Sleepless in Seattle: The Microsoft culture

Microsoft, the company which changed the software world forever, produced three billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from its employees and now has around 90,000 employees and 60 MBA interns for the summer. I could talk for a whole day about the culture of the company which can be consider as an 18 wheeler, but I would start with one word - intricate !

The dictionary define 'intricate' as difficult and complex, and there is no better word to describe a company that is actually 7 different companies (divisions) with their own agenda, fighting over the attention of the CEO. In the last couple of years, Steve Ballmer (CEO) did some re-org that put the technical people (engineering background) at the top of those divisions and reduced the internal fighting almost to zero. Although the willingness to look unite, the internal structure and culture of every division is different and mainly defined by its president.

In general I could say that the culture in Microsoft is very open - since I has a vast hi-tech background it is like returning home, to the open door of your peers and managers (in all levels), to the flexible hours of work, to the open mind for new (sometimes crazy) ideas and opinions and the casual approach to the working environment (jeans and t-shirts). I was lucky to be able to work and communicate with people from all over the company and to understand that there are three major pyramids in the company - the main one is the engineering (the heart and soul of the company), the business (the head of the company) and the field (the arms and legs of the company).

                                                                              Talk to you soon,
                                                                                             Barak.

Surprise Surprise.......whooom! and here's the Surface!

Hi all,


Nothing much has happened since my last post- only Microsoft has created a HUGE stir in the tablet market by introducing its own new tablet- the Surface, AND they introduced the Windows Phone 8 AND they acquired the work-place friendly social networking business Yammer for $1.2B- all in 2 weeks! Yes- that is the kind of market-swinging movement at Microsoft right now, which makes it an extremely exciting place to spend the summer. 

USA Today's article comparing Surface to the Ipad


As an intern in such a dynamic company, there are so many new things to learn- from enjoying  and adding to the wide-spread speculation before the Surface was launched (yes- no one outside of the immediate Surface team even had a whiff of what was being launched that day) to considering what effect this and other launches (and acquisitions) will have on the company's products, business model, branding and future strategy. 


A midst all this excitement in the Redmond campus, there are moments when Microsoftees come up with more brilliant and innovative ideas and new products are incubated after these key moments. Which then explains the environment that has been created in the Redmond campus- casual, lots of nature and free of many of the redundant corporate fads- an environment that is conducive to creativity and open to radical ideas (about tech obviously).

That also explains why Microsoft gives its MBA interns such great opportunities to meet with the highest level executives. We have an Executive Lunch series where the 60 of us are put in a room with C-level people, so far we have met with the Chief operating officer, Kevin Turner (60K poeple around the world report to him- just a fun fact) and Lisa Brummel ( the Chief People Officer, who has had the most unconventional career- going from an MBA to leading the marketing for some of Microsoft's best products to being on the team that incubated the Surface several years ago!). During these lunches, we eat great food and get this exec's full attention to ask any question that we have for around 1.5 hours. The full time employees here say that this opportunity is not even afforded to those who have been at the company for 6-7 years- That is the kind of learning we as MBA interns have at Microsoft.

Now when I am not talking to C-level execs at Microsoft :), I work on my project with an absolutely great team, meet with people from several different departments and enjoy more events. Last week, the Microsoft Business Division had our summer party- we went golfing at this amazing golf course called New Castle. See the picture of the view of Seattle from this Golf course=> it was breathtaking!  And the weather was on our side that day, lots of sunshine.


Last week we also had a happy hour for the interns at this (again) amazing place called Ray's boathouse in Ballard (added to my "must go list" in Seattle!) All these events are accompanied by open bars and buffet lunches/dinners.

In between all this fun, my project is gaining momentum and I am getting into the swing of things. Last week I had a chance to present to my Director my progress and findings so far and realized that I was making a presentation after a very long time. That made me think- we do not make enough presentations during our MBA really, we should do more of those. Microsoft is very a Power point heavy company- everything is done in Power point and excels and presentation skills therefore play an extremely important role in the communications to higher management levels. Another important skills that I feel I am developing at Microsoft is that of balancing detailed analytical thinking with high-level strategic thinking. Every discussion moves back and forth between these two views and its important to think about the nitty-gritties as well as from the 30,000 feet level at the same time. 


So guys- that's been my last two weeks of a lot of fun and excitement- and its only been 3 weeks since I started...I could get used to this fun....:)


Chao! Till we meet again....

