I've always been a fan of networking, but I had no idea that using a little networking could create such good results. I've gotten some great internship leads over the past few days as a result of reaching out to the folks in my circle of contacts.
First, my girl maya (1st year student at Columbia Business School) passed along an email from one of her alums saying that Booz-Allen's ATL office was looking for some candidates to fill intern spots in their office. This was about a month ago and I sent my resume to her, but I dind't hear a peep from them until a couple of days ago. I've been playing phone tag with their ATL office recruiter, but I'm going to hit her up tomorrow and I should be able to set up a first round interview at that point. When i first got the email from maya, I passed it along to my boys Detavio and Shawn and they've both set up their first round interviews, so there's a chance that we can all end up in ATL together at BAH.
Next, my boy Christian (who was my roomie back when i was in VA and works for Booz Allen's McLean, VA headquarters) asked me to give him my resume so he could put it into the system in case there are some openings there. I sent it to him over a month ago and received an email from a recruiter saying that they didn't have any openings. As soon as I told my boy that, he told me that he was going to ruffle some feathers and look around for other stuff in their office for me. Well, I got a message from a recruiter from that office when I came out of class tonight and I'm going to give her a call in the morning to see what kind of opportunities they have for me.
A couple of days ago, I sent out a post on a Princeton Alumni Career networking list and a Black Ivy league alumni list saying that I was looking for contacts at boutique strategy firms or in corporate strategy units of corporations and I got a bunch of good replies. I've been in contact with 5 or 6 companies as a result of that one message and I'm hoping to get some more good news from them in the next couple of days. In fact, the Accenture second round interview that I have on Friday came as a result of me networking with people in the Stanford GSB alumni network, as well. I will never ever doubt the power of networking again. I have a feeling that one or more of these leads will lead to some offers for me and allow me to finally start focusing on school fulltime again.
By the way I've got to send a huge shout out to a couple of cats that just found out that they were accepted for the Stanford GSB Class of 2007. First, my man Jason who I met at the many Voices event back in November got the call earlier today 3 minutes after getting off of the phone with me telling me how freaked out he was because he hadn't heard anything yet. I knew this dude was a cool cat from the time I met him and, after reviewing his essays for him and prepping him for his interview, he wanted it so bad that I knew he couldn't be denied. Also, my man Eugene (a Princeton alum) who found me through MBADiversity.com got the good word, which really made me smile because I helped him prep for his interview and, after talking to him, I knew he'd do well and would be getting the call from DB. Fellas, I don't know if you're seeing this, but I can't wait until y'all matriculate in the Fall.
I just got the call from URS Corporation that they'd decided to go with another candidate for the summer. I'm a little bummed out about it, but not too badly because I realize that there is nothing more I could have done to secure my position. The lady who called me told me that I had done well on both of my interviews and that I actually came out as being their second pick, but the guy they ended up taking had more relevant experience to the work that they had planned for their intern this summer. When she dropped that on me, I knew there was nothing I could have done to have changed my past work experience, so I charged it to the game.
For all of you former hardcore techies out there who are considering business school, be prepared for getting this sort of feedback from companies when you look for jobs. I've had several companies make knocks against the fact that I didn't have much face-to-face client interaction experience or that I hadn't worked in a particular industry that was related to the work that they did. You know, I enjoyed my time plugging away at Java code, but I wish I'd jumped out of it and into something else sooner so I would have ended up with a more diverse set of work experiences before getting here. I've still got other leads that I'm chasing down, so I'm not trippin', but it is EXTRA humbling to face these repeated setbacks.
One more thing for the former techies (specifically software engineers)...make sure you stay in practice with your coding because those skills go away quickly. A couple of days ago, I decided to try to code up something simple just for fun (yeah, I know that's mad nerdy, but it's something I used to do every now and then to keep my skills sharp). I was fine with designing what I wanted to create, but, when it came to actually implementing, I drew a blank. I actually had to hit some books to figure out how to even start the programming and then had to hit the books even harder to remember the classes that i wanted to use in my code. I eventually ended up ditching the idea of coding that day because one of the Elite 8 games was coming on TV. This was the first time that I'd tried to do any coding for over a year and my skills had gone away very quickly...if any of you want to keep your development skills once you've left your jobs, you've got to make sure you keep on coding regularly.
