macmba.com

Here is my 150 word summary of my platform.
As Executive Vice President, I will focus on two things: communication within the program and coordinating events between the clubs. I believe we can work with the administration to make sure that we know when decisions are made; whether they are decisions that students can have input on, or if they are purely administrative, we should know what has happened and how it affects our program. At the same time, faculty and OCM should be aware of major events in our schedules, such as midterms and national recruiting conferences. Working on War of the Words was a pivotal event for me; it was a chance to combine students and faculty for social fun with an academic
goal. I believe we can combine some of the basic events, like resume workshops, and then branch out and let each club shine in its own featured social and academic event.

I’ve decided that I’m going to run for the position of Executive Vice President of the MBAA. The EVP job is similar to the Presidents, in that its mandate spans all of the clubs and roles. The primary focus has been on coordination and communication, and on getting the clubs and activities to all work together. This is one of the ways that I think that we can polish Smith more and have a more cohesive experience. The outgoing officers laid a lot of groundwork and are leaving a great base to work on. That is my overall impression of Smith, we’ve done a lot of work and now need to polish and refine it so that everyone can see the solid base that we are working on. In the end, I decided to run for EVP instead of President because of the time commitment. President is a 25-30 hour a week job, which is somewhat made up for because it is also a GA position. None of the vice-presidencies are a GA positions. However, I already have a GA position next year, working with the Dean and his committee to improve the school and to try and find where the school’s culture can develop. I also have really enjoyed working with Sysarc this year, and may want to do the same next year. Either way, I would be unable to meet all of my commitments this year if I took on another 20+ hours weekly and I don’t want to abandon a lot of things that have been good to me just because something shinier came along.

My managerial accounting professor has a solution to cell phones in class….

“If your phone emits a little tune during class, you must dance to it. You can’t turn your phone off once it starts, you must dance until if finishes. I only have to make the first person do this, once the rest of the class has seen it, they invariably make the offender dance.”

Of course, a phone did go off today, and we made the girl who it belonged to dance.

First, I have a bit of advice for anyone who’s switching fields, especially if they are doing it by going back to school. If at all possible, get some experience in your new field while you are switching, whether its volunteer work, part time work or an internship. I talked to a number of companies at the National Black MBA conference this fall, and they fell into three categories. Some companies liked to take people from different backgrounds and teach them to become brand managers and marketers. These companies were excited to see switchers. Some were interested in switchers, but only if they could show the same skill base, such as numerical analysis, project management, experience in a matrix organization, and cross team leadership. Others said they mainly hired from other firms and wanted you to cut your teeth elsewhere. Everyone said to highlight anything that I had that could be considered relevant experience. I did that, and also took another step.
In addition to summer jobs, people also post 5-15 hour a week internship jobs on the Maryland job site. Surprisingly, not many people sign up. I got one where I’m doing marketing for an IT consulting firm, which is great because I have the IT past to understand what it is that the company does. It gives me a great chance to get marketing experience that I can talk about, and exposure to a whole different side of a company. It also gives me a nice stipend that I can spend to go out with friends for drinks or food that would otherwise stretch my budget.
I’ve started “pinging” everyone that I talked to back at the career fair and since then, with a focus on anyone who doesn’t come to Smith to recruit. In each letter, I mentioned talking to them earlier, the key points about the job and the skills needed that we discusses, and then said I’d taken the liberty of attaching a resume. I also noted that we’d discussed how basic job skills that I already had could carry over, and highlighted that I’d had exactly that experience in my marketing job, where I’ve learned about direct mail campaigns, ad-word optimization and email campaigns. The first company that I mailed sent back an invitation to fly down and visit them for a third round interview and tour of their facilities.

I’d been a little annoyed that so many of the people at the job fair basically told everyone to check back later, or only wanted very experience candidates. However, I think a lot of people may fail to check back later, and to make the connection to the earlier conversations, which may make all the difference in differentiating yourself from all the other candidates.

So I’m back at school, and I went to the Giant to pick up some food, to get ready for living on my own again. A few things struck me:

One of my friends, James, has been waiting for heelies to penetrate the market for at least five years. He’s always thought they were neat, and would have really like to have had a pair when he was younger. I’ve seen them a lot recently, they must have reached some critical mass to actually penetrate the market, ala the hush puppy resurgence talked about in The Tipping Point. Giant now has signs on every door saying that you are not allowed to use them in the store. Not surprisingly, they have had accidents with kids wiping out on waxed floors and also with the kids sliding into carts. I think this is one of those products that you only know has actually caught on when you start to see it banned.

Also, Giant has a new program encouraging you to buy and use their reusable bags. I don’t know the exact details, but I think there may be a slight discount if you do. If there is, they should consider totaling how much you could have saved this year by switching, and putting it in with your bonus card information.

There is a potential problem with the program though. I bought about $70 worth of groceries, which came in 21 bags. Note that only 8 of these were actual “parcels” the bags that I carry. The rest were double bags, or bagged items inside of the bag. The checkout guy that I had used some sort of system and spent a lot of time adding things to bags, folding that bag and inserting it in another, then opening it back up and adding another bag. I’m not sure, would he have expected me to have 21 reusable bags, or would he have filled my reusable bags with plastic? In a few cases, the sturdier reusable bag would have cut down on the need for double bagging, but only three of the bags were used to double bagging, so it wouldn’t have made as much of a difference as it might seem.