I’m down to two exams, one for Portfolio theory and one for B2B Marketing. I envy those classmates that didn’t have final work after projects, I htink its hard to go from studying mode to creating mode and back again, but somehow I’ll power through it :-). It’s strange to think that by this time next week, I’ll probably never have to take an academic, ie non-certification, exam again.
If your looking for some great Mac setups, MacLawStudents.com has a review of 8 law setups. I’ve found B-School to be pretty similar, with my notes on setting up Lotus and the face that we don’t use exam software.
Overall, I really recomend a mac and a copy of VMWare Fusion, there are a few things that you might want to do for finance and stat that need scripts and macros from a windows machine. The good news is that many schools, such as mine, have highly discounted XP and Office licenses for students. It can be even better if you get a job as a GA/TA, and can get faculty discounts
Last night was Spring Fling, Aka Comm Prom. It went fairly well, with only one minor incident, and a lot of people having a great time. Net Impact does a great auction where they have students donate items, then they give the proceeds to one or more MBA students who are working this summer on socially responsible work. The theory is that these jobs often pay nothing or far less then students could get elsewhere, and it helps us put students where they want to be going forward, rather then where they can pay the bills from the summer. As you can see below, I took the option of black-tie option, and leveraged it.
One of the things I noticed during the campaign is the use of action words and verb tenses. Business communication is always focused on action words and trying to increase the urgency and importance of your speech by cutting out extraneous information. This is a change from my past as an English major. I did notice a major correlation between the verbs people chose and the message they sent.
People who wanted to put forth a platform of ideas tended to use strong phrases and say I will. As an example, one candidate started with As President, I will work… and then outlined the plan that he has in mind.
Candidates who want you to get to know them used if phrases. Generally, people who started with if elected tended to spend more time telling about themselves and how open to ideas they are, and less time developing plans.
Likewise, the first group of people tended not to have topic sentences in their platforms or speeches and instead went for the “grab” to pull you into their candidacy. The second group had more pleasantries and superlatives.
In the contested positions, everyone who was more in the first group won. Even when two platforms for the same election started with asking verbs, the one that went straight to ideas beat the one that went to experience first. This was, according to the grapevine, the hardest of the two to decide between because everyone really liked both.
Overall, I think we had a really great group of candidates and people trusted that they could all get the job done. Given this background, it seems like reminding people of your past experiences didn’t help as much as outlining what you planned to do. There was a certain mindset that all of the candidates had enough of a background to get things done, the difference would only come in what they did with their background.
I think this can be extrapolated to the job searching process. Too many resumes, cover letters and interviews focus on the details of what has been done before. I think employers would rather hear what you’re going to be able to do for them. The stories about past performance aren’t impressive on their own, but rather are an opportunity to show that you have the skill base needed and recognize that this is the right time to use it. There is an important difference between how you’ve done something similar before, and how you’ve done something similar before that means you can get results now.
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.
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.
