random ramblings

It’s been a while since my last entry.. been very busy with school Now I’m in the middle of a 2 week spring break.. and I’m so bored at home, been in front of my laptop and tv for hours.. running out of programs / websites to browse :p .. so I thought I could update this blog..   (hendrik would probably say that I could get off the couch and do some cleaning around the house hehehe but i’m never a fan of household chores hehe)

So.. i’m back on the job market now.. for a summer internship… been back in the market since I quit my last job I guess :p I’ve attended plenty of company presentations, "briefs & meets", that’s what we call them, many networking events, and quite a number of interviews.

My first interview was with Ernst & Young last semester, I think in October?  it was very early in the recruiting season. The position was with their Technology & Security Risk Services department in Austin. Honestly I applied because it’s E&Y, and because I could :p I wasn’t really interested in the job description. I thought that it’s a good opportunity to practice my interviewing skills, it was my first interview in 6 years !! E&Y recruiting process was very nice. It started with a pre-interview dinner at a very nice restaurant in downtown. After that dinner and the first round interview, I was sure that I wouldn’t want the job because of level of the responsibility was not what I expected. Additionally I thought it was very weird that they were interviewing undergraduates for the same positions. In fact, there were only 2 MBA candidates for the job, me and one of my classmates. Everybody else were juniors. I wanted a position where I could utilize my MBA education, and all of the other recruiters come to campus with very specific job requirements that include an MBA degree and some work experience. This one clearly did not. Regardless, I didn’t decline when I was invited to a 2nd round interview. Again, we had a very nice dinner at another famous downtown restaurant I visited the Austin office and had 5 interviews back to back including one with a partner at the firm. I thought the interviews went well, I enjoyed meeting everyone and had good conversations. My impression about the job itself is better, but I still wasn’t sure if I would accept if I got an offer. A couple of days later, my classmate told me he got the offer. I got my first ding letter "thanks for your interest but.." that same day :p But I wasn’t dissapointed. I was actually glad that I wasn’t in my friend’s position. He had similiar thought of the position. He was a software engineer prior to MBA, 4 years of work experience. He’s interested in Marketing and wants to get out of IT. Moreover, it’s still very early in the recruting reason. Other companies wouldn’t start interviewing for internships until January. Interviews in the Fall semester are mostly for full time recruiting, for the 2nd year students. There are only a handful of companies who started internship scouting in the fall, and most of them are for investment banking jobs, wall street, those kinds of jobs. Not for me, thank you very much

In early December I got a 2nd interview invitation from Emerson. I didn’t know anything about them before they contacted me. I never applied to the company, but they found my resume from the school’s career center. At the dinner/presentation they explained that they never do open recruitment like other companies where they post a position and any student can apply. They had this MBA Corporate Sponsorship program, to prepare MBAs for leadership positions in the company, and they target only high potential graduate students from select universities. So I felt quite special that I was among the selected few hahaha. I was impressed with their presentation, I believe the job assignments that they provide will be very challenging and provides high visibility. The interview went well I thought. But I didn’t hear back from them for a long time. In late January I called the recruiter and she said that they’re just moving very slowly in the process. I later found out that a classmate got an offer from them and accepted. But until now I never received a ding letter from them, so I guess I’m still in?

Then came winter break, which I entirely spent in Indonesia. I had my 2 weddings receptions. They were beautiful. Thank you all for the best wishes. Pictures are posted in www.momentville.com/hendrikvera. So there goes my 4 weeks of vacation.

I freaked out when I came back for the Spring semester. The recruiting season for internships officially started. I had missed the drop deadlines for a few companies while I was in Indonesia .. including Dell and Apple. But I was more afraid of upcoming consulting interviews. A lot of my classmates spent days and days practicing case interviews during the break. They were all so serious about it, even during the first day of class, I overheard somebody said, "Hey Joe, case practice after class?" When I passed by the meeting rooms, I could see a lof of "case practice" meetings on the room reservation calendars. If you’re not familiar with case interviews, it’s when "you are introduced to a business dilemma facing a particular company. You are asked to analyze the situation, identify key business issues, and discuss how you would address the problems involved."  It doesn’t seem that frightening, right? But it is!! I was interested in consulting, but not so sure like a lot of my classmates. The interview process for consulting firms are daunting for me. First rounds are always 2×45 minutes back to back case interviews. Next round usually is a half day office visit which include more case interviews (deeper, harder) and also a presentation. Just the thought of it already discourages me, but still I was intrigued by the perks of consulting jobs, high salaries and the travels (not too sure about this now that I’m older and married hehe, but still it’s cool). Aside from the 2 case workshops that I attended last semester, I haven’t really been practicing cases, AT ALL. So of course I freaked out because I had landed interviews with multiple consulting firms.

