Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Watch out Demon Deacons!

Every year, the Babcock School of Management at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC hosts a marketing summit. As part of the summit, they have a case study competition just for MBA's. Only 8 schools get to participate and one of those is WF. So basically there are only 7 spots. So seven of us Marriott School-ers put together a team and sent our application (our resumes and just 300 words on why they should choose us) off into the great beyond.

They chose us!

BYU has never been invited to this competition before so it's a pretty big deal. There is usually a high profile sponsor corporation that provides the real life problem to be solved. Previous sponsors have been Yahoo!, Motorola, Apple, Coca-Cola and more that you would recognize. Top MBA programs like Harvard, Dartmouth, Virginia, MIT, and UCLA are some of the past competitors. So we will be up against some tough competition.

We are definitely thrilled to be invited and are looking forward to showing what we can do in 36 hours with no sleep and no coffee! Hopefully we will come home with the $5000 first prize! WOOT! Go team!

This is your brain. This is your brain during finals.

It's finals time and I am tired. I took my finance final yesterday afternoon and operations was this morning at 7 am. So that lack of brain power left today has reduced me to random internet surfing and quiz taking. And this is one of the "gems" I ran across today.

13

Free Online Dating from JustSayHi



I promise I will post something of substance next week...my "key takeaways" from my first semester of B-school, if you will. But I have two more finals left (marketing and communications...you know who you are) and then I'm having my wisdom teeth out on Friday. Ouch. So it will just have to wait until I regain consciousness sometime this weekend.

Until then, how many 5 year olds could you take on?

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Procrastination

When my brother sent this to me, I literally laughed out loud. It pretty much perfectly describes the process I go through every time I sit down to do homework. Being in B-school has taught me to fight the urge to put off my homework until the last possible second.... but I still mentally fight with myself every single time. Hopefully that fight will get less and less as time goes on. :)


Merry MBA Chrismas

So last weekend our dear friend Marci invited a bunch of us to her house in Midway, Utah for a little fun. Although the first large snowstorm of the year hit earlier in the day, we did not let a few flurries deter us from some sorely needed time away from Provo.

We had dinner, drank yummy hot chocolate, laughed, sang, and enjoyed the break from our studies. But the highlight of the evening was going to the 9th annual Interfaith Creche Exhibit. It was amazing to see more than 900 nativities from all over the world. So in the spirit of the activity, we took the opportunity to make our own nativity. See the final product below.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Rise and shout the Cougars are out...

Last Saturday was the biggest game of the year here in Utah. The BYU-Utah game was incredible and fortunately was here in P-Town. So thanks to my All Sports Pass I had tickets to the game and they were good seats: south end zone, 12th row!

I could tell you about all the highs and lows but since a picture is worth a thousand words...I'll just post some pics of the game.

Oh yeah and we won! Final Score: BYU 17 Utah 10



One of the last plays of the game.
Yep. I was officially there. (And it was very cold.)
The Celebration begins.

The field being rushed.The field is now rushed.
Better luck next year Utes.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

We smoked 'em.

BYU - 35
CSU - 16

'Nuff said.






NACin' it.


Thursday night we had the opportunity to hear from Elder W. Rolfe Kerr at the Marriott School National Advisory Council (NAC) conference dinner. The theme for the conference was Enter to Win, Go Forth to Serve. Here are some of my notes from his talk:

Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve, and Strive to Excel

Enter to Win
  • Learn more than is expected of you
  • After belief, must follow application in your life
  • Be a life-long learner and make changes along the way
  • Right now is a time for building character, knowledge and confidence
  • Know more about your families and service to the church
Go Forth to Serve
  • Do more than is expected of you
  • Mosiah 2:17: "And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service ofyour God."
  • Do the job at hand better than it's ever been done and know your efforts will be rewarded
Strive to Excel
  • Become more than is expected
  • Pursue excellence in your person
    • Personal
      • Consciously succeed at home first
      • Seek and merit divine help
      • Never compromise your honesty
    • Interpersonal
      • Remember the people involved
      • Hear both sides before judging
      • Facilitate success of your associates
    • Professional
      • Plan tomorrow's (next week's, next year's) work today
      • Achieve visibility by your productivity
      • Develop one new proficiency each year
  • Paraphrasing President Hinckley: "All of us cannot be geniuses but we can all strive to be better." (reference)
  • "I'd rather see a sermon, than hear one. I'd rather get my lesson by observing you." (reference)
  • Become more than is expected of you

Career Insights

Okay, so this is a week later than I promised...but a little thing called midterms got in the way. So I have a good excuse. But as promised...what I learned from our little visits last weekend.

