Weird start to the third quarter

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.

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).

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!

Takeaways from my first semester of my MBA

Tomorrow is my last exam for the second qtr of classes which also means the end of my 1^st semester of MBA life! So for people who might be considering an MBA (or anyone else for that matter) here are the key things I found for managing (for the 1^st 4 months anyways) MBA school thus far:

-Make time for things besides school- Given the insane workload, it would be VERY easy to spend all day and all night doing homework. However by the same token, if you just focus on school school school, you WILL get burned out. To prevent this, for me anyways, this meant taking an hour out of my day to go to the gym and get a workout in. I can’t tell you how good it felt to get away from academia for a bit and blow off some steam with some weights. It also let me come back to school-related work with renewed vigor. So be it the gym, playing some hockey, getting some Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 in, whatever…Taking a break helps!

-Prioritize your projects schedule- Because we had some many things coming at us every day, I found it really useful to create a “to-dos” list with associated due dates on my computer. That way I had a visual list of what I needed to do for when and therefore could plan my time every day accordingly.

-Participate in class- This is super beneficial for 2 reasons:

1. You get EASY marks in class for raising your hand and saying something. (sometimes a lot of marks at that!)

2. If by chance you need to ask your prof a favour, he/she will actually know who you are therefore be more inclined to help you out.

-Communication skills are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!- I really can’t stress this enough. Good communication skills makes so many things for you and your peers 1,000,000 times easier. I’ll leave it at that. Please be a good communicator. Thank you. :-)

-Network, network, network- I spoke about this in an earlier blog post but it’s worth mentioning again. Get to know as many people as you can in the industry you want to work in.

-Be nice to everyone- You never know when you’ll need to make a big business deal with one of the other future executives in your class. ;-)

-The Rotman MBA education is as rewarding as it is challenging- As you guys know, I busted my butt pretty hard this semester and despite lots of drama and stress, I’m really happy I have soaked up as much as I could. Yay for learning!

And with that, I am off to get 1 more exam done, then off to Punta Cana (thank you mom) until school starts up again in January. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year and see you in 2012!!

Case Analysis Super Weekend of Total Craziness!!!

One component of our Strategy Class is a case study and presentation that is worth 40% of our grade in the class. It was probably the most challenging but also the most fun grade I have ever worked for in my life! Here’s what we were faced with:

-Friday evening our strategy prof revealed the company we would be doing our case study on. However, he gave us no other information (i.e. not even the problem we were tasked to solve).

-Saturday at 6pm all 265 of us would be randomly assigned to groups of 5-6 people and we’d be given the problem which we would have to solve and present to CEOs and executives including those of Cineplex, what our recommended solution is.

-Sunday at 11pm our presentation slides were due to the prof

-Monday at 8:30 we found out what time we would be presenting at some point between 9am-12:45pm that day

-Finalists announced at 1:15pm

-Final presentations 2pm-3pm

Crazy eh?? I’ll run you through what the experience was like for me:

-Friday night we found out the case was on Cineplex and it would be dealing with an issue they are faced with right now. i.e. was brought up as a “hot button” that needs resolving in their board of directors meeting just one week prior. I love the business side of the entertainment industry and am quite familiar with it so I was pretty excited not only because it was an industry I liked but because I was so familiar with it, I wouldn’t have to do as much research as some other people who don’t know “the business”.

-Some people went NUTS on doing all sorts of crazy research that evening. But I figured without guidance on what problem I needed to solve, what research could I do??

-The prof suggested only that we read the Cineplex annual report’s management discussion and analysis and understand what portions of their business come from where, etc. He also suggested that we go see a movie at a Cineplex. (great research method!)

Friday Night Post-Announcement

-I went home, read some of the MD&A. I also figured that since the rest of the weekend would be so stressful, I’d unwind with some beers with some friends.

Saturday

Morning- Finished reading MD&A and did some brief reading on the history of Cineplex, AMC, Empire (the main chains here in Canada) and Netflix, just in case.

Afternoon-Took prof up on his advice and went to see A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas at the Cineplex Scotiabank Theatre. WHAT A FUNNY MOVIE!!!!!

-Also did some research at the theatre…what amenities do they have these days, how is the theatre laid out, pricing, etc

Saturday 6pm:

-We get our groups, problem to solve and a giant stack of reports about the movie industry, Cineplex and its competitors.

-My group: I was already friends with one of the people in my group which was cool and the others I knew of but didn’t really know. They all turned out being pretty cool people as well and also smart and strong communicators (communication skills= VERY important!!!). I am happy I got a chance to meet and work with these new people!!