But I guess thanks to  my great resume hehe, I’m getting interview invitations from several consulting firms : A.T.Kearney, BCG, Schlumberger Consulting, and Bain. I also applied to McKinsey, Oliver Wyman, and Booz Allen Hamilton but didn’t get invited.  I felt good that I’m getting all these invites, but scared at the same time. I met with a communication coach, and had 2 practice sessions with a career advisor. They helped, but I guess I really should have spent more effort on my own. I really wanted to work for BCG, been learning about them a lot. The people were friendly and really nice. I’m impressed with the firm’s reputation, and I was surprised when one of the associates still remembers me by name a couple of months after a networking event, even though I never correspond with her after that first meeting (I’m not good with "basa basi" on emails).

The interview with A.T.Kearney was probably my worst interview ever… with BCG it was better, SBC even better, and Bain I’d say was my best case interview (and I got good feedbacks from them), but not good enough to get a 2nd round. So that was the end of my consulting career :p  I’m thinking to myself that since I didn’t enjoy these interviewing process maybe consulting is really not for me. Well I don’t know. I love problem solving. I like challenges. But I don’t like case interviews !!

Besides consulting, I was also dropping my resumes for Operations / Supply Chain Management, and rotational Leadership program (general management). 

I interviewed with Walmart in mid January.  The outcome was positive, but they’re having problem finding the right position for me. Walmart’s process was different, the on-campus interview was just a behavioral/fit interview conducted by an HR person. Then they will try to match us with openings in the various departments. The one thing I didn’t like was the location. Bentonville, Arkansas :p   Hehe but I don’t mind it for 3 months, don’t think I want to live there long term. 2 of my classmates were offered positions just after that 1 on-campus interview. They both accepted. As for me, I’ve been in touch with their HR. They connected me with 2 different managers, the first one was with their Space Allocation group. The potential project was interesting, it was to develop a model (where we can plug in different variables) to find the best size for different parts of a new walmart store. After talking to the manager, I got the feeling that he really wants a Master of Statistics. He really dug down on my Stats skills and experience. So I talked to the HR again, and I was connected to their IT Strategic Planning group.  It seems like I can’t avoid IT jobs because of my experience. This interview didn’t go well at all I thought. I didn’t like the way the manager questioned me. It was so intimidating. He asked me one question after another, random questions in between ("what’s the last book you read? why do you like it? why this? why that? tell me this .. tell me that", so fast I felt like I was interrogated.  After that I wasn’t holding much hope for Walmart, but up till today I haven’t got a ding from them.

Then I got 3 invitations from Bank of America for 3 different positions : Quality & Productivity, Operations, and their Technology program. I declined the Technology invitation since I had decided that I really don’t want to do that anymore. I want to stay on the business side. The Q&P interview went ok, not great, but I felt pretty good about it, the interviewer was a Six Sigma Black Belt himself.  The Ops interview I thought went really well, at that time I felt it was my best interview ever. I came out feeling very confident that I would get a callback. But the following week, I heard that my teammate (who sits next to me in class), got a callback for the Q&P group, while another classmate got the Ops. I hadn’t heard anything yet, so I knew I wasn’t selected. The next day I got the ding again. I was sooo dissapointed, I wrote the interviewer asking for feedback "What made me less competitive?"  It took a while for me to get a response, but I was told that the other candidates "had very compelling reasons why they want to work for BofA" while I didn’t.  Well it was right on. I always had problem with that question. "Why do you want to work for us ?" I always find this question difficult to answer. Well duh if I applied to the job, isn’t it enough to prove that I’m interested ?  I don’t drop my resumes to every opening out there.

So by mid February, I started getting nervous. It’s still early, but I’ve been interviewing a lot, more than average I believe. Some students are only getting 1-2 interview invites so far. Btw, I felt bad for my fellow classmates on F-1 visas.. I’ve been there.. the jobs they can apply to are limited, and it’s so hard to even gen an invite.  I’m getting all these interviews, but no result so far. It’s not a good feeling. On the other hand, 20% or about 50 of my classmates already have internship offers. The ones I talk to got their offer after having 3-4 interviews. And I had had how many so far ?  Nine !!! and zero result!! I am still waiting from something from Walmart and Emerson.. but it’s been so long and I know of people who already received offers from them, so I wasn’t expecting much.

One weekend I spent a couple of hours doing off-campus job search. I really like Indeed.com and simplyhired.com. Very similar sites. I searched for "MBA internship". I submitted applications to various companies : T-Mobile, Hewlett-Packard, Adobe Systems, Eaton, Gap, Target, Genentech, and ZS Associates. The last one was a boutique consulting firm, specializing in Sales & Marketing. Not my thing, but the job description sounds interesting, very analytical, not the typical Sales & Marketing job.

Very soon I was contacted by ZS and was scheduled for a phone case interview!! Bad move. It was a weird interview. I thought I didn’t do too bad, but I knew right afterwards I wasn’t going forward.

Then the last week of February, which is midterm week (exam, projects, homeworks, crazy week!), I was scheduled for 4 more on-campus interviews !! Monday with General Motors (GM), Tuesday with AT&T, Wednesday with Mastercard and HP. Interview with GM went alright. AT&T and Mastercard were good too I guess.. well I never know how it would turn out based on past experience.