I know that not everyone reading this blog is a Christian, but I am and I would be remiss if I didn't devote a post to saying how thankful I am for Jesus giving his life for all of our sins (My mom is a preacher, so I guess it comes with the territory). Today is a big day and it has me reflecting on how lucky I am, not only to be at the GSB, but to be alive, be of good faith, and be on my way to Heaven one day. I have been really bootleg about going to church since I got here because I'm always so tired on the weekends, but I knew that I had to get up and go this morning. I ended up attending church with my girl Lynn and her boyfriend Ron (MBA1 and MBA2, respectively) and I had a great time. The service was different what I'm used to back home in VA, but it was cool nonetheless.
After church, I spent most of the day hanging out and watching the last Elite 8 NCAA tourney game (That Mich St-Kentucky game was CRAZY!!!). I'd intended to buy my course readers for my Spring classes, but I wasted too much time lounging and, by the time I went out to buy the readers, both the Stanford University store and the GSB course reader sales rooms were closed. I guess I'll have to get up bright and early tomorrow and pick those up so I can fight off the undergrads to get my Ed school readers and fight off my classmates to get my GSB ones.
What's up, y'all. I got in from Cabo last night and it was a rough night because of this daggone cold. The coughing, sneezing, and congestion not only kept me up all night, but had me feeling like I was going to die on the plane. I feel a little better today, but I definitely need to go out and buy some meds sometime tonight.
When i got up this morning, I had to get ready to start the internship search grind up again with full force because I had three interviews over the course of the day. The first was a phone interview with Accenture. My interviewer was a manager from the NYC office who had been with the company since 1997 and was able to give me a lot of great information about the company. The call was relatively straightforward with some behavioral questions and then a mini-case discussion about the trade publishing industry. I felt like i'd done OK on the case, but I wasn't getting good signs from the interviewer before she got off of the phone, so I was worried. Those worries were cast aside later when I got a call from the recruiter later telling me that they want to move me on to the second round of interviews sometime next week.
The second one was a phone call with a representative from McMaster-Carr, an industrial supply company. I heard about the company from the best friend of my roomie's GF who is a recruiter there and, once i looked into the company a little more, I realized that they are a very profitable firm. The gentleman who called me was a manager in their Systems group and his vision for the call was to have it be part-interview and part-informational for me. He gave me a lot of great insight about the company culture, their performance, and values and told me that they had some really interesting project options for an MBA intern. At the end of our call, he told me that he'd call me back in the next couple of weeks with an update on my status and, from the way he said it, I think I'll have some good news coming.
The last interview was with SAP for a position that would involve me doing research on the factors that influence enterprise software purchasing decisions. My interviewer was a Sr. VP with the company and, while he was a cool cat and was very accomplished, I don't think I connected well with him during the interview. I had a feeling that it would be a rough session from the start when I had to wait in the lobby for 15 minutes at the beginning because my interviewer was swamped with work. Plus, my current illness had me having flashbacks of my HBS interview. Everything started out well with him telling me about his background and the work that his group did within the company. Next, he described the project that he had in mind and why it would provide value to the company. and asked me a few questions, which I answered fine. Then, another SAP manager stuck his head in the door and my interviewer invited him to participate...that's when things started going south. This new guy started throwing questions at me that I wasn't expecting and then the original interviewer started asking questions too and, with my constant coughing, I was thrown for a loop. By the end of the interview, I felt like I was going to get a "HECK NAW!" for this position. Fortunately, I've got another interview coming up for a position with the internal consulting team at SAP, so I hope to do better on that one.
OK, I’ve been on this trip for 5 days and I just realized that I could get internet connectivity on my laptop. So, I’m finally able to make a new post about how this Spring Break trip to Cabo has gone. I never went on a Spring Break trip during my undergrad years because I was always working, so I was hoping to get that experience all at once on this one. To put it simply, this has been a GREAT trip. As the break approached, I had visions of all of the wild things one would see on MTV’s Spring Break telecasts, like people running around half naked on the beach, all-night outings at clubs, and other assorted craziness. While I have seen some of those things, they haven’t even been the highlights of my time here.
