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.