Incoming fire has the right of way.
Wow, nearly lost the contents of this page, thanks to a badly fumbled upgrade. Sometimes it pays to have picked up a few tidbits of sql and general database management knowledge. Nothing like a catastrophic loss of your diary while you’re low on sleep and trying to finish 9 (count ‘em) projects to up your stress levels a bit. Or to make you sit in a corner, sucking your thumb and crying for mommy.
P4 is over. So far, at the start of each of the past two periods, most of us had promised ourselves that we would relax, that this would be better, and that finally, the workload would peter off. HAH! At least the stress is no longer accompanied by the same amount of frustration and grief many of our class experienced before — maybe that’s just resignation kicking in. In my case, it didn’t help that all of my class work was back-loaded to the second half of the period (with both of my half-credit electives only starting in April.) Combined with the reluctance of group members busily engaged in consulting interviews, this translates to “a whole shitload of project work jammed up against the end of the period.” Sort of an academic doppler effect.
At least some of our courses wound up agreeably, most notably Markus Christen’s marketing class. While I wish the session hadn’t focused so strongly on a thoroughly buggy simulation software (three cheers for spending 2 hours working on a market strategy decision, only to lose the fucking thing thanks to a broken submission mechanism and subsequently having the least competent, most tired member of your group — me — frantically trying to re-create your results the next day. That yielded some amusing results) the lectures were nothing short of amazing. I am astounded at the man’s energy and enthusiasm; I’ve had some pretty good professors, but none received multiple standing ovations. Then again, none gave out champagne and Asterix comic books at a mock awards ceremony after their class either.
In fact, yesterday night was the first weekday in three weeks when I managed to stumble home before 02:30 after knocking out page after page of beautiful, tear-jerking prose for my various assignments. Yes, it’s all a bit lacking on the quantitative side, but as I told our strategy professor in response to his question whether we had run financials on competitors to the company our Industry & Competitive Analysis case focused on, “I’m not the numbers guy.” The numbers guy was away interviewing for jobs. Natch.
We also seriously underestimated the amount of work required for our media presentation, but thankfully we were finally able to draw a line under it and send the damn thing in. What a fantastic class — I wasn’t terribly keen on the lectures (i.e. “how to make money from advertising”) but the prof, the former head of McKinsey’s media practice, invited an amazing line-up of senior executives from media heavy-hitters around Europe. I have rarely been so impressed by the repeated willingness of top-level managers to openly engage a bunch of students in discussion.
Just a minor thing about final presentations: I realized that describing CEOs as “swaggering, egomaniacal windbags” while giving a slideshow really goes over well with a lecture hall full of — aspiring CEOs.
Speaking of top-level managers, I recently went through a fairly surreal experience, after being invited to a sort of gala dinner at chateau Bourron-Marlotte with a bunch of heads of alumni associations and other assorted grand high muckity-mucks. I was tremendously fatigued, and my mood wasn’t helped by some of the surreal conversational dynamics — I counted at least 5 people who turned their backs on me, literally in mid-sentence, to chat with their friends. Whatever — I suppose that, attending these kinds of events, one would rather schmooze with long-lost friends than with a couple of job-hungry MBA candidates hanging onto your every word like a proverbial lifeline (hey, gotta whore a bit to pay off the damn student loans.)
At last I did break down and get myself a loan, at a ridiculously low, probably government-subsidized rate, from my bank, once I finally managed to corral my account manager into sitting down with me. I’ll use the 7 days “backing-out” period to review the contract for any cleverly hidden bits about rights to my kidneys in case of default, that sort of thing. Feels good to finally have my financial situation sorted out; the money people at INSEAD were indubitably growing antsy about my inability to pay my last tuition installment.
Small observation: it’s so much easier focusing on what’s relevant when one sees a glimmer of hope on the horizon, this particular one in the form of two job interviews. Both came about relatively serendipitously, although I did an inordinate amount of research and networking before I finally started receiving positive feedback. A gentleman I contacted on linkedin, after searching for key people in his particular company, was kind enough to spend a bit of time talking to me about the particular area of strategy I was researching as a career path, and passed my details on to his parent organization — who want me to write a CV in French. That’s real fun, and making me realize that, despite what I thought was a reasonably decent command of the language, my business French is, well, English.
My second interview is the direct result of my hosting the company in question for their career presentation on campus. There’s not much to it — welcome the speakers, make sure everything is reasonably well organized (taken care of by career services), put up some signs, help set up, do a small introduction — but the opportunity to have them to yourself for a few hours leading up to the main show is priceless. This being a fairly high-profile outfit, I was tremendously surprised that nobody had signed up to play master of ceremonies — I suppose everyone was too busy getting dinged by consulting companies to realize that there are other ways to go about finding a job than applying to MBA recruitment programs.
In fact, I somehow get the sense that quite a few people haven’t gotten the hang of this whole networking thing yet — one colleague came up to me after abovementioned company’s presentation and complained that it was difficult to write a motivation/introduction letter for a job that doesn’t have a posted description. Dude. Please. Give them a call, say hi and thank you, introduce yourself, tell them you’re interested in them, ask intelligent questions, and see where it goes from there. The two alumni who tagged along to this particular evening were extremely approachable (thus nicely balancing out some of my other experiences with INSEAD alumni) and asked me to stop by. Whatever happens, I’m doing a project with them for my media course’s continuation session next period, and it was certainly a pick-me-up. A badly needed pick-me-up; I seriously wish these guys had stopped by before the consulting dog-and-pony show came to town.
Seems like I’m the grief counselor for people “dinged” by consulting firms these days. I’m tremendously happy for those among my colleagues who got offers, especially one gentleman with a particularly exotic background who was sweating bullets about his career options — despite putting on one of the calmest faces I’ve ever seen. He’s set with an offer from his first choice in London — proving that something is right with the universe. Nonetheless, I must have had similar conversations with advice (imagine that, me giving advice to anyone, there’s a pretty mind-bending load of chutzpah for you) on how to go about networking. Maybe it’s because I’m already desperate, or because I’ve been giving it a go nearly from day one, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.
On the topic of dings: there is now a bell in the bar area. That’s cruel, or funny, depending on how you look at it. I’m actually more amused at the fact that I haven’t heard the thing ring more than once to date. People need to start reveling more gleefully in rejection — one of my colleagues received the following gem:
Nous avons bien reçu votre dossier de candidature en réponse à notre annonce et vous remercions de l’intérêt que vous portez à notre société.
Nous sommes au regret de vous informer que nous avons sélectionné une autre personne qui nous semble plus adaptée au profil recherché.
Nous vous souhaitons de trouver rapidement un poste qui vous convienne et vous prions d’agréer nos sincères salutations.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he hadn’t actually applied for the job. Genius.
Short note about our house; I’m a bit worried about the transition to next period. Just received a furious note from our landlord via my colleague who’s our de facto den mother. Some of our friends from P2 did a bit of a number on the place during a recent party, with the result that he is absolutely livid. I’ve always been on good terms with the guy (and I suppose having been around a grand total of, what, 3 hours the last few weeks might help) but I am worried about our relationship with the man. He’s a very nice gentleman; when we moved in, he mentioned that he appreciated someone a bit more mature (that’s me, dammit, stop smirking in the back) holding at least one of the leases. I hope he wasn’t expecting me to keep the inmantes under control; I’m not good at that sort of thing.
One more strategy paper (also known as “technique for avoiding nightmarish exam full of esoteric concepts you’ll never use again, such as Herfindahl indices”) to go, and I’m off for the week, first to Paris, then to Amsterdam, with an interview stop in between. Wish me luck and luxury.