Before going into details, I’ve got to give a huge shout out to my classmates Kim S. and Amy J. who organized everything for this trip. They made it so simple to get in on this that all we had to do was call the resort to make our reservations and book our flights and we were all set. We’re staying at a brand new resort down here with everything included: all food and drinks and most activities. We knew from the start that we weren’t staying at the standard Spring Break spot because we were the only people here in our age group…everyone else was either much older or were the kids of those older folks. We soon found all of the young folks when we started hitting the town at night. The two main spots down here are Squid Row and Cabo Wabo, which were both decent spots and were filled with some of the wildest partiers I’ve ever seen, but they were both so packed that it was overwhelming. Anyone who knows me knows that I like to throw down on the dance floor, but trying to do so in an overcrowded club with people’s drinks spilling on me is NOT the move for me. I think it’s safe to say that I’ve outgrown that sort of partying.
The real highlights for me have been the opportunities to get to know my classmates a little better. There are several cats in my class who I considered my friends that I’d never had a chance to hang with for more than a minute or two at a time. One of my missions for Cabo was to spend some significant time kickin’ it with these folks. Also, there are a bunch of folks on this trip that I barely knew and had had no interactions with outside of seeing them across the room in class. I definitely wanted to spend time getting to know that they were all about, so I’ve been randomly rolling up on these people and asking them to give me their 2-minute elevator pitch about their lives. I know that I can’t learn everything about all of the folks on this trip in such a short period of time, but I’m hoping that this serves as a starting point to build off of over the next four academic quarters.
I guess I’ll jump off of here now and get back to resting. I caught some sort of 24-hour bug yesterday that had me down for the count. I had a terrible fever, aching body, congestion, runny nose, and it got so bad that I felt like my eyes were throbbing. I ended up stuck in my room sleeping for most of the day, but the fever finally broke at about 4am. Now, I’m just trying to get enough energy built up to go out for a little while tonight…it’s our last night here, so it should be off the chain.
Whew, I finally made it to the end of the finals period for the Winter quarter and I feel like I'm about to pass out from exhaustion. Thank goodness Spring Break is here because I needed it in the worst way. In about 10 minutes, I'll be catching a shuttle to the airport in San Francisco, where I'll be catching a 6:30am flight to Cabo, Mexico. About 85 of my classmates are going to be making the trip and we're going to be staying at a brand new resort down there where we're going to be living like kings. It'll be good to have a chance to kick it for a few days there, but, even better, I'm hoping
that this will give my classmates a chance to let lose and let me see what they're like when they don't have their game faces on. Don't worry, I won't be messing around any water stuff so you don't have to worry about me drowning (like I almost did in St. Martin over the summer). I'm just going to lounge, read, and party a little to get my mind ready for the new quarter coming up in a week and a half. I don'tknow if I'll have internet access at the resort, but, if I do, I'll write a few updates while I'm there.
After a week of a couple of highs and many, many lows, I'm happy to say that winterr quarter finals are finally over. I just got back from taking my last exam for my Finance class and I feel like I'm ready to pass out. I was terrified going into this last exam because I didn't feel like I'd developed the intuition that I'd need to answer the questions on the exam. I'd struggled on the midterm and, since the final counts for 50% of our final grade, I thought that I was in serious danger of failing. Fortunately, I had one of the best study sessions with a couple of classmates (shout out to Kumi and James) and went through all of the sample finals as a way to figure out how to use the formulas we'd done in class. When I looked at the test, instead of feeling scared, I was actually totally relaxed. By the time the test finished, I couldn't say that the test was easy (it was actually pretty daggone hard), but I feel like I did well enough to get a passing grade. I won't know for sure until a week or so from now when i get my final grade, but I think it's safe to say that I will be here next quarter and won't be on any sort of academic probation :-)
The other two exams I had since I wrote were Marketing and Operations. The Marketing exam came first on Tuesday morning and I didnt think that one was too bad. I found it relatively straight forward and I felt like I knew the material, but the test was SO LONG!!! I was able to finish the entire thing, but I am pretty sure that my answers decreased in quality as the test progressed because I was rushing through it to make sure I finished. The Operations exam came yesterday and that joint was a BEAST!!! That exam had to be the hardest one that I've had since I got here and I left it seriously wondering if I'd passed it or not. The only solace that I had was that it only accounts for 25% of our final grade so a bad final exam score won't totally do me in.
