The University at Buffalo's School of Management team won second place in a best practices competition for their advanced interviewing workshop that aims to help students develop their interpersonal skills in a post-pandemic setting.
The event was organized by Beta Alpha Psi, an honor society that meets every year for speeches, award celebrations and workshops for financial information students and professionals. The society counts more than 300 chapters across the country and the University at Buffalo chartered its own chapter, Zeta Theta, in 1981.
The two-day July session started with a discussion on how the pandemic changed the recruiting process. The next day, participants took part in mock interviews led by some of the School of Management's accounting advisory council members, who come from firms such as the Bonadio Group or TransUnion.
Led by Zeta Theta president Katriel Agregado, 21, the UB team developed and implemented their workshop on campus to help students navigate a new hybrid environment and compensate for the decline of in-person class interactions.
"We work to cultivate an environment at the university where we're not just looking for good grades, but what will prepare you for your professional career, your professional development, and what skills you are going to build," said Agregado. "Our intention was to create something not only for us, but also the rest of our membership nationwide, and how to best use the resources of our organization."
Sydney Merritt, 21, served as a mentor for the team and used her experience as a former Zeta Theta president to assist them in their project. A former participant in the School of Management's Geico interview challenge program, Merritt served as a practice interviewer and said that understanding both sides of an interview is critical for a discussion to be effective. Her own team participated in the competition last year and won first place at a regional level.
"I came to understand that a great interview is when you're having a natural conversation where it's not just these prepackaged, canned answers that they may be looking for, but that are not necessarily you," said Merritt. "Being your full self in that interview in a professional, polished way is what makes an interview fun for me."
But for students, the competition was not only about the award, but what it means to be in a leadership position and create a bond with their teammates. To give students enough support for them to be successful, Merritt said they should feel like they are growing as professionals and individuals. She believes that discussing strengths and weaknesses with each member is important to be a good leader, and Agregado added that they should never feel like a cog in a machine.
"Preparing for the workshop and its presentation was the most exciting part of the competition," said Agregado. "The excitement, the nervousness, but mostly bonding together as a team was a wonderful process, because we've never felt closer and it just made everything worth it."
Last year, the School of Management ranked in the top 10% of Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited business schools and obtained a 100% placement rate for its graduate-level accounting students. Rose Hu, 36, explained that this success was due to a nice balance between research and clinical practice at the university. A former senior audit manager at KPMG, Hu said that UB knows how to bring real-life experience to the classroom by giving more space to alumni, and Hu herself obtained a UB degree. The CPA teaches auditing, accounting and law while also serving as a faculty advisor for Beta Alpha Phi.
"The fun thing for me as faculty advisor is to see all of the students grow, because as they invest more time into Beta Alpha Phi, you see how they become able to practice and articulate why their strengths make them a wonderful asset to wherever they want to go," said Hu. "With brilliant young professionals like Sydney or Katriel, I think that the world is changing for the better and it helps create a more diverse profession that opens its doors to everyone."
The students now want to turn their workshop into an annual spring event that would complement a networking event they host each fall. For Agregado, continuing to be part of the honor society means bringing together academic success and the will to give back to the community. For Merritt, it means pursuing her role as a mentor and nurturing their sense of collaboration, which she thinks allowed the team to rank so high in the competition.
"I'm so grateful that I got to play a more active role in my professional development and I think Beta Alpha Phi completely changed the trajectory of my career," said Merritt. "It opened the door to so many possibilities in the accounting industry, and it really just shows us what's possible and gives us tools to invest in ourselves."
