Dear prospective employer, here is a great example of “managing ambiguity” and “overcoming challenges”

As some of you many know, 2 of my biggest passions in life are consumer electronics and athletics. So companies in those 2 spheres are at the top of my list for places I’d like to work once I finish my MBA. That is also a big reason why I chose to go on exchange in the fall rather than the spring: most of those companies do not recruit in the fall so I wouldn’t miss out on them by not being at Rotman in the fall.

However late last month I was surprised to learn that Nike- one of my target companies- was coming to Rotman in October and I wasn’t there! This is the story of my experience managing this job application process from afar. It’s a long but good story so get ready to read!!

My first challenge was twofold:

A. How do I get top of mind at Nike without physically being present?

B. How do I create a good application for the marketing job Nike was hiring for?

--Managing Part A--

One of the members of the Rotman class of 2012 interned at Nike in the summer of 2011. Given I was always interested in learning more about what it’s like to work at Nike (with the idea to maybe work there), I had spoken with her a year ago about my interest in the company. She began working full-time there after graduation and was luckily part of the recruiting process for Nike’s on-campus visit this time around. I tried connecting with her on the side, to get some additional info about the role which I might have missed in the Rotman on-campus visit. And having met her previously, gone to the same Rotman events with her, etc, it wasn’t like I was some random stranger out of the blue either. So this helped me get as top-of-mind with Nike as I could given I was in Madrid and Nike was visiting Rotman in Toronto.  

Nike also has a very specific and unique culture that involves wearing “Nike-appropriate” clothing. After discussing how to be top-of-mind with my career adviser   I decided I send over a picture of me in such clothing so that they have an idea if I look the part sufficiently for Nike- especially important given I couldn’t be gauged in-person at the recruitment event in Toronto. I don’t know if the email with a photo of me was ever seen but I was happy I sent it so that the Rotman Alum who works at Nike if necessary, could pass who “Mike Moses” physically is on to the Nike HR team even though I wasn’t physically at the Nike recruitment event at Rotman.

--Managing Part B--

I was also lucky because one of my friends interned at Nike this summer and is living in Europe this fall as well. Same time zone made things MUCH easier. So in talking to her I got a sense of what sorts of things Nike values, how to communicate to them, etc.

Of course, after writing my cover letter, I sent it over to my career centre adviser for feedback and input to ensure it all looked good.

So with that, I sent over my application. I never like to “count my chickens before they’ve hatched” though, so I decided to move on with my life once my submission was in. This meant among other things, that since we had a week off school in mid-october, I decided I’d use that time to visit Portugal for the first time.

Little did I know that TWO DAYS before I was to leave, I found out I got shortlisted for Nike!! They wanted to interview me! Except they wanted to interview me in literally the middle of my Portugal trip!! AHHHHH

Recruiting season at Instituto de Empresa

As I may have mentioned in previous blog posts, job recruiting as facilitated by Rotman basically involves companies visiting campus whenever and then you applying for jobs as they are posted on the Rotman careers website.

Here at IE it is interesting to note that the website IE uses for you to search and apply for jobs is the EXACT same one that Rotman uses. I guess good MBA schools share similar tastes in job tools.

Everything else though is a bit different. IE has 1 specific week where ALL companies that recruit at IE come to campus. Rather than each company having info sessions whenever, IE has a career fair: each company that recruits at IE has a booth on campus during 1 or several of the days of the week and you come to the booth and talk to the companies.

What I like about this approach:

-You don’t need to sit through tons and tons of info sessions where every company says “we’re the best ever! You can grow your career here like nowhere else! Everyone likes working here!” So you have more time to allocate to other things in your day :-)

-Although if you do like info sessions, some companies that recruit at IE do do them as well.

-The chances of you getting to talk to an employer one-on-one are much higher given you don’t have 100 people who just sat through an info session trying to speak to the same 3 people at the exact same time with this being the only time you will get a chance to speak to the recruiters (given they have a booth at the fair as well).

-Companies can weed out people with poor communication skills right away.

-You know you will have been exposed to all of the companies coming on campus by the end of career week so can plan accordingly (i.e. if a company you want to meet isn’t on the career fair guest list, you can plan appropriately to meet them separately).