Most of my classmates are hanging outside of Schwab celebrating, but I'm too tired to go out there with them right now. Plus, I've got to start packing for Spring Break too...thank goodness I survived these finals.
Today was the start of winter quarter exams and, if today's test was any indication of what I've got ahead of me, I'm in for a doozey of a week.
It all started with the final for my Strategy class this morning from 9am to noon. We'd been given access to last year's exam as a study tool and, although my prof told us that the test would be more difficult than last year's, I wasn't even close to ready for this one. Last year's exam had a total of 10 questions and was worth a total of 38 points...this year's was a MONSTER with at least 25 questions that were worth a total of 100 points. I'd reviewed our strategy book and writeups of each case over the weekend, but there wasn't much that I could do to spin myself up for this one. The hardest part of the test was the second half of it, which involved the analysis of a case that the professors made up. If we'd had an additional hour, I would have been fine (this one was 3 hrs vs. the 4 hrs that we were given for our Fall quarter finals), but I just ran out of time at the end. I'm afraid to think of how I did, but I'm cross my fingers for at least a passing grade...THANK GOODNESS FOR OUR NON GRADE DISCLOSURE POLICY!!! :-)
We've got Marketing tomorrow morning, so I'm about to jump into that studying now. I wish I'd made better use of my time in studying over the weekend, but I was so burnt out from the classes and internship search that I couldn't get myself to start grinding bigtime on it until yesterday afternoon. I've got a long three days ahead of me.
One last thing...I received word last night from the School of Education that I'd officialy been accepted into the MBA/MA in Education joint degree program, so I am feeling really good despite getting run over by the truck that was my Strategy exam. I signed the acceptance paperwork this afternoon and I'll officially be enrolled starting next quarter. It's going to be tough to get both degrees done in two years, but I'm focused and am ready to take on the extra courseload over the next four quarters to make it happen. Hopefully, I'll be able to apply the lessons I get from the Ed. school classes later on in the non-profit activities that I have in mind.
Today is the start of what will be a long weekend. As I said in my last entry, I haven't been able to retain much info this quarter, so I'm going to be studying like a fiend to make sure I don't fall flat on my face. My first exam is for Strategy on Monday morning, so that's where i'm going to focus my attention initially. I didn't have time to crack our textbook at all, so I've got to read all of the chapters...plus, I've got to review all of the cases and my class notes too. This is going to be rough. I am seriously hoping for an LP (i.e. "Let me Pass") in this class so I can at least spare myself from having to retake it at this time next year.
In other news, I'm officially offerless now because I sent the notification to Infosys that I wouldn't be able to accept their offer to work in Bangalore. I was really looking forward to getting some international experience, but the compensation wasn't where I needed it to be and, since I would have been doing IT research for the summer, I didn't think I'd get enough of an opportunity to apply the lessons that I've been getting in my time here. I'm sure that something else good will pop up soon.
Lastly, I'd like to give a shout out to my man Brian G. who is a Princeton '04 grad and new admit to the GSB. I just finished hanging out with him, his girlfriend, and a couple of his friends as they stopped through Stanford on their drive down to San Diego for a conference. He's still on the fence about where he'll end up, but I hope we can get him here because a cool cat and we can always use more Princeton Tigers in the mix :-)
As I sit here typing this entry, I'm on the verge of passing out from fatigue because this has to have been the longest week I've had since I've been here. Today was our last day of classes for the Winter quarter and it has taken every bit of energy I had to make it through without falling asleep at any given moment. I really enjoyed the 5 classes I took this quarter, but I can't help but have some regrets because I don't think I put as much effort into the classroom side of things as I should have. Instead of focusing on learning, I put too much of my time into trying to get an internship and the outcome has been little progress in the internship search, less retained information from the classes that I took, and less preparedness for 4 finals next week than I need to be successful. This weekend is going to be absolute hell as I try to cram a quarter's worth of Strategy learnings into my head to prepare for that exam on Monday.
