Network till you drop

One word you’ll hear all the time in business school is networking. I’m sure I’ve used this more than a few time on this blog. I spent the last 2 days doing this and it was
FA-BU-LOUS. All the time I spent in the past few weeks attending recruiting events really paid off. I attended the National Black MBA Association job fair in Atlanta and it was a very encouraging event. There were recruiters from the Fortune 100 companies interviewing right on the spot. My expectations were tempered with reality setting out for the trip. However, I was simply blown away by the number of people getting multiple interviews within the two days. An old friend in his second year at another business school got 6 interviews in a single day. Most of the recruitments were however targeted at the second year students. First year students that were of interest to the companies were also interviewed sometimes informally or added to the companies’ database for consideration in about 2 months when they start formal internship recruitment.
Yours truly infact got a couple of interviews too. One was meant to be informational but my interviewer who was very very senior at his organization absolutely drilled me and boy did I deliver. I got the chance to ask him just one question. He was clearly impressed and introduced me to some of his fellow senior colleagues at a reception later that evening. My takeaway from the interview was that one should never never go to these events without doing thorough research on the company and the specific division that you are interested in. I heard stories of embarrassments from other students that just strolled to company stands without knowing about the company.

I was wowed the large size of the interview area. This is clearly an indication of the healthy state of the job market. I went to the booth of a regional bank I didn’t care for just to get their goodie-bag and the gentleman ended up talking me into dropping my resume. Why not? I had an endless supply of those. I got called for an interview 20 minutes later!

Back to networking…Not only did a grow my network among the recruiters, I met a lot of the MBA students from the other top MBA schools and very impressed with the number of students and even recruiters originally from my home country. It was yet another chain in the network that I certainly tapped into. I was very proud to be a Kenan-Flagler Student at this event. If there’s anyone reading this that thinks UNC is a regional school, you had better take a closer look. At this event it was instant name recognition. I even ran into buckyoo .

One advantage I clearly had over many first year MBA students from other schools was that my school started much earlier than most of them and we’ve had time to meticulously work on our resume, elevator pitch, value proposition etc. Some of them have only been in school for just two weeks with neither business cards nor well thought out pitches. I ran into several of my classmates and professional colleagues from way back. It was a good reunion.

I attended more cocktails and hospitality receptions that I expected. I also got the opportunity to network with the 3 firms in the industry that I’m interested in that do not currently recruit on campus. Looking forward to next year’s event already since it’ll be at my Florida town – O-Town baby!

On a different note, this blog got a shoutout from clearadmit yesterday. Always good to know someone is reading.

2006 WSJ Ranking

Wall Street Journal released its 2006 ranking today and Kenan-Flagler moved up one notch from #9 in the country to #8. I remember I was working on my application last year when the 2005 ranking came out.

This has been a very interesting week to say the least. It’s just Wednesday and I have attended 4 company presentations. I enjoy attending these presentations because I learn something new about the Industry every time. The big guys come to town in impressive numbers and deliver with all their power and might with great pitches about all the pros of working for them. The smaller guys come too and roll out the best reasons to work for them and not the big boys. Many of them offer very educative slides that should prove very valuable when interview season rolls around. It’s been a wonderful experience because this is the stage where the recruiters are trying to win us over, so I see it as my opportunity to ask probing but tactful questions. It’ll be a different story in January when the tables turn around and they asking me all the questions.

The down side to this is that the hours I spend hitting the books was really reduced this week. This means I have a lot of work to do over the weekend to catch up. It doesn’t bother me because I’ve decided to look at the recruiting events as an extra class I have to take and get good grades in. It makes no sense to score great grades academically and fail at connecting with the real world of the recruiters. I still see some of my fellow international students trying to grapple with the idea of just walking to someone they’ve just met and start networking with them. To these students, it’s just plain weird and rude! With each passing event thought, I see more and more of them getting out of their comfort zone. You’ve gotta love Business School.

While applying to Kenan-Flagler last year, I knew the academic curriculum was integrated but now I know just how integrated it is. All the faculty members always know exactly where we are in the other classes. They even know the examples used by the other professors. For instance, we recently got an assignment in the Microeconomics class that requires the use of regression. This is a topic we just covered in the Statistics class. Any MBA applicant reading this should pay close attention to these little details about any school to which they may be applying. For me, I couldn’t have asked for a better school.

Beer Week

This last week was by far the most hectic for me since I arrived at Kenan-Flagler. In addition to the regular class workload, I had a few assignments and a grand daddy Accounting Exam on Saturday. I got my first dose of recruitment networking from the several company presentations I attended during the week. The two most eventful ones were those of the Investment Banks. One of them came with an army of personnel that ranged from first year Associates to MDs. It was interesting talking to them and getting their opinion on some questions I’ve had about the job/industry. These events are usually followed by receptions that I like to call “After Parties”. The beer drinking skills from my undergrad days came in really handy. So after attending all these and getting home around 1:30 am, it’s impossible to do anything else. Of course I have to be in class again the following morning by 8am and get ready to repeat this same process the next day.

