Babson College

Case study features an interview with:

He Hao

Assistant Director, International Relationship Manager

Babson’s current status:

The Challenge

As the International Relationship Manager at the Babson career center, Hao He advises international students and domestic students interested in working abroad. She also builds international employer relations to expand Babson’s global footprint and offer more opportunities to students.

As a former international student herself, she sees the challenges international students face. “Limited job opportunities, both internship as well as full-time opportunities in the U.S.” are a key challenge. “They want to know who hires international students, how to break through from the initial resume stage, [and get] to the interview stage.”

The office relied on several resources spread across platforms and offices to support international students. They collaborate with the Glavin Office of International Education to offer information sessions by immigration attorneys several times a year.

To help students with finding relevant jobs and employers, He would manually analyze past internship and job data to share a list
of employers that have hired recent Babson graduates, direct students to websites like MyVisaJobs.com and, previously, a legacy tool. However, the legacy tool had a poor user interface and low student usage. Students found the website hard to navigate and barely used it.

Why Interstride

When considering alternatives, Interstride’s clean user interface and the trust of other university partners immediately attracted He.

He looked to Interstride to offer “a specific workspace [where] they can find [jobs that are] specifically open to international
students. That’s the number one challenge.” In addition to more opportunities, He knew that international students would “benefit from immigration news as well, by knowing what alternative they could seek other than H-1B.”

Impact

By implementing Interstride, He wanted one resource that could provide more opportunities, international-specific jobs, and support globally-minded students, all in one portal.

With Interstride, international students can tap into other opportunities from employers nationwide. While He builds new relationships with employers and shares relevant opportunities, she is only one person curating these roles, and “the thing is, I’m limited to my school only.” Additionally, “exchange students go to other countries as well. They [want] to know opportunities in other countries,” and He can support them using the same tool used for international students.

Feedback has been positive from students, with one student sharing that “Interstride has been extremely helpful so far and | look forward to using it more.” Another commented that it is “solving the right problem” for them.