"There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second."

So, another fortnight has passed and I find myself becoming more and more integrated into what Amazon calls their 'peculiar' ways. The customer obsession that I mentioned in my previous post is truly something that all Amazonians learn to live by; I constantly get reminded that the focus is never to get too hung up on besting the competition, for if you can truly show that you care for your customers, they will come back to you instead of your rivals. Though this strategy seems to run contrary to what’s preached in most bschool textbooks, AMZN’s care for its customers seems to have paid off big time.

Another thing you will find at Amazon is that for meetings, PowerPoint slides are considered taboo. You got that right – all my deck-crafting skills built up over client meeting after client meeting at Accenture are completely worthless here. Instead, meetings are conducted with the presenter creating a white paper which is then distributed to all the members to read during the meeting. After everyone is done reading, there is a Q&A session to address any open topics up for discussion. The goal of this is to prevent bad content from hiding behind fancy slides and to ensure that the presenter has all the content prepared in a concise and readable format. While it initially seems a little unnerving to have such meetings where everyone is silently scrutinizing your every written word, it serves its purpose to ensure that meetings do not take overly long and keeps discussions on topic. It’s another AMZN peculiarity that gives Amazon its own unique culture.

One nice thing that Amazon does for its MBA interns is to organize executive speaker sessions over lunch (BYO food, naturally – the savings go to bringing all you customers lower prices, etc.) where senior VPs talk about their work at AMZN and give us a chance to pick their brains over various topics. I mean, how often do you get to ask Amazon’s CFO about his thoughts on investor relations? Now all they need is to convince Jeff B to give us a talk too.

Oh yes, I did promise to talk about the elevator art. Basically, the elevator wall panels are whiteboards with markers made available for talented (and not-so-talented) Amazonians to contribute a little ‘art’ on their daily elevator rides. I must admit to being impressed by some pieces, which I’ve shared with you below. It’s a cool touch, though in a building with only 6 floors, these budding Michelangelos have to possess some of the fastest drawing skills on the block.

“My Pokemans, let me show you them”

To round things off, I’d like to remind all avid readers that Amazon is offering a great selection of Kindle titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. All you need is an Amazon Prime membership (great value at only $79 annually) and a Kindle device to get started. More than 100,000 titles are available to be borrowed for free, including New York Times bestsellers like the Hunger Games trilogy and all 7 Harry Potter books. Unlike traditional lending, there are no limits on the number of copies available and readers never have to wait in line for the book they want. To learn more about the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, visit www.amazon.com/kindleownerslendinglibrary.

"Problem?" - Trollface

The Worls Soccer Masters Tour

Hello everyone,

I just landed back in Michigan after a demanding weekend in Miami. As I wrote before, we had an event last weekend with several goals at the same time. We were inviting two groups of clients, who had to be managed separately, and also had to manage two mini-events outside of the stadium to reach the public. As I’m sure everybody knows, managing four things at the same time can become an impossible task and this was not the exception. Several problems appeared along the way and a lot of “on the spot” decisions were taken. It’s not really important to get into the details; the important thing is that the final outcome satisfied all the people involved. The worldwide CEO of the Aftermarket Division was present at the event, as well as the Director of the Aftermarket Division for Argentina and the Vice-President of the Aftermarket Division for the US. They all approached me on Sunday to express their satisfaction with the final outcome of the event. If I have to make any recommendation to everybody who is reading, that would be to make your team like you as a person and not just as a co-worker, you will be amazed of the results you will get from them when you achieve this. By the way, the soccer game was also amazing and I’m attaching two pictures, one of the press conference and another one of the match. Let’s see who recognizes the players at the press conference.

Now is Monday and the event is over so we need to look forward towards the next challenges. The strategy for commercial cooperation in Mexico has to be outlined and that’s why I will be flying shortly to Ciudad de Mexico to start the initial meetings with our colleagues over there. I’ll let you guys know how that journey ends; I hope that with a good ending as well.

Driving ahead

Lear corporation is one of the leading companies in the automotive industry. Its business is mainly focused on the seating and the electrical power management system (EPMS). The Taylor division I intern in is an EPMS division.

As a finance intern, part of my job is to make journal entries and also deal with some other financial related work. As I work, I have heard a lot of familiar famous car companies that cooperate with Lear, including General Motors, Volkswagen, Delphi, etc. Last month a German engineer from Volkswagen visited our plant, because VW is considering to further cooperate with us. I had an opportunity to spend a few minutes speaking with him in German. He seemed to be very happy about what he saw. I am sure that we can cooperate with VW more and receive more orders from them.

