Life Prep

So, I've successfully changed my sleep schedule. Well, decently successful there have been a few days that I've over slept but its a step in the right direction. 

And, my networking is getting so much better! The thing about networking that I think I have been forgetting is that I love people. I love what  makes people happy, I love learning about their experiences. Some how in the stress of networking with 100s of people I've lost the enjoyment of the interactions.

The rest is kind of a work in progress.

Speaking of things that I enjoy, I worked an adoption event on Saturday for Helping Paws. There is something so rewarding about helping an animal find its way from the street and into a loving home. Cassanova was the dog we worked with this week, he just wanted to lay with me and be loved. For a little dog, he's a keeper.

Sundays are the loveliest of all days

So I owe you job thoughts and randoms, so sorry darling fictitious internet readers. 

Where does a girl start. 

Lets go with job thoughts.

So on Wednesday this week I had my first official "sit down" with my Career Center Coach. Her name's Jennifer and she's wonderful. Yes, I know I say everyone at Iowa is wonderful, but that's mostly because they really are great. 

The goal of Wednesdays meeting was to outline what I am expecting and what they're expecting from me. Its already been a lot of work, and I know its only getting started. Things I need to start thinking about:

1. Where do I want to live when all is said and done? 
2. What type of companies appeal the most to me and why?
3. How committed to living abroad am I? And what am I willing to give up to accomplish that.
4. What functions of my current job can I use to get me to where I want to be?

So this list could go on and on, but you get the idea. Its difficult to spend time focusing on these questions, when I have real work/life/moving questions taking up so much of my time. 

I've been looking up full time positions that interest me, and trying to reverse engineer to myself. 

Nestle LDP

Is one program that really interests me, and has motivated me to work on my languages again. 

Stay tuned shortly I'll give you some insight into this beautiful mind with random life ramblings. 

How to Interview like an MBA, the first book review

The Premise

The basic premise of "How to Interview like an MBA" is pretty obvious. The book promises to get your interview, network and resume skills up to par with an top MBA program student through ten different section reviews. 

The Delivery 

I'm a reader, since this is the first book review I'm doing I'll throw that out there. I love information, I love the way different people convey the same ideas, and I love words. I'm kind of a nerd like that. That being said, I really thought  Dr. Shel Leanne did a great job of expressing the nonfiction technical information in a way that didn't bore me to tears.  She also really covered every area of concern, from what your plan of attack for your resume should be to what you're probably going to have to explain to a recruiter (why you had a rough second semester or how your work covers area not generally considered in that function.) 

Pros

She's incredibly thorough with topics but very concise when it comes to explanations, a combination that I admire and appreciate.

There are examples given for just about every type of communication you will encounter from cover letters to thank you notes, which is something I plan on referring back to.

There are 100 sample questions, in case you're a little bit nervous about interviewing an need some practice.

Cons

I would have liked for there to have been more about pre interview work, ie job hunting like an MBA, but maybe that will be its own book.

There is a lot of stories from professionals who experienced a good/bad situation dealing with the topic. After a while I started skimming those passages. 

The Take Away

These are just some details I would offer to someone else 

• There are four points of research you should do for any interview. 
1. Industry (The main characteristics, the trends, any recent shifts)
2. Company (The main competitors, any recent news, the company's strategies etc etc)
3. Interviewer 
4. The Job (Who do you interact with, what are the responsibilities, how much ownership do you have of your products)
• Questions to ask your interviewer to leave the best impression 
• How to shape the interview to best demonstrate you as the right fit. 

All and all, definitely worth reading. It may be a bit of over kill for people actually pursuing an MBA who have a full time Career service staff at their disposal but a good reference point. 

You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

I'm not 100% I agree with that statement, but it was the one thing of a two day leadership seminar that sticks out in my mind.  The seminar was okay, I wished I had known going in that it was going to be very basic management notions, I probably wouldn't have chosen it over other options but its nice to have open forum to express the way you lead. 




As for life prep, its going. 


This week I'm dog sitting for a friend and laying on the couch reading "How to Interview like an MBA" seemed like a great way to spend the evenings. 


These are the kinds of things that I'm trying to get in order for school:

• Build confidence in my abilities as a networker, actually building my confidence outright 
• Adjust my sleep schedule so 8:30 classes don't feel like torture
• Establish some sort of exercise habits
• Review my budgeting and really set goals for them
• Spend as much time with the people I care about

I've been working on parts one, two and five but the other two aren't so attractive to me. 

When it comes to networking, my current goal is to leave any function thats even borderline appropriate for networking with one new contact. Even the seminar gave me one good new contact. I'm also working up an excel sheet and talking with friends about people they might know that could be people I need to know.

The sleep thing is not going so well, but its a work in progress. 