My lack of adequate sleep really caught up with me during the week and I had to slow things down a little to reset my system. The system didn’t get reset to its normal state until Friday by which time I had to attend the Securities Industries day. That too was fun. I got answers to some questions I’ve had about middle market and boutique I-Banks.

So, I did a crash studying through Friday night to Saturday Morning preparing for the Financial Accounting mid-term. The pattern from the past mid-terms is that we’ll have questions based on the financial statements of a foreign company. Lo and behold, we were presented with the financial statement of Nigerian Breweries!

My classmates in the room I was taking the exam all winked at me since I made a case for the quality of Nigerian Beers just a few days ago in the Economics class. I can’t wait to see what my score is.

Next week will be very much like this past week except that I won’t have any exam. Maybe I might even get the chance to blog during the week. I doubt it.

Football is Football, unless it's Football

Made it through another week. A certain Corporate Finance assignment took too much of my time this week. I had hoped to knock it out within 2 hours but that was not to be. While reading on Bonds and Stocks Valuation, I couldn’t help but wonder why every computation involving bonds needs to have ten different names. The professor’s notes and the two textbooks I had with me for reference had completely different names and notations for the same computations used interchangeably. I suppose it’s probably some barrier to entry gimmick.

Now that the two “Football” seasons have kicked off, I keep wondering if I can keep track of either of them. Fox Soccer Channel tends to repeat the Premiership Games at night, so maybe I can at least see the highlights. The second Football I’ll have to deal with in any way my classmates do. Hey, the recruiters will start coming to campus as from next week, one needs to stay on top of these things.

A day in the life

It’s been two weeks now since my last post and a lot has been going on. I’ve had a few tests, assignments and attended tons of social events. I’ve eaten more pizza in the last three weeks than I’ve eaten within the last year. No more Pizza for me!
The materials taught in Business school are not too technically difficult. The problem is that there’s simply no time to really study the materials the way one would in a BS or even an MS program. The reason being that there are too many events competing for your attention. I’ve picked three social and career clubs to be very active in. One cannot afford to be actively involved in too many activities. I applied, interviewed and was successful in getting appointed to an advisory board that I’m very passionate about. Very excited about this.
As if life is not hectic enough, things will be kicked up a notch later this month when recruiters start coming for their information sessions. I also have a career fair to attend in Atlanta later in the month. I’m glad Kenan-Flagler starts earlier than most other schools. A friend from another top business school called to let me know that he cannot attend the Atlanta career fair because he doesn’t see himself facing a recruiter at this point. He cannot convince himself on what he’ll do when he grows up let alone convince a recruiter. I advised him not to go if he does not feel confident so he doesn’t weaken his school’s brand at the event. As for me, my resume has been super refined to the one page B-School format and I have interview prep sessions planned out. Even if I don’t interview, the fair will be a good opportunity to practice my newfound toastmaster skills. Thank God for a long holiday weekend. I’ve been able to catch up on my sleep, chill out a bit at a football game, and re-energized.

Here’s what my typical day looks like.

6:15am: Alarm goes off. I turn it off

6:30: Backup alarm from the radio starts buzzing. This time I get up. Crank up the volume of the radio so I can listen to the news on NPR while in the shower. This is the last chance I’ll have throughout the day to know what’s going on in the real world.

7:30: pick up (or get picked up) by members of my carpool.

7:45: Grab a cup of Coffee at Café McColl before heading to my 8am class

8am-12:20pm: Have three classes back to back with 10 minutes break in between to change classrooms.

12:30 – 2pm: Lunch time. This is where the pizza eating part comes in. Usually at this time I’ll have a club activity, study group meeting, career event etc to attend at this time. All the clubs serve pizza at their kickoff events. We are gradually moving past that stage now and getting to the Brown Bag events. Brown bad means “Bring your own lunch”.

2-6: Catch up on emails. More meetings with study group, peer mentor, tackle assignments, case readings, class review sessions (These sessions get into more details that may have been skimmed over in the main class)

6-7: Go home and eat dinner if there’s no outing planned. If there is, look over what is left on my to-do list. Decide if I should go to the event or not. Make sure I’m back home by 10 if I still have a lot to do for the day. This is also when I try to work out.

10:30 till 2am: I keep telling myself I need to sleep by midnight but it never happens. I realize I only have less than 4.5 hours before the first alarm goes off. Close all books and shut down laptop.

I should shutdown now. It’s 1:30am. And so the journey continues….