It always pays to do your homework. And as Jeremy Bedzow, an M.B.A. student at the IE University in Madrid, can attest, in business school it often pays to volunteer — especially if you are looking for rewards that go beyond the bottom line.       

Despite the global economic crisis — or perhaps because even the most conventional career paths no longer seem so reliable — increasing numbers of business school students like Mr. Bedzow find themselves engaged in social enterprises. Some are only passing through. Others find a lifetime’s vocation. All of them are changing the way businesses — and business schools — position themselves in the global marketplace.       

During his first week at the school last year, Mr. Bedzow attended a session on Corporate Social Responsibility. The guest speaker was Jeffrey Avina, the director of citizenship and development for Microsoft in the Middle East. In his remarks Mr. Avina challenged the students to use their talents for the good of society. Mr. Bedzow put up his hand to ask a question.       

After the session he asked Mr. Avina for his business card — standard networking practice. But the result of Mr. Bedzow’s go-getting approach was a chance to help shape an innovative approach to solving a problem that besets countries throughout the Gulf region: the mismatch between the needs of employers and the skills of a country’s native graduates, which often leads to a reliance on a largely expatriate work force.       

“I was targeting him from the beginning,” Mr. Bedzow said in an interview. “I’d read articles about what the company was doing in terms of education, so afterwards I immediately sent Jeffrey an e-mail volunteering to help in any way I could be useful.”       

“Jeremy was very proactive,” Mr. Avina said. “He approached me right away, and was very interested in working on education as a change agent in society. And if people come to you willing to commit to a certain level of effort there is always something you can do.”       

As it happened, Microsoft had recently been asked by the government of Saudi Arabia to develop a program that would train young people, particularly young women, for private-sector jobs in finance and information technology. The company was also asked to use its network of local partners to make sure that at the end of the process graduates would actually find suitable jobs.       

“In a lot of countries in this part of the world there simply aren’t enough jobs,” said Mr. Avina, who worked for the United Nations for many years before joining Microsoft. “Because of the Arab spring, there’s been a lot more attention to this issue,” he said.       

“Sixty percent of the population in Saudi Arabia is under 25,” Mr. Bedzow said. “And if you look at indicators,” like the Imagine Cup worldwide technology competition, “Saudi Arabia are always in the finals. They have some of the best computer hackers in the world.”       

“There’s an incredible discrepancy between capabilities and opportunities,” he added.       

Working with a team of IE students in Madrid, Mr. Bedzow helped Microsoft to develop a model program to provide training in information technology as well as the soft skills required to function inside the corporate world.       

Known as ITCAN Academy, a pun on the Arabic word for perfection, itqan, the course recruited 100 university students, all of whom had to be Saudi nationals. According to Sultan Al-Sahli, a spokesman for Microsoft in Riyadh, at the end of the two-month training period, 75 percent of the trainees had found jobs with monthly salaries ranging from 7,000 to 13,000 Saudi riyals, or $1,800 to $3,500 — well above the average wage.       

The company also arranged for Mr. Bedzow to travel to Saudi Arabia to observe the program first hand, and to gather data that will be useful when the program expands.      

READ MORE