Saturday 7-10:30pm: We divide up all of the reports amongst the group and read them

Saturday 10:30-2:30am (yes, 2:30am): We discuss all of our readings and research to begin formulating insights on how to solve the problem we were faced

Sunday

-Slept for 4.5 hours last night

9am-10:30: Meet back at school and used the insights from the previous night to develop our strategic recommendations

10:30am-11pm: Developed powerpoint presentation with our recommendation and insights/analysis supporting our recommendations

11pm: Presentation was handed in. No changes allowed to it beyond this point!

11pm-12:30am: Figured out who will say what in our presentation. Our presentation was to be 15 minutes long. We also prepared for the questions we’d probably be asked by the judges and prepped our answers to said questions.

Monday

-Slept for 5 hours last night

7am-8:30am- Met back at school and practice presentation.

8:30am- We find out we are presenting at 11:15

8:30am-10:00amWe practice a bit more

10:15ish- A teammate falls asleep in the middle of our meeting. Hilarity ensues.

10:20-11:00am- Chill out to calm the pre-presentation nerves

11:15- GAME TIME!!

1:15- We found out we didn’t make it to the finals. BUT if the team that beat us wins the whole thing, we get one of the highest grades in the class! So there is still hope

1:30- Meet our judges and find out we had the best marketing ideas. The only reason we didn’t win was because the other team had better financials. If only we had an accountant in our group! Oh well…A learning experience for next time.

2pm-until now- Catch up on sleep

I am still dead tired but I learned a ton this weekend. VERY valuable learning experience and I had a blast at the same time!! But no time for any more rest or reflection for now because exams start in a week!

Social commentary

I forget if I mentioned this in one of my earlier posts but Rotman separates the entire year of students into sections and you are with that one section for the entire semester. That is, out of apprx 260 students in the Rotman MBA Class of 2013, all of your classes from Sep-Dec are with the same apprx 65 ppl. Each section has different schedules so it ends up being that you do most of your school work with your section and see your section most of the time (since everyone else is on other schedules).

While the social events we do are AWESOME, they are events for everyone in school so it is hard to get some solid chill time in with people from the other sections.

This week by chance, I got to hang out casually (i.e. not a school party, not a school club event, not in the Rotman halls) with some of my friends from the other sections that I unfortunately really hadn’t spoken too that much in the last little while and it made me realize, I MISS THESE GUYS!!! Because of the section splits it’s definitely a bummer we don’t get to hang out that often and I really wish we could!!

And on the subject of friends, non-MBA friends, you are probably thinking I am a huge jerk on account of not having called any of you in the last 3 months. I know I HATE when someone says to me as an excuse “ohhhhhh I’ve just been sooooooo busy.” I think it’s a load of BS. So I’m not going to say it. What I will say is my life since Sep can be summed up as this: class, homework, social events related to school, sleep. Which I hope explains my social non-existence outside of school. I don’t know if it excuses it but I hope it explains it. J Rest assured, as soon as I am done exams, if any of you message me to get a beer, there is a 100% chance I will say yes!!

My favourite class of the year thus far

Our profs are all really awesome. They give engaging lectures (even on topics as seemingly boring as accounting) and have great experience to draw on and are generally pretty fantastic. However yesterday was, I think, my favourite class among all classes and subjects since I started school. It was in our Strategy class and the topic of the day was “blue ocean strategies” basically how to innovate.

Coming into strategy class I was a bit sceptical as a lot of literature on “why company xyz has a good strategy” is very hindsight-y. Based on how such articles are usually written, I am always left thinking there’s no way you would have thought company xyz’s strategy would succeed without the benefit of hindsight. This is a big reason why I don’t read business books that you can buy at Indigo or whatever.

Anyways, into class we went. Our prof talked a lot about how the best way to compete in an industry is to not compete in an industry at all and rather just invent a new one. i.e. Cirque de Soleil….It’s not a circus and it’s not theatre. Or (my personal favourite), the Wii…make a videogame system for the family instead of one for just hard-core gamers. For all you videogame fans, turns out my prof was on the actual team that invented the concept for the Wii with Nintendo!! He is one super smart guy and strategy class is teaching me a ton. And it’s stuff I can actually use for success in the business world even without the benefit of hindsight. Huray!

However, you too are going to have to shell out the dough to get into Rotman to get the full scoop on what my strategy prof is teaching. ;-)

So yeah, very educational week!!