Saturday, September 14, 2013

The benefits of visibility on campus

Hello everyone!

You probably thought this blog was retired right? Well much like what happened during the first year of my MBA, while I was going through the interview rounds for my full-time job, I didn’t want to blog since if I did write anything it probably would have been me being angry or frustrated that I wasn’t employed yet which isn’t useful to you guys in any way whatsoever. Now that I am set for employment, how I got my job is a good lesson on what TO do when you are looking for a job post-MBA.  So here is my story on how I got my job:

As I might have alluded to in previous posts, I was VERY committed to making sure I get a job post-MBA. This meant many, many emails and meetings with my career advisor to ensure I was presenting myself as strongly as possible to potential employers. I also went out of my way to do some pretty creative things with companies that recruited on campus (while I was on exchange in Madrid and while I was completing my last semester in Toronto) so that those companies remembered me as well as possible.  As a result of all of this, the Rotman Career Centre knew me very well and I was probably often top-of-mind to them- to the point that I am pretty sure they wanted me to get a job so that, if nothing else, I’d stop getting on top of them for help!

As a result of the above, one day I got an email from the director of the Career Centre telling me that the Admissions team was telling her in passing that it was interested in hiring an MBA grad to join their team and the Career Centre director, knowing my passion for the Rotman brand, my strong networking skills, etc, thought I might be interested. I was indeed interested, so she told me to apply, so I did. Note that this job was not listed on the Rotman job listings site (but it was listed on the “careers at the University of Toronto” website). However if it wasn’t for me being told about the job, I never would have even known it existed.

So I applied, did my interview preparation, did my interviews and got the job! So I will be the new Assistant Director of Admissions for the Full-Time Rotman MBA Program.

I know some MBA students might feel like:
-They know everything they need to know for their job search
-They want to go at their job search without Rotman’s help

But as my story proves, it pays (literally and figuratively) to ensure people know you on campus! So get out there, get involved, be friendly with people and good things will happen!!