However the interview with Mastercard actually made me not want to work with them. It’s because I got the impression that the company weren’t interested to hire the interns fulltime upon a succesful summer. They are looking to hire 30-40 interns this summer, but they made it clear that at the end only 2-4 students will be invited for full time to join their Leadership Rotational Program. I asked them what happen to the rest of the interns ? Are there jobs for them at Mastercard outside of the leadership program ? And I was told well too bad they just have to look elsewhere for other opportunities. Wow I thought I wouldn’t want to be in that situation. I would feel like I am in a competition all summer long, I definitely wouldn’t enjoy the experience. Most of the other companies I’ve been talking to always say that they are using internships to source full time employment. Of course it all depends on the performance of each individual, but if everything works out great, they will offer a full time position at the end of the summer. Back to B of A, I remember they told me that they had 9 interns last year and all 9 of them are coming back full time this year. How great is that ?!! That’s my ultimate goal for the summer, it would be awesome if I can come back to school with a full time offer. So Mastercard in my opinion was "using" the interns to their own benefits.

The HP one was the best one this week. It was for "Business Planning Manager" position in Houston.  On Thursday I got a call from HP San Diego, for a Supply Chain Management position which I applied directly on their website. I wasn’t prepared for that phone call, so I thought the conversation could have gone better. But I mentioned that coincidentally I also just interviewed with HP Houston. The manager asked for the name of the interviewer so they can connect with each other. I also emailed the manager in Houston telling about this, and he immediately replied telling "I just gave my input to San Diego, I gave you very high marks".  I felt good about both prospects in Houston and San Diego with HP.

Friday morning 2/29 I flew to San Jose for an evening of MBA forum with Adobe Systems. This was another result of that off-campus job search that one weekend. When I arrived at the hotel I got a call from GM offering me an internship with their Global Information Systems & Services group. Another IT Strategy job. I got mixed feeling about this. The job fits with my background, but not my current interest. The location is uhm not that desirable. It’s in Detroit. Anyways, I thought I would think about it later after I got the official offer letter.

The Adobe MBA Forum turned out to be like an internal career fair. There were more than 20 different groups with summer internship openings, each group had a table with a number. They all took turn explaining what they did, and then we were free to talk to the group we’re interested in with resumes in hand. Some groups are clearly more popular than others. There were probably around 50 MBAs that were invited to the event, more than half are from Berkeley. I’m guessing there were a lot from Stanford as well. I was the only one from Texas, and I met others from Princeton, Chicago, Virgnia, UW Seattle, and more.  Most of the openings are for Marketing or Product Management positions. I was very tired after such a crazy week, and wasn’t really in the mood of networking and selling myself. The thought of competing with all these students from Stanford and Berkeley also didn’t excite me.  I went straight to the table with the least people (no queue), the job description said that it was looking for student specializing in Supply Chain Management. Well that’s me, and I know it’s not a popular choice so I thought my chance here should be best. Afterwards I stopped by 4-5 other tables.

Hendrik joined me that night for a weekend in SF   I actually forced him to fly to SJ because I thought since my hotel and ticket were already paid by Adobe and the next week was Spring Break for me, I might as well stay the whole weekend in the Bay Area (no homework / assignment in sight). I was finally succesful in convincing Hendrik to come for a little vacation. It was our anniversary weekend afterall. March 1st ! It’s been one year since we exchanged vows   *Toast*

Anyways back to my job search.

Back in Austin on Monday. Got a call from a hiring manager at Adobe, for the Systems Documentation Specialists job. We talked about my interest in Supply Chain as well as my 6sigma experience. I also got an email from HP San Diego telling me that I’m on the shortlist of people currently considered.

Tuesday & Wednesday – I had 4 separate phone interviews with HP for that Supply Chain job.  I also talked to 2 more people at Adobe.

Thursday – Got an offer from HP over the phone. No detail about the salary yet, but I got the offer! The manager wanted to know whether I will accept it or not, money aside.  Even though the compensation offered by GM were good, I said that I’d definitely pick HP over the other offer.

I was elated !! probably smiling all day hehe.. The previous week I was so nervous with my unfruitful job search.

Friday morning, I got a call from Adobe — they also want to give me an offer!! Unbeliavable!!! I was on cloud nine.

Then when I checked our mailbox I saw a bonus check from Cummins, profit sharing from last year. Even though I only worked for 3.5 months last year, I was still entitled to my bonus.. What a nice surprise. I forgot that it’s that time of the year !!!!

Wow.. what a great week for me !! Thank You God !

I wrote another thank you letter for the manager in HP Houston, also withdrawing from their consideration. Then I declined an interview invite from Texas Instrument :p Hehe it feels good that I can actually do this.

oh last update from the school’s career center, as of last Monday  31% of my class are holding internship offers .. so i guess that’s around 80 people.. add me to that list please !!

So now I have 3 offers on the table.. what to do now ? Never dreamt that I would be in such situation.

ps. it took me 3 days to finish writing this super long entry :p