And I've been having a great time exploring the city with my lovely friends and eating dinners with my family. 

I'm a few days late, but here's some job thoughts

When I visited Iowa for their Advanced weekend, I got the chance to talk with a lot of current students and graduates about their company placements and internships.

Companies a few of my classmates are working for

• Sears 
• United Airlines
• Delta Airlines 
• Unilever 
• Darden
• United Stationers
• Amazon

Well, the list could go on for quite a while but you get the point. The best advice anyone gave me was starting the search early, so ideally I'll have the luxury of being picky. So I went a head and made a bookmark folder called "Internship Search" and took to the web determined to find some good prospects. 

Here's a couple of companies I'm looking into

• SES 
• AT and T
• Verizon
• Johnson and Johnson (the holy grail of consumer good internships clearly) 
• Pfizer (also holy grail of consumer goods because there are multiple holy grails)

Thats just a taste of course.

I've also completely revamped my resume into "Iowa Formatting" and set up a starting point interview with the Iowa Career center. 

If anyone else has thoughts or connections at these companies I would love to hear them. I'm hoping that doing the leg work now will enhance my prospects. 

Carnegie Mellon vs. Iowa aka the battle of the titans 


So, lets review.

Iowa is a great program, thats giving me a very good deal, with students that I've already formed bonds with and staff I can see assisting me in whatever I might need in the next two years.

Carnegie Mellon is a little less known to me, they've had their admitted students weekend and I feel kind of blind about their personality. That being said, their brand could open doors that I'll have to kick down if I go to Iowa, and they are known for being the tops of the academic world. Plus, they have a hockey team!

Drum Roll..........

Uh, duh, I'm sticking with Iowa.


Its funny because if you would have told me a month ago that I was going to pick Iowa over Vanderbilt or Carnegie Mellon, I would probably have bet against you. It was a very big decisions, and I really feel confident in my choice. There's nothing I can say to accurately describe how much fit and feel impacted my decision. Also, having significantly less student loan debt is something that will allow me to take whatever path feels right when I graduate.

Also, just so you know fictious internet reader, I have stayed up to date on my reading and job search thinking, but those blogs are for a later day and time.

Hope your day is full of sunshine.

Ramblings on undergrad, the GMAT, & the MBA search

So, I suppose I've already completely and totally failed at keeping myself accountable to this blog. Shucks.

I have a good reason though, I swear! This past weekend was the University of Iowa MBA Advanced weekend, where they bring all of the admitted students together, throw in some current students and some alcohol and hope you play nice.

I had a great time, and I'll litter this page with some pictures of it shortly I'm sure.

That being said, on Monday Carnegie Mellon contacted me and accepted me! I guess now is as good of a time as any to give my grad school selection story.

I've always been the smart kid in the family, the one who is constantly asked what are they going to do with their lives. For a while, I thought I had some indication to be a writer, but as you can tell from this blog, my writing skills aren't putting the food on the table. Doctor was clearly out, I hate blood, guts and any type of gore. For that measure cross out vet, chef (cooking involving gutting) and law (if you've worked in the law field you know its all blood and gore.)

During undergrad I stumbled through my first few business classes, I was making the awkward transition from awkward high school kid to slightly less socially awkward college girl. Then, one day I was reading my marketing strategy book, and I reached the last page that I was assigned and I was so interested I kept going. I ended up finishing the entire text book that week and became completely enthralled by how various functions of a business sustain and promote each other, and on the flip side destroy each other.

For example, if the marketing department makes a terrible campaign that insults some demographic, the sales department can't move enough products and the factories have to cut labor. Of course this is a very simplified example, but you catch my meaning I hope.

Any way, back on track, so I was hooked on business. I graduated from college thinking I was going to land some fantastic marketing job in some giant company and completely revolutionize the way American's see generic paper towels. So I applied, and I waited. Then I applied some more, and I waited. And well, you see where this is going. Finally I decided I needed to do something to fill my free time, I'm not one who can idly stand around and thats how I ended up working in what was supposed to be a 4 hour a week book keeping position.

 I've been at the office for just over two years, and have put in somewhere around 5,376 hours, but who's counting. I handle everything from client contracts to mass mailing campaigns.  So, thats all well and good but one day, after getting back from visiting a friend who was in his first year of law school I realized I was stuck. I wanted to move forward, but companies simply weren't hiring entry level employees and frankly I desired more knowledge than most entry level employees hold.

Enter the GMAT. I signed up for the GMAT as a way of evaluating if grad school was right for me. I signed up September 14th, and took the test October 11th. I had come up with a range in my head of where I wanted to be to pursue my MBA and miraculously my score came out right where it needed to be.

