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[ayonde]

Final Year of my MBA - Part 1 (Blog#8)

While returning to school I realized that the upcoming year would probably be the last time in my life where I’ll get the freedom to try out different and new things. This became my mantra throughout 2nd year of my MBA – try everything different – probably stuff that I will never get to do again in life.

CAMs: The fall semester introduced us to Career Acceleration Modules (CAM). I came to US thinking that I would “major in Operations” specialize in Supply Chain Management and “minor in Finance”. I thought “If I have to understand how a company works I need to understand Operations and Finance”.

In both the cases Enterprise Engineering (EE) was my 1st CAM choice. EE introduced a lot of concepts in Operations, IT, Analytics and some in Supply Chain. I found the subject to be extremely dry and boring. I just couldn’t see myself doing Holt-Winters model in any organization.

Another CAM that I wanted to take was Finance. I wanted to learn about it – but honestly I was lucky that I could barely pass Finance and Accounting in 1st year. It was for the Sharks on the Wall Street. I wasn’t a Shark but a haddock at best. I also realized that no one is going to give me a Finance job just because I took a Finance CAM. So I decided to take Business Marketing a.k.a B2B CAM. I was able to connect to the subject and found it intriguing. I thought that it could help me setup for Product Management roles in a telecom organization.  The student consulting project for Cisco and the field trip to Lenovo at Raleigh, NC was also attractive.

I started Graduate Assistantship in the 2nd year. Steady flow of stipend was super helpful. There were lot of papers to grade and I had to schedule office hours for undergrad and grad students but it was fun. It was that time of the year where National Hispanic and National Black MBA Associations hosts their annual conferences.

Career Fairs: This time I was well prepared. I registered early. I realized that to be successful in a sea of similar students I had to stand out. I bought a pack of linen paper and printed my resume and cover letter on it. A recruiter will most likely keep my resume since it would feel different texture than other resumes on plain paper. I also did my research and targeted specific companies. I did not spend energy – as I did last year – targeting firms like General Motors or General Electric as I knew they didn’t sponsor H1B Visa for International students.

Further I customized my resumes for specific jobs at specific companies. I bought a paper folder, put my cover letter on the left, resume on the right, and inserted my business card as well. I went out to the booths of my target companies introducing myself and gave them my folder. This surely created an impression. I had also applied to various job postings beforehand and had 6-7 interviews lined up.

Since my positive experience with career fairs last year I pursued W&M MBA’s Career Management Center (CMC) for a more structured approach to MBA career fairs that included a CMC sponsored bus to the events. They listened. One of the conference was in Atlanta while the other was in Philadelphia. Time management was critical. I had to extract and utilize every possible minute of my day. While others would watch movie or sleep or chitchat on the bus. I would isolate myself to the back of the bus and grade the IT papers. Sleep a bit in the hotel and then research more on the companies that I would target.

Out of 6 or 7 interviews, 4 were for Leadership Development Program. LDPs are a rotational program where a company hires you and put you through various functions – Operations, Marketing, HR, Finance, Project Management, etc. The program usually lasts 2 years and at the end of rotations they will assess your fit and performance upon which they’ll offer you a position. This was very appealing. I had amazing interviews on-site especially with Sprint and The Hartford Financial. Only to learn that H1B sponsorship is not applicable for LDP programs. The remaining interviews also did not materialize to anything.

Home Depot: Home Depot hosted an invite only event in Atlanta. I couldn’t get an invite however I kept in touch with their HR and managed to get the invitation at Philadelphia in National Hispanic Conference. Since it’s invite only – Home Depot controls the event beautifully. 20 or so students with over 30 recruiters, Managers and HR. I had amazing conversation with one of them and he wanted to hire me for Supply Chain Analyst. “Awesome!!” I thought, but he said that the salary was $45,000 and in Atlanta. The first word that intuitively came out of my mouth was “NO”. My parents had put a lot of money into my MBA and I had done back of the envelope calculation. I needed a minimum salary of $85,000 to make my ROI work. $45k was an undergrad level salary. Unfortunately I returned empty handed.

CSSGB: In October I learned that Green Belt Certification Exam will be hosted in Richmond, VA by American Society for Quality (ASQ). Lean Certified Six Sigma Green Belt (CSSGB) was on my radar. I initially wanted to get it done through electives during my MBA. I realized that doing it from W&M won’t get me the certification. If I take the exam from ASQ on my own instead, not only can I get the certification, but also I can get it faster and cheaper as I can then utilize those 4.5 credits studying something else.

That’s exactly what I did. In-lieu of car, I took the Amtrak from Williamsburg to Richmond. Spend the night at a 2nd year student’s husband’s apartment. Took the exam next day, changed two buses to reach the train station. Took the evening train back to Williamsburg. Amtrak cost me $18 each way. I was frugal. I had to be.

Few weeks later I got the good news and received my certificate in mail. In addition to PMP I was now a CSSGB.

Diwali Night: At the start of my 2nd year I had resigned from all the clubs – Operations, Consulting, Honor Council, MBA Association etc. as I wanted to focus purely on getting a job. However, I also wanted to do things that I have never done or will never do again. Enter Diwali Night. Every year the Indian students at the MBA program organize Diwali Night. Catering, Performances, Dancing – the whole works. It’s one of the most celebrated festivals at W&M.

I overcame my stage fright to participate in a drama and two dance numbers! Organizing the event, taking out time to practice the moves, selecting menu items, negotiating and organizing food pickups etc. was a great experience.

Job Search: Nearing the end of semester my GPA was in good shape nearing 3.5. My focus anyways wasn’t grades anymore it was finding a full time job. I was applying to jobs online morning, afternoons, evenings and night. One time I applied for a job posted at Deloitte at 2am only to get the rejection email at 2:25am. Either I was getting dumped by some automated process or an elf was working at Deloitte screening my application at 2:30am. Online application wasn’t working. I had to change my strategy.

2nd year classes ran Mon to Thu so Fridays were off. I bunked one Thursday and took the Wednesday night Amtrak to NYC. I spent Thursday and Friday meeting W&M MBA Alumni, networking, and introducing myself to Alumni across the NY and NJ area. The trip was helpful and insightful but didn’t materialize into anything.

It was November and I was getting desperate. I realized that my chances of getting a callback from big name companies like Microsoft, EY, KPMG etc. were slim. I started applying to Telecom companies like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint thinking that they would appreciate my previous telecommunications experience but not a single call.

Now I started searching for jobs with keywords like Telecom + MBA to cast a wide net. I chanced upon a job posting by Cartesian. It was for Strategy Consultant. Luckily, as a part of their application process they gave their HR’s email id. I sent an email with my resume and cover letter. To my surprise I got a response in two days asking for my availability to interview.

Perhaps my luck was changing.