In addition to the end of classes today, I also had another internship interview today. This one was with a huge engineering services company called URS Coporation in their SF headqaurters. They are seeking an intern for their Corporate Strategy group and, since I'm trying to learn as much about strategy as possible this summer, I was very interested in performing well. Things started out iffy when i got caught in hectic traffic on US-101 going into SF and got there 10 minutes late. I parked my car in the most expensive parking lot ($3.00 per 20 minutes) of all time (which was across the street from their office and suggested to me over the phone by the lady who set up my interview) and ran in that building so I wouldn't look totally unprofessional.
The session consisted of two interviews, the first of which was with their VP of Corporate Planning who runs the day-to-day operations of their Corporate Strategy group. This lady was SO on point with a PhD in Physics, 6 years of McKinsey experience, and several years in Strategic Planning at Chevron-Texaco. I think I developed a good rapport with her and did well on the case that she gave me, so i thought I had a chance to come out of this with an offer. The second interview was with one of their Strategy Analysts and i'm not sure how that one went. I felt like I was having issues connecting with her and, while she said that I did well on the case, I found myself making the case much harder than it was and I tripped myself up several times trying to do too much. When the 2nd interview was finished, the analyst left me in a conference room by myself where I waited...and waited...and waited for 20 minutes for someone else to come in and let me know that everything was over. I eventaully had to go to the receptionist and ask what the deal was. At that point, I found out that I should have been done as soon as the second interviewer left me, but no one had even let me know. The lady who'd set up my interview came out to walk me to the door and left me really disappointed when she told me that URS doesn't validate or reimburse for parking. I told her that the lot she'd suggested was $9/hour (I ended up there for 2.5 hours after that 20 minutes of waiting in the conf room by myself) and all she said was "sorry". Needless to say, i left there pretty salty and determined that I'd better get an offer from them because it would be hella foul to get dissed AND have to foot a $23.00 bill for parking.
The roughest part of the experience was the drive back to campus after the interview because I came out right in the middle of rush hour trafffic. The drive back to Stanford that Mapquest said should have taken me 40 minutes to do ended up taking me 2 1/2 hours. Plus, I was tired as a mofo, so I kept on having to fight off the urge to take a nap while I was sitting in standstill SF traffic for 20 minutes at a time. That trip was so NOT CRUCIAL!!!
The night did end up on a high note when i got to participate in a charity activity for the Ronald McDonald House through the GSB's Challenge for Charity organization. Along with about 15 classmates and some other volunteers for the area, we helped to set up banquet tables and decorations at the local neiman Marcus for a charity casino night that will take place on Saturday evening. There's something about helping out a great organization that just wipes away the fatigue and stress that comes from fighting through terrible traffic on a Friday afternoon.
OK, time for me to hit the books. i've got a lot of Strategy cases to re-read so i don't fail that final.
"Wow!"...that's all I can say about this weekend. For the past few weeks, I've felt pretty run down by the internship search and the academic rigor of this quarter and, to be honest, I'd started to wonder if I was really on point enough to hack it here and survive the GSB. The past few days have re-energized me and have me ready to fight through the rest of this school year and take over the world over the summer :-)
On Saturday, we had our annual Black Business Student Association conference at the Stanford Faculty Club, which went off without a hitch. It was the most successful BBSA conferemce ever and it set the bar pretty high for my class to make some big things happen next year. The event featured a morning panel about entrepreneurship that was set up by my girl Lynn, an afternon panel set up by my boys LaShawn and Corey on Career Development, an afternoon talk by the founder of Urban Golf Gear, and a keynote speech by the CEO of Symantec, John Thompson. I can't front...I was thinking that the conference might be bootleg because there were only two panels, but, on the big day, everything fell into place perfectly. The panels were the perfect length, were moderated well, and covered a wide range of ideas on their topics. The founder of Urban Golf Gear made a presentation that was casual enough to keep people entertained, but informative enough to keep them interested. And, John Thompson's speech was fantastic...he's truly a dynamic speaker and i was even able to speak to him for a few minutes after he came off stage. There aren't too many Black folks at the top of tech companies and he's the only one at the top of a company as large as Symantec. Overall, the event was off the chain and I can't wait to help put things together for next year's conference.