So, now that I've gone off on a tangent, back to my selection of schools process.
My selection criteria were three fold.
    1. Had to be a top ranked school
    2. Had to have a class size of less than 300
    3. Had to be in a city that had a hockey team.

I'm sure you're sitting there, scratching your head over what hockey team is in Iowa City. There isn't one, but I'm getting there. Hold your horses cowboy.

That being said, I narrowed my choices to the following programs (1 being least favorite, 5 being top choice.)

1. Olin (Washington in St Louis)
2. Kennan-Flagger (UNC Chapel Hill)
3.Owen (Vanderbilt, Nashville)
4. W. P. Carey (ASU, Phoenix)
5. Teper (Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburg)

Note, Iowa wasn't even on the list. So I took the chance to visit UNC with my Aunt and Uncle this fall for their women's workshop. While I absolutely adored the women I met there and truly look forward to seeing them advance their careers and lives, the feel of the program wasn't right. I need a program with a little bit of competition and a little bit of fun. UNC's program felt a little too holistic.

I'm incredibly thankful that I had the chance to visit UNC, not only did I get to rule out the program from my list, I also got my first taste of mba networking, and had a fantastic road trip with my aunt and uncle. But, now I was down a school. I didn't feel comfortable just applying to four school, particularly because I was on the border line for admissions qualifications at several of them. I pulled out all the brochures that I had gotten at an MBA Big 10 fair, and the Iowa caught my eye. I remember really enjoying meeting the alumni from Iowa, but had kind of written it off, I mean there's no hockey team! Also, I had some concerns that the program size of 65 students per class was just a little bit to small for my liking.

But, after investigating further Iowa had a really great growing brand. Their students were going to companies that I wanted to go to, and they were doing a lot of innovative things to create real experience in the classroom. So I applied.

I finished all my applications by Thanksgiving, and then the waiting began. I'd have an interview, and then more waiting.

Finally my first admissions decision came out. Olin sent me an email at 10pm on a Friday night telling me I was waitlisted. While Olin had been my first application, my first interview (where we spent more time talking about Brett Hull and the Blues then my qualifications) and I was still getting some of the bugs out of the system, it still hurt to get the email at 10pm on a Friday waitlisting me.

When Carnegie Mellon waitlisted me, I was a little bit more disappointed. Teper is an amazing program, with cutting edge technology and alumni placed in basically every company on the continent. Plus, it has an incredibly well known brand. Suddenly, I was very worried about getting into programs and ended up sending out a few more, just in case applications.

The unfortunate thing about C Mellons waitlisting me was it was directly before I interviewed with W.P. Carey. If you know me, you know I don't do heat. I'm the girl that gets a sun burn in her car, in the middle of a Michigan winter. Despite all of that, I had myself convinced that ASU was right for me. I had an established social group in Arizona, the program was very impressive, the professors in marketing were doing research that interested me, all good signs. I tanked my interview; and some how, the lowest ranked school on my list was the only one to deny me. Which, in retrospect is for the best, I think my motives for considering the program were more social and less business. It would have been nice to have a close friend within twenty minutes to turn to.

So, I come back from my interview at ASU and receive my admissions notice from Iowa as well as my scholarship offer. I've never been so excited, I kept reading the letter over and over and actually had to leave work because I couldn't possibly focus on anything else. And then Vanderbilt called and offered me admission and suddenly I felt elated.

And then I realized, I was going to have to pick between two amazing schools. I visited Vanderbilt, and attended an alumni dinner in Chicago, and really enjoyed what I learned at both. The students were engaging and motivated, the classes were fascinating and the school itself is beautiful. Not to mention, Nashville has got to be one of my favorite cities in the United States. It has the midwest personality with the hospitality of the south. It also has a much higher price tag than Iowa.

Then I visited Iowa, and I started to become attached. Not only were the students at Iowa engaging and motivated, but they were incredibly welcoming and genuine. The class I sat in was so riveting, I contributed to the discussion and held my own. And the staff was sincerely excited about getting students from where they were to where they wanted to be. I sat down with Mark Winkler, the business director for the marketing academy, and he was telling me all of his plans. I think it was seeing his spark and his dedication that really sealed me in for Iowa. As much as it makes great sense to go to Iowa because of the money, its became more than that. I truly feel apart of the community and look forward to contributing to its success.

So, now that I've told you a 9 page rant about my mba choices, back to the start. On Monday Carnegie Mellon sends me this silly email that offered me admission and a decent scholarship. I'm still a little bit blown away by it, to be honest, I would never had anticipated them accepting me. That may just be my lack of self confidence bubbling to the surface, but I didn't really see it coming. So here I am, choosing between my original first choice and the school that I've completely fallen in love with.

For now, I'm going to leave it at that.