This week was the start of our 3rd quarter (Q3) of classes and it is definitely a weird feeling. Since I wrote my last Q2 exam, until this past Monday I was in class for 1 week (our Negotiations intensive week- we did a whole class in 1 week and then wrote a huge essay at the end of it) out of the last 4. Anyways, because recruiting season has heated up (mostly for the aspiring investment bankers and consultants right now, anyways) not too many of us have a lot of time for actual school. So it feels like we are unemployed and applying for jobs, with the inconvenience of spending a few hrs in a classroom every day instead of the other way around.
Thankfully Q3 is VERY forgiving. We only have 3 final exams this qtr and the nature of the assignments we have during the qtr aren’t nearly as intense as those of Q2. The school definitely does a really good job setting it up such that we have less work to do in class so that we have more free time to go to interviews and such. But as a result it really doesn’t feel like we are in school right now! Although given how time consuming it is to write good cover letters, I would almost rather do more finance assignments than write cover letters…Almost.
Once the job placements start to get finalized in a week or 2 I’ll have more to share with you about the full process that goes on in the fun and exciting world of MBA recruitment. Stay tuned.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Adventures at the 2012 MBA Games
This past weekend I was lucky enough to be a part of the Rotman delegation at the MBA Games. What are these MBA Games I speak of, you may ask? Well it is a weekend of competitions between the various MBA schools across Canada. This year there were 19 schools. You can check out the website for the Games here.
The winner of the Games hosts the event the next year (although I think if there is a repeat winner in back-to-back years, the event goes elsewhere the next year). This year the Games were hosted by the University of Alberta which meant we were off to Edmonton! I had never been there before so it was fun to check out a new city.
You guys can read what our itinerary was on the Games website so I won’t repeat that here. Instead I want to give you a sense of the challenge and fun involved (for me anyways). A common theme across our whole team (and everyone at the games) was energy, enthusiasm, athleticism and brains which made every event extremely fun and intense. (so if you are a quiet person this competition is unfortunately definitely not for you)
The scavenger hunt was essentially a photo-taking contest across the city (i.e. find the famous wayne gretzky statue). I was kind of jealous of my teammates who got to do this event since they basically got to do a tour of the city for free.
The case competitions were crazy:
-8:30am- the teams were given the case
-8:30-11:30am- the teams had to develop a deck with recommendations for a case solution and support for those recommendations (an especially big challenge on 4 hrs sleep).
-11:30-12:30- lunch breach
-12:30-2pm (I believe)- each team was required to do a 15 minute presentation of their deck to a judging panel along with Q&A
-2:30-4pm (I believe)- finalists present again and a winner is announced
My team was unlucky and drew the 1st presentation in round 1. So I experienced something I never experienced before- going into a presentation without having practiced even once. However, me and my teammates are all all-star presenters so we actually did quite well!
The athletic competitions were also pretty intense. While I did not compete in them, me and the rest of those not competing cheered non-stop…I never thought I’d get so emotionally invested in my classmates’ innertube water polo performance… haha The picture I posted is from us cheering on our inner-tube water polo team.
It was really DeGroote at McMaster University’s year this year…Despite our best efforts, DeGroote won almost every award (athletics, spirit, academic, etc). So next year, off to Hamilton we go.
The weekend was completely exhausting- I am still recovering today- but it was absolutely worth it. A great bonding experience, great opportunity to practice your skills from school and a chance to get some laryngitis in (on account of all the cheering).
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Demystifying Recruiting Season
Happy new year, readers! The upcoming 4 months is when the majority of employers do their hiring for MBAs for the summer and because the 1st few weeks back at school are pretty light on the coursework front, it means it is time to prepare for job applications! Acting as a ticket to an awesome job was the main reason why I am in my MBA so I’ll give you guys a bit of a rundown of how things for work us as I know I was very curious about this upon starting my MBA.
The majority of recruiting is done through the Corporate Connections Centre (CCC). Something I only discovered once I started school which had me a bit concerned though was many of the full-time CCC staff are on mat leave. As a result there are a lot of newbies to the team and in some cases, newbies to recruitment on the campus side. (i.e. until now they worked for companies that came to campuses to recruit) The good news for prospective MBAs is by the time you start school, the mat leave people will be back in the office so you will be all set!
Besides the 1-on-1 advice, resume reviews, etc, the CCC has some REALLY cool other resources that I sorely wish I had in undergrad. Some of the fun and useful things we get access to:
-Free access to Vault guides for most industries you can think of
-Profiles of the “ideal candidate” by profession i.e. if you are interested in becoming a portfolio manager (or brand manager, consultant, etc), what skills do you need? How important are grades? How do they tend to hire?