What I don’t like about this approach:

-Talking to a recruiter in one company while the recruiters from every other company can see you is kind of awkward. Like say you weren’t as articulate or polished as you would have liked with company A. Company B’s recruiters can see this in plain sight. So when you go visit company B’s recruiters they may already be biased against you.

-The recruiters are at the career fair all day. If you meet the recruiters at the end of the day they might be totally wiped and uninterested in talking to people anymore, thus reducing your chances to connect well with them.

-If you can’t be at IE that week for whatever reason, you’re screwed (unless you take the initiative to find a way to meet the companies you are interested in a different way).

Anyways, after getting exposed to the corporate world from the North American point of view at Rotman, it was also pretty cool seeing things from the European side here at IE. It is interesting to note that apparently MBAs are in relatively high demand in Spain despite the employment crisis. Like, my IE classmates have been telling me they have had no problems getting interviews/job offers thus far. Interesting…Another reason why an MBA is valuable ;-)

A happy end to recruiting season

One of the big things I wanted out of my MBA was to get a job where I can get much more strategic marketing experience, working on major global brands (ideally not in Canada). I was determined to make this happen. So I:

-Met with countless people- Corporate Connections Centre, 2^nd yr students, people in the jobs I want to do- to build strong relationships and to do resume reviews to ensure people knew me and I could give them exactly what they want

-Researched the crap out of the companies and industry I was interested in…So much so that when companies I was interested in came to campus, I won prizes for my knowledge of those companies and industry

-Learned from those who got the jobs in the areas I was interested in and those who didn’t get the jobs in the areas I was interested to get a sense of best practices (and not so great practices) and ensure I would nail my interviews

-Did countless mock interviews with the people who have or had the jobs I wanted

-Ensured that in an interview situation I would be prepared, polished and perfect

And I am a super personable guy on top of that (important for marketing jobs). You’d think this would be enough to nail the job I want, right? WRONG. I got shot down from some of the organizations I was most interested in. Knowing that even when I do everything right (according to my interview feedback), it is still not enough, I got super depressed. Like, really, really depressed. And angry at pretty much every administrator at Rotman. How could this happen??

Every now and then Rotman posts jobs in other countries. I was always reluctant to apply to them because usually those jobs go to the “rockstars” of class (you know, the people that go to school, get straight A’s, are the captain of 8 sports teams and save puppies with their free time). I am a pretty smart guy but I am by no means someone like the above. So when a marketing strategy and business development job in London (England) came up, I thought nothing of it.

The CCC emailed me though and asked me to consider applying. It turned out the job was only open to Rotman students, not the population at large, which would improve my odds considerably. So I figured I’d apply. Two interviews later and I got the job.

So this summer I will be moving to London, England to work at Rainmaker Global Business Development (http://rainmaker-gbd.com/) as the Business Development/Commercial Partnership Intern.

I can’t begin to express how excited I am!! I am pretty sure I will have zero free time but the job should be absolutely amazing. So excited for it.

So after all of the stress and frustration of the last few months, I can safely say that if I can be successful in my job search, you can! Work hard, stay focused and you will be rewarded. :-)

Inside info beyond what you might have heard at the Rotman Open House

Sorry for no post last week. It’s been a pretty standard routine as of late so not much new to add as of late. Today was the Rotman Open House where prospective students come to the school and learn about Rotman. So I wanted to share with you some of the things I’ve learned about Rotman since I started:
- I was told all corporate recruiting for us MBAs is completely separate from the undergrads. However in several corporate info sessions, there have been several undergrads present. From the recruiter’s standpoint, I understand why they prefer this since they only need to come to campus once. However admissions people, get your facts straight, please.
-I was told if Rotman doesn’t have a relationship with a specific company that you are interested in, the Corporate Connections Centre (CCC) will go and create that relationship to help you get a job. No chance. I’m not really sure how the CCC builds its corporate network but if you want to work at Nike for example (which the CCC has no relationship with), you have to do all of the networking work yourself.
-Expect very variable service from the CCC. Each student is assigned a CCC staff member to act as basically their career coach to help with everything from figuring out what you want to do with your life to writing cover letters. Depending on who your coach is, you might have the best experience in the world or the worst.
-There is a good reason why if you did an undergrad in commerce you don’t get credit for any of the classes you took. I have a B.Comm and maybe 90% (or more) of what I have learned thus far at Rotman is all-new. So you are definitely getting your money’s worth academically speaking.