Black & Decker

Key take-away
*HR must be a Strategic Business Partner and should:
  • Be pro-active about acquiring the right talent
  • Consult closely with the other business areas
  • Not just be an administrative function
  • Educate the company culture
  • Give managers the tools to hire the right talent
Other insights:
  • Talent Acquisition
    • Why do they hire someone? 80% Traits and 20% Skills - Traits are innate, skills can be taught
    • Behavioral Interviewing - the best determinate of future ability to do the job is past experience
    • Analyze where are we finding the best talent and what is it costing us?
    • Also how fast can we get them and how qualified are they?
    • Build a database of candidates
      • Internet
      • Employee Referrals
      • Research Firms
      • Agencies (last option)
  • Interviewing
    • Practice
    • Never stop networking
    • Be a good person
Edwards Lifesciences
  • Be good at influence management
  • Own the project
  • Become an expert in everything related to your product
  • Use the 4 P's of marketing (product, pricing, promotion, place)
  • To increase your network, set up a lunch everyday with a different person
Final Thoughts
In discussing our trip with , one of the things we all took away from this experience was how easy it is to set up informational interviews.

Prior to our trip, my fellow travelers and I all felt a little apprehensive about "informational interviews". But everyone we met with was super willing (and I would even say excited) to talk to us and share their perspectives and experience about their personal career path, current job and how to get the right position for us. Reaching out to alumni and other people in our networks is suddenly not so intimidating and as we learned oh-so-valuable. The contacts we made and the information we gleaned will most definitely help our our internship search journey.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Road trippin'

Here's the story of six 1st year MBA's who embarked on an exciting adventure to sunny Southern California.

For the first time ever, the BYU Powers That Be planned a three day break from classes Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for the express purpose of visiting companies, networking, having interview flybacks etc.

So the six of us jumped in the car and took off for the hotbed of commerce, Southern California. Here are the featured players :

Me

Marci

Derek

Rob

Gordon

BrandonHere's a rundown of the week's events:

Tuesday

After the brain-drain of taking our Operations mid-term, we were more than ready to get on the road. We made really good time, stopping only for really important stuff like gas, potty breaks and to grab some choice grub at In n' Out in Las Vegas.
Rob, me, Brandon, Gordon, Marci

Wednesday

Our destination for Wednesday morning was in one of the many areas of SoCal on fire, so we got an early start just in case of delays. On our drive down into the LA area Tuesday night, we could see the fire light on the tops of the ridges just over the mountain from us. It was pretty crazy, so we were a bit concerned about road closures etc. Everything was fine but the aftermath of the fires along the road was evident. Check out the smoke and burned land just off the road:




Rob's brother-in-law works in finance for Black & Decker Hardware & Home Improvement Group in Lake Forest, CA, just outside of Irvine. Rob arranged for us to meet with some folks there and it was awesome. (In my next entry, I'll talk about what we learned/discussed from our meetings.)




After lunch and a good time at B&D, we made our way down to Long Beach to visit Boeing. We met with an hr representative who works in Global Recruiting and learned more about how one of the largest airplane manufacturers and defense contractors finds talent.



And since we were so close, we decided to stop by the Newport Beach Temple. It is a bit unique because unlike many other LDS temples, it is pink and looks like an old spanish-style mission. So incredible (I think I might have found a new favorite temple!) Notice the smoky air from the nearby fires.




With our business done for the day, we changed into our street clothes and started the quest for our dinner. On the recommendation of Brandon's roommate who used to live in the area, we settled on Rockin' Baja Lobster, a nifty little baja seafood mexican place on Balboa Island.

Oh baby. It. Was. Good. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.





They are famous for their seafood buckets...and there is a reason why...they are A-maz-ing. If you are ever in the area...make this a stop on your itinerary.

Thursday

Our next stop was Edwards Lifesciences in Irvine. They are a medical device company most famous for their heart valves. We met with a Utah native working there in marketing and had the opportunity to view the clean room where they "manufacture" the heart valves. Very very cool.


That night, we met for dinner with another Utah native who works for Mercer, an HR consulting company.

Friday

Of course, we couldn't go to SoCal without visiting the Happiest Place on Earth...Disneyland. Our newly acquired business training in marketing and operations threatened to derail the fun as we noticed all the line bottlenecks and promotion opportunities in the parks. But finally we relaxed and through the magic of FastPass, we hit all the top attractions, watched the best shows, and experienced the magic of Disney.





We decided to ride Splash Mountain and all got soaked...

But I think it brought us closer together as a group. :)

So in conclusion...this week was fantastic all around. I met with some incredible people at respected companies, spent the week with my amazing classmates and got to know them in ways (both good and bad) just not possible sitting in class, laughed, learned, laughed some more and basically had a blast. (MBA professors are you listening? This was an incredible experience and well worth the time out of class).

Tomorrow I'll post some of the "key takeaways" I learned from our meetings this week. But for now I've got to get to bed. :)

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Battle of the '09ers

Our MBA class is divided up into three sections. We have all six of our classes with the same people, all day every day. So we get to know our fellow section-ers pretty well. And while I do everything I can to meet as many people in our program, there are still a lot of people in the other sections that I don't very well or really even at all.

After much trash talking, Section 2 challenged Section 3 (my section) to a football game on Saturday morning. And what's a little healthy competition to help us bond with the rest of our classmates. We had a lot fun, got a little exercise, and enjoyed the crisp fall morning air.

Below are some shots of us in action. We didn't really keep score but I think everyone was glad they dragged themselves out of bed to come.