The second big event of the weekend was the GSB's first round Admit Weekend. I'm a member of the Admit Weekend Committee and was in charge of coordinating two of the panels, so I had a vested interest in seeing things go off well. The Admit weekend started with a Welcome LPF for the admits in Schwab followed by small group dinners ( I attended the one sponsored by the BBSA for the Black admits). After the dinners, we had another welcome get-together at a bar in Palo Alto called Blue Chalk. I'm usually not into Blue Chalk becuase it is tiny and crowded in the upstairs area, but the place had a DJ that night and the downstairs area was jumpin' so I was in my element. I was sweatin', grindin', and wyldin' out...I probably should have conducted myself differently around the admits, but, if they're going to be here with me, they need to see how I do for real, for real. The night ended with most of the current students and admits heading over to a groupof second year MBAs' house for a party sponsored by the International Club. I didn't have the greatest time there because I wasn't into the music, but everyone else was dancing around, talking, and vibin' with each other so well that I couldn't help but be pleased. Sunday and today were filled with panels, info sessions, a mock class session, and other team building exercises intended to help the admits get to know us and each other. It still remains to be seen how many of them we were able to secure, but, from what I heard from the guy I was hosting for the weekend (shout out to my man Julio V.), a lot of these kids will be back here in the Fall. These folks were so excited to be here that I couldn't help but be excited for them and even more excited for myself and my classmates for making it thorugh almost 2 full quarters here.
I can't end this without sending a shout out to the admits that I met this weekend. They were truly a great group of people and I hope they all choose to come to school here in the Fall. Seeing their excitement and energy made me recognize once again how fortunate I am to be here and now I'm ready to take on these winter quarter Finals next week and get this internship stuff taken care of.
...and they said that they weren't checkin' for The Kid.
The results of the Student Association Presidential election came out today and my running mate and I didn't come out on top. The group who won were highly qualified , so I can't be salty about the result and they'll likely do a good job. At first, I was upset because I'd talked to several people last night who said that they had no clue that they had to revote and others who didn't know that they had to specify a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place team on the revote ballot (if not, the ballot would be invalid). I thought that these folks had been disenfranchised and I was fighting mad because I thought the system had let my running mate and I down. But, after doing some research today, I found that everything in the election was kosher and the other folks won fair and square.
Looking back, I think my running mate and I could have done more to campaign and there were other some reputation issues that I didn't anticipate which likely hurt us. People have been checking on me all day to see how I'm doing, but, surprisingly, I feel totally fine. For the past week or so, I had been wondering whether I wanted to really take on all f the extra work that the position would entail and now the people made that choice for me. I'm just going to look at it as God's way of telling me that I need to focus on school and getting an internship next quarter.
The results of the Student Association elections were supposed to be published today, so I was surprised to see an email in my Inbox this morning saying that the presidential race hasn't been decided yet. According to the email, none of the four teams running for the position got more than 50% of the vote, so the co-COO's have started a one-day runoff where each voter is supposed to pick a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice. From what the COO's told each of us candidates in an email a couple of hours ago, the two teams with the most 1st place votes will have both their 1st and 2nd place votes counted and the other two teams will have their 2nd place votes counted and whichever team gets the plurality of those votes will be declared the winning team. If none of the teams has a plurality at that point, then the 3rd place votes will be counted, as well. I hope I'm describing this correctly because I'm not 100% sure that I understand it all.
This whole process worries me, not because it is going to decide whether I get to be co-president, but because I am wondering whether it is the best way to do this. [EDITED - I was just sent an explanation of how the voting will work and the two scenarios I was imagining wouldn't go down...the preferential system of electing is set up differently] These outcomes don't seem like they'd be in the spirit of who the class would be indicating that they want by virtue of the 1st place votes they made. To make matters worse, neither the candidates nor the voters were told that a team had to get over 50% of the votes in the first election to win (I think there may have been something in the SA Senate bylaws about this, so I'll have to check there to be sure). I had a bunch of people come to me with questions about this earlier today and I had no idea of how to answer them. No matter how it turns out, I think the results will be challenged and I doubt that it'll be any of the candidates who raise the challenge. This could be a very intetresting day or two around here...