If I can think of anything else, I’ll add it to this post. Or you can always feel free to post any questions on comments below in the comment box.

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!

Do you like networking? Then going to business school might be for you!!

After “Week of Stressful Exam Hell Part 1” we got a week free of classes. However don’t think it was a time to just site on your ass and do nothing. It was time for “Career Discovery Week”! This was a series of presentations from the Corporate Connections Centre (basically the Rotman careers centre) about how to go about the job search and panel discussions with Rotman MBA alum from various industries (finance, marketing, healthcare, tech, consulting, etc) about what it’s like to work in various fields.

Because I am somewhat unique amongst my peers in that I know exactly what I want to do after I graduate, some of the info was definitely skippable for me. But if you are on a quest of self-discovery for what you want to do with your life, everything that happens in the week will definitely help you out a ton.

One constant theme that was rammed down our throats hard is NETWORKING. Because I want to work in big corporations, I used to think it wasn’t that necessary because to apply for a job in a big company you have to apply though some anonymous job application tool online, get filtered through HR, then meet the hiring managers, etc. If things were so bureaucratic, what difference would it make if you knew anyone at the company? Apparently say you meet some random guy that works at Kraft and he likes you, then when you apply for a job at Kraft, he’ll tell HR to keep an eye out for my resume. So I guess when HR is doing their filtering of applicants they must have a filtering option: “Did someone internally mention this candidates name? If so, interview” ;-)

Anyways, me being Mr. Proactive, I already a) worked with the Rotman resume experts to get my resume ready for distribution weeks ago and b) set up meetings for networking purposes at the companies and industries I am interested in. I also needed to get away from Toronto for a bit to maximize my break before I get back into the swing of things with school. So this weekend I killed a whopping 4 birds with one stone!

1. Went to Vancouver- my favourite city in Canada- for 4 days

2. Got to see one of my really good friends who I hadn’t seen in a few months, and chilled with her

3. Visited my family on the west coast

4. Met with some of the main companies I am interested in working for in the future

Very productive weekend but I am VERY tired now. I feel like I could sleep for a week. But that’s impossible because tomorrow it’s back to school!!

First quarter of MBA, DONE!!

Ok so this past week was without a doubt one of, if not the most stressful week of my life ever. Let’s recap:

-Sunday Oct 16: Exam (at 6pm no less, which threw off my studying for the rest of my classes!! Especially because the rest of my exams were at like 9am or so)

-Monday Oct 17: No exam but studing for 3 classes in 1 day

-Tuesday Oct 18: Exam

-Wednesday Oct 19: Exam

-Thursday Oct 20: Exam

-Friday Oct 21: Exam

Given the constant barrage of exams, it was tough figuring out what to study for when, and so that I learned enough to at least pass. On top the studying itself, the exams were TOUGH. It wasn’t like undergrad where you memorize a book and the exam is the same as the stuff you memorized. The profs in Q1 pushed us…HARD. As you may know, Rotman bell curves: grades are adjusted such that x% of the class gets A’s, y% B’s and so on. I am praying we all failed so I can at least get a B after bell curving! haha (by the way, the majority of the class failing is a very real possibility based on the stories I heard from the 2^nd year students)

Apparently last year, once Q1 ended, Q2 started the week following. Oh man would that have been tough. I am very grateful to the class academic reps for changing that! We get a week off now before we start Q2. …Well not totally. This coming week is “career discovery week” where the Corporate Connections Centre for Rotman is giving a bunch of seminars by industry veterans about what it’s like working in various industries as a rotman grad, how to write cover letters, etc. Some of the seminars I am sure will be interesting and useful but given I already know what I want to do with my life, not sure how many of the seminars I will actually attend….And I need a rest anyways. I am completely spent. No more gas left in the tank!!

Now I am off to sit on my butt and do the exact opposite of studying in preparation to become a world leader…WATCH JERSEY SHORE!! haha