Michigan is the center for automotive industry. When I work in the company and attend the events, I feel that the companies in the industry are tightly connected. Last week I attended an event held by CoNext, Inforum. The organization evolved from the Women Economic Club and focuses a lot on building professional women's network. The event aims at offering an opportunity for the interns working in the automotive industry to get to know each other and start building our network within the industry early. I met some students from U of M who I did not realize are interning in the same industry as me. After mingling in the event, we felt more connected. Additionally, I met a lot of interns coming from other schools. It was very exciting to meet different people and learn what they are doing in their internships. Also, I got to know the industry better after the event.

The automotive industry is the main leading industry and  there are a lot of great companies in here. I am proud to be interning in one of these companies and gain the essential knowledge and skills for my future.

When the going gets hot.

About a month into my internship, it is time to observe the work I have been doing and decide whether I am managing my time and efforts effectively. I have mostly been collecting data as part of a rigorous market research and I am now looking at the data I have been collecting to figure out whether I am covering enough ground. I really only needed to skim the data and talk to a few people to figure out where the wind is blowing, but in order to build a solid case to support my claims I am trying to exercise caution. In a new work environment, figuring out the best rationale to present and how to present it is actually rather tricky. Truths are not absolute and you may realize that your convictions, i.e. regarding which companies are strategically the bigger threats, are more subjective than you thought.

Even in an environment that truly allows and challenges one to innovate such as Dell, it is not easy to understand how far can you stretch it. If you argue false convictions, how much of it counts towards your learning experience and how much of it reflects on your lack of experience in your role, the industry or both?

When the going gets hot, the hot still enjoy Texas very much, despite the blazing heat of 105. My fellow interns and I have gone hiking and swimming and other things outdoorsy. This weekend we spent a full day at Six Flags Fiesta Rescue near San Antonio. It felt good spending the entire day out of town, and it felt great to be able to do that with such a large group of friends. It is far too early to say whether I can expect to meet any of them again next year. I guess that right now we're all just trying to live in the moment as we figure out whether this could be the best place for us.

Your internship is what you make of it! Or, is the glass half empty or half full?

Another two weeks (or 20%!) of my internship down. So it’s time to sit back and reflect – what have I learned, what have I accomplished and equally as important – what else do I want to accomplish before the remaining 70% (I guess that’s what a B.A. in Mathematics does with you – makes you convert everything to percentages) elapse?

A few weeks into the job I now understand why during the interview process someone told me that Groupon is like a human who has the body of a grown-up person but the mind and heart of a child. So what does it mean?!  

Undeniably, the company has grown immensely since it first started some 3.5 years ago. It is now much more than a daily deals site and offers a wide range of products and services to both merchants and discount-seeking city dwellers and explorers. It has undertaken the ambitious task to transform the way SMBs (or small and medium businesses) do business. And to accomplish that Groupon now employs over 10,000 people across multiple functions in 48 countries around the world. And not in the last place – it is now a publicly traded company that had the audacity to reject a $6 billion take-over proposal from Google. Not too bad for less than 4 years in business (and that is probably why Grouponers say that 1 Groupon year is equal to about 3 normal years). That is the grown-up body.

The mind of a child refers to the fact that like many companies that have experienced rapid growth, Groupon wasn’t necessarily quite prepared for it. A lot of processes and structures that seem common sense for anyone who has worked in a big multi-national company, like knowledge-sharing and standardization for example, are not there. Yet! And while one way to think of that is “What a drag, dude!” (reference clarification link) I think the Groupon way is “Great! This means every little thing I do to streamline things can have a huge impact on the day-to-day lives of Grouponers around the world!”

That is what I am trying to do over the course of my internship – help with reporting standardization. And while it does not sound like the most glamorous or exciting thing out there, I have come to realize that if I do what I have set out to do it will truly leave a mark. What’s more – I learned a new trick in Excel that gave me that “I did it!” warm feeling so I guess it is all about the small joys in life and making the most out of every situation.

Outside of work, life is still sunny and wonderful. And windy! My explorations of summer Chicago continue. The free summer concerts in Millennium Park are in full swing and I have come to love my walks around the lake and the bell-like sound the boats make. And there are beautiful fireworks every Wednesday and Saturday! What more can you wish for?! :-)

2 weeks of options

Week 2 of my internship ended! To recap, I am in the equity capital markets division and was specifically assigned to the convertibles desk in this division. Overall, this 2 weeks have been an extremely steep learning curve. I took classes on options, but those classes hardly prepared me for what I had to learn at work. There are many complicated products to learn and most of the work on this desk is modelling and pricing options. As I wasn't able to model and price at this point, my supervisor gave me many notes to study and constantly tested me on how much I've absorbed. It was very stressful at first, as I thought I would be working on assignments but instead felt like I've taken an upper level intensive class on options. I must say though, my supervisor was very patient with me. He knew I was struggling to understand the concepts and that options was not something I'm good with, but he took much of his time out to teach me. What was interesting was the way he tried to teach me. He never has a lesson plan, and would leave it up to me to study as much as I can while working on random assignments from other people in the team. His way of testing how much dedication I have to the team was to announce 5 minutes beforehand that he will be testing my knowledge. And so, I have to constantly make sure I was studying and reviewing my notes.

One day, he handed me a presentation on a certain product, walked me through the main points and then told me that I will be teaching this to another intern. After spending some time preparing notes to teach the other intern, right before I was about to teach, he brought in more interns, and said I will be making a pitch of the product to the interns. I was thrown off, did my best to pitch, though I must say it wasn't a good pitch. And that was one of the highlights of the 2 weeks.

I thought I had a great supervisor, albeit a tough supervisor. But I'm really grateful for his time and his dedication to teach me. I will be having multiple supervisors as I rotate through the division, and I'm excited to see the different styles of supervising that I will be experiencing.

Client engagement started!

Deloitte has a formal process of defining summer goals and project scope. All the goals should be made SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely). Then I will review the goals with peer advisor, my consoler and my project manager. They will also provide some suggestions for the goals, then I will update accordingly. After everybody agrees on the goals, I submit them to HR. My summer performance will be measured against those goals. It is a very transparent process.  

For the second week, I was on the beach which means I am not working on a client engagement. At that time, I did some practice development work, which is doing some research on a specific topic and increase knowledge of the firm. It is a very intensive project. I ready technology white papers, industry report, companies’ financial report and analyst report to get familiar with the topic and also collect raw materials for my deck.

Starting from the 3^rd week, I was staffed on a client engagement project. This project is to help client build an information technology roadmap to align with company development strategy. At the first week of the project, we conducted a series of interviews with stakeholders to understand the current situation and future needs. It is a really nice experience, not only that you could talk to many people from the management team, but also a great way to learn consulting. There is a small tip when conducting interview. One of my job scopes in the project is to collect raw materials, so I take meeting minutes during the interview. As non-native English speaker and freshman to the industry, I know it will be difficult to follow the conversation at the beginning. So I suggested my supervisor to record the meeting with my phone. My supervisor thought it was a good idea, but we have to check with clients before we do that. It turned out to be a great help, because the meeting schedule is very intensive and there is indeed a lot of new information. The recording helped to fill in many gaps in our meeting minutes. 

Well, here comes the boss. My supervisor is from Ohio. You know what I mean. But he is really a nice guy. He gives me many tips about client engagement, and told me many fun facts about the firm. At my side, first of all, I try to focus on my job and get the work done. I also try to be honest about my progress, asking for advice and help if needed and updating my progress regularly. 

First 2 weeks at Google!

My first two weeks at Google have indeed flown very fast! And the learning curve has been really steep.

The days of orientation were really enjoyable - meeting new interns, interacting with them, learning about Google. I was introduced to the Google way of thinking about things - which was certainly very helpful.

On the second day, my manager came to get me and we had a great conversation about my project, the background and context and what I should achieve at the end of my project. 

Starting day three, I met a lot of people in my team, across teams to understand the situation - my team was super helpful in getting me settled in. Google has a great culture with folks who are passionate about what they do - it was quite amazing to see things move at lightning speed here.

Over the course of the next few days, I absorbed as much information in the context of my project as I could. One of the first few things that I realized was I would have to really plan out my project. I drafted a work-plan and defined what my end product would be and had a fruitful discussion with my manager.

On the fun side of things, we went out on a welcome lunch on Friday of my second week. It was a really nice Mexican place and that was when I saw the really humorous side of my team - they had a great sense of humor. All the things that I had read and understood about Googlers - that they are passionate, have a sense of humor, have a sense of purpose were all getting confirmed.

Settling in San Jose was fun - I had to finalize my apartment, find furniture, go shopping - hectic but fun. Most importantly, I got to connect with all my friends who are in the bay area.

Overall, first two weeks have been a lot of fun, work and learning!

My first two weeks in New York Citi- Part 2 of "from CPG to Banking"

Hello everyone,
Has been a while since I posted my first blog. You may think that the title of this  second one is a miss spelling, however it is not. I just didn't want to be one more person talking about Citibank, as I just saw that my intern classmates have been very active.
The ver first week went by very quickly. We had a trainning during the whole week, along with some networking events and an speech of the CEO of Citibank consumer banking division, Manuel Medina Mora, who happens to be a mexican that has a long career in the banking industry. This conference, was just the cherry on the cake that confirmed the things that I am enjoying at Citibank. First. Diversity of backgrounds, and second,  approachable senior management. As I consider both relevant elements when it comes to build a strong organizational culture. Also, they come very useful when evaluating whether I see myself  working for Citi in the future, because, from an international student perspective, I would not like to be working in a place in which thediversity in background is not appreciated. Another thing that I have enjoyed from the program so far, is the caliber of the interns. I can tell that I've had interactions with people from all of the  top 15 business schools. Which has been a great opportunity not only to expand my network, but also to realize that The University of Michigan, Ross Business School, is very well positioned in the MBA market. Now, starting my second week, I have to confess that  going back to work after eleven months, is like working out, you need to keep up with your condition! It is not a big deal, but it is something that needs to be practiced again. Additionally, as it has been for other classmates, when  defining deliverables, it is not as easy as I had thought. I realized that my project is more ambiguous than I though, as it has to do with launching a new business model, which deals with increasing revenues, strategy and marketing. As a result, there are some roles that are still unclear in my team, but, the upside of this is that I am having the opportunity to work in something entrepreneurial, something very rare in a big organization like Citi. (You may have seen that also Citi just turned 200 years, and it is just  starting the 3th century of life ). The project has been great to leverage on my previous MAP experience as a team-member and on my Strategy classes. So far, I can tell that the project has exceeded my expectations, even though I still have to figure things out and develop many frameworks to deal with the unknown of a new business model.
I will keep you posted.
Miguel

First week with Citi 200 years, done!

My first week of summer internship at Citibank was over before I had time to worry that if I am ready to go back to work after being on holiday for about two months. My first week started in New York with other 36 MBA students from some of the top business schools around the country, including Wharton, Columbia, Haas and Cornell to name a few. Everyone was so excited to get to know each other on the first day and was so happy to be part of the Citi Consumer Banking Summer Associate Program for 2012. The Bank organized some of the senior leaders from different business functions to meet and talk to us about what they do on a daily basis, the challenges they face and the opportunities ahead. With almost no time to rest for jet legs and adjust for time differences, I found the information I got in the first two days was overwhelming. However, the excitement about my summer project with CitiMortgage and the great new friends that I made have really kept me going through the week.

The last day of the week was my first day to report to CitiMortgage Ann Arbor office. During a quick catch up with my manager over a cup of coffee, he wanted me to take up a major role in facilitating the expansion of an operation center in Danville, IL. The project includes hiring new stuff and analyzing calls from a huge data base for this busy inbound call center for CitiMortgage’s super streamline business approaches. The project is challenging in its complex nature, but I am really excited about it and the opportunity to pull it off. When I was writing this blog, I am working from this office about 400 miles away from Ann Arbor and will be here for the rest of the week.

There will be lots of hard work ahead of me this summer. However, there also will be lots of activities and events that I will enjoy during weekends and time offs. I am sure that it will be a great summer.

First week at Citi

Citigroup’s SFMA is a well-organized program. I received the summer position placement document from Citi in mid-May. It includes 8 positions within the global finance area. Each position came with description of its department, tasks, requirement and perspective. Later on, I found out that there were only 8 of us in the SFMA program, and each of us got placed in a different team. It is a bit sad that we will not see each other much after the training week, but this structure provides us a way to broaden our network within the company, and learn as much as we want about other teams.

The first week started with presentations given by CFOs of the Institutional Clients Group (ICG) and Global Consumer Banking (GBC). It was as much a presentation as a conversation. We all had plenty of time to ask CFOs questions. During the week, directors and controllers of Treasury, Financial Planning & Analysis, Corporate Accounting policy and Tax gave us a brief introduction to their team. The managing director of Treasury reminded us that the Key to financial management is not getting into details of rules and regulation reform, but to think logically and act ethically. We also had breakfast chats with our junior and senior mentors. Everyone I have met so far at Citi is extremely knowledgeable and supportive. Through out the summer, we will participate in speaker series from top executives of Citi.

In addition, this year is the 200-year anniversary of Citigroup. As members of Citigroup, my colleagues and I went out on Thursday to paint a local community park. It was a great time to meet people from consumer banking group, and give something back to the community.

Working Smarter

    The past few weeks at Four Wood Capital Partners have been pretty eventful. In terms of my own assignments, I've been at work on a myriad of projects. Some of these were doing research reports on our firm's competitors, creating a model for our high net worth client strategy, analyzing trends in real estate investment trusts (REITs), and putting together daily market summaries. Anyway, it doesn't seem like I've been given my big summer project yet (although working on our High Net Worth Client Strategy has been going on now for a few weeks, and it has drawn a lot of attention from various directors and managers in the firm). Nonetheless, I still have yet to get placed on a live deal.

    When it comes to getting work done, I've found that most of the people in the office with more experience are willing to give feedback and lend a hand to our group of interns. After all, none of us have significant real world experience. Their advice has helped a lot in knowing what to focus on and look for. One of the big takeaways so far has been the importance of developing work in a manner, such that anybody could understand the message by looking at a slide. It makes sense considering that investing activities are not exclusive to highly educated or sophisticated individuals. While we still need to make sure our research checks out and that all the work is accurate, keeping it understandable seems to be a very important point to remember for presentations and explanations.

    Working with supervisors has been relatively enjoyable so far. Most, as mentioned before, are generally helpful and willing to give guidance and explain what they want to see in our work. One thing all supervisors enjoy is hearing about interns and their social lives. Seriously, they love to hear about it. Moving on. At times, it can be tricky to work with multiple supervisors who have different objectives. However, I have found it easiest to collaborate with both supervisors and let them both take the credit for the great idea. I'm just hoping to keep my head down, learn a lot, and get new insights from more experienced professionals. It will be interesting to see if this strategy can work all summer long.

Interning with Booz & Co - SETTLED IN!!!

Blog Post #2! - June 17th 

Hi all,

It has been a ridiculously busy first week of work. In addition to training which was hosted in Washington, for I met a 50+ interns from all over the world, my family and I moved from Toronto/Ann Arbor to Chicago.

1 day after moving in, I learned that my client site will be in Boston for the entire summer! Such is the life of consulting :)

As I have only had training to this point, I have yet to experience the Booz & Co office environment. And on that note, Booz & Co, not Booz Allen Hamilton which is a completely separate business that we are unaffiliated too.

In addition I will travel directly to the clients site next week, so the office environment will have to wait. However I am expecting an entirely different work culture from my previous life. Travelling Mon-Thur with people I do not know, but fully expect to develop very strong personal and business relationships with should be exciting.

One thing that became very clear from training, is that consultants want to work with people that they genuinely like. We are going to spend more time with each other than our own families, we will be stuck in airports together, miss flights together, etc. We better really enjoy each others company!

My client is in the financial services industry, and I'll be working with a team supporting optimization of their IT infrastructure, as I am part of Booz & Co's IT Strategy practice. 

In terms of personal support, Booz & Co has made a huge effort! I have been assigned a junior and senior mentor from the Chicago practice. The Job Manager of my project has overloaded me with information, and I am still days behind on reviewing all of the material from orientation. There is no shortage of work or challenges, and I am expecting an awesome summer.

Finally, from a settling into Chicago perspective, we are still getting our feet wet. Only been here 2 nights, its an awesome city and reminds me of my hometown (Toronto). Friendly people, excellent food (DEEP DISH PIZZA's...500 calories per slice at least), hot summers (30C+ each day). I hope to find some time for golf on the weekends.

Until next time, 

Cheers!

Omair

Getting started with work....

As I reflect on my internship job seeking experience, I would like to stress again and again to prospective international students about coming to campus in fighting form in terms of learning how to network and developing a killer resume. 

Easy things first......if you got into business school, you already have what it takes to be a leader, you now need to develop a concise one page resume of your career, extracurricular achievements and leadership roles.....easier said than done....ONE PAGE!!....For most international