney to assess her existing portfolio and to talk through some of the questions she would face from recruiters and employers.
“Erin reviewed my LinkedIn step-by-step,” Amini said. “I was able to enhance my résumé and become really familiar with behavioral questions through mock interviewing.”
After graduating this spring, she ultimately accepted a risk management and assessment position at Wells Fargo.
“The Rockwell staff helped me to consider all the factors that come with choosing a job and what aligns with my career goals,” Amini said. “My journey is on the right path thanks to Rockwell.”
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