-If you are going into consulting, TONS and TONS of guides of practice cases you will need to be good at in interviews (consulting interviews involve doing a case analysis and giving a recommendation on a solution to that case)
-Access to where grads and recent interns worked over the last few years (really helpful if you want to work at company x, see if someone worked there and then they can help you!)
-Interview question banks sorted by industry and company
-Industry reports (i.e. who major players are, outlook on the industry, etc)
-Guides on almost every company that has recruited at Rotman containing recent articles about the firm and industry, annual reports, company analysis (i.e. SWOT)
Something important to note: Finance and Consulting jobs tend to be all filled by the end of Jan so you finance and consulting people will be set within a month. However for a marketing guy like me, marketing job hiring happens right up until the end of April (and in some cases even early May!). This is a huge bummer for me but I guess it is just the nature of the industry. So all you fellow marketing enthusiasts, get ready to sweat it out for a few months. :-)
Something that I never understood in the past about recruiting was as follows (especially for marketing jobs…I think things are a bit different in other career paths): For marketing jobs you need to almost always apply through the online application tool. So I thought the process was:
-You submit your resume for a job
-If it passes the autoscreening tool, random HR person reads it
-If random HR person likes it, you get called in for an interview and go from there
As such, I figured what good does any networking do if your resume doesn’t even pass the initial screening?
However, I was mistaken! This is what actually happens:
-Company X recruits from Rotman and therefore has a dedicated employee focused on hiring from Rotman (person Y)
-You apply for a job at company X with “rotman” of course noted as your school
-Your application therefore goes directly to person Y since she deals with the Rotman applications
-Person Y remembers meeting you somewhere and (hopefully) liked you
-Person Y tells HR to set up an interview
BOOM! Networking advantage.
However this also means if a company doesn’t have a dedicated person for your school, you’ll probably end up in the 1st scenario and have to get creative to get the interviews ;-)
These are some of the big things I was wondering about in the MBA recruitment process so I hope I have helped a bit. Good luck to those on the job hunt!
The majority of recruiting is done through the Corporate Connections Centre (CCC). Something I only discovered once I started school which had me a bit concerned though was many of the full-time CCC staff are on mat leave. As a result there are a lot of newbies to the team and in some cases, newbies to recruitment on the campus side. (i.e. until now they worked for companies that came to campuses to recruit) The good news for prospective MBAs is by the time you start school, the mat leave people will be back in the office so you will be all set!
Besides the 1-on-1 advice, resume reviews, etc, the CCC has some REALLY cool other resources that I sorely wish I had in undergrad. Some of the fun and useful things we get access to:
-Free access to Vault guides for most industries you can think of
-Profiles of the “ideal candidate” by profession i.e. if you are interested in becoming a portfolio manager (or brand manager, consultant, etc), what skills do you need? How important are grades? How do they tend to hire?
-If you are going into consulting, TONS and TONS of guides of practice cases you will need to be good at in interviews (consulting interviews involve doing a case analysis and giving a recommendation on a solution to that case)
-Access to where grads and recent interns worked over the last few years (really helpful if you want to work at company x, see if someone worked there and then they can help you!)
-Interview question banks sorted by industry and company
-Industry reports (i.e. who major players are, outlook on the industry, etc)
-Guides on almost every company that has recruited at Rotman containing recent articles about the firm and industry, annual reports, company analysis (i.e. SWOT)
Something important to note: Finance and Consulting jobs tend to be all filled by the end of Jan so you finance and consulting people will be set within a month. However for a marketing guy like me, marketing job hiring happens right up until the end of April (and in some cases even early May!). This is a huge bummer for me but I guess it is just the nature of the industry. So all you fellow marketing enthusiasts, get ready to sweat it out for a few months. :-)
Something that I never understood in the past about recruiting was as follows (especially for marketing jobs…I think things are a bit different in other career paths): For marketing jobs you need to almost always apply through the online application tool. So I thought the process was:
-You submit your resume for a job
-If it passes the autoscreening tool, random HR person reads it
-If random HR person likes it, you get called in for an interview and go from there
As such, I figured what good does any networking do if your resume doesn’t even pass the initial screening?
However, I was mistaken! This is what actually happens:
-Company X recruits from Rotman and therefore has a dedicated employee focused on hiring from Rotman (person Y)
-You apply for a job at company X with “rotman” of course noted as your school
-Your application therefore goes directly to person Y since she deals with the Rotman applications
-Person Y remembers meeting you somewhere and (hopefully) liked you
-Person Y tells HR to set up an interview
BOOM! Networking advantage.
However this also means if a company doesn’t have a dedicated person for your school, you’ll probably end up in the 1st scenario and have to get creative to get the interviews ;-)
These are some of the big things I was wondering about in the MBA recruitment process so I hope I have helped a bit. Good luck to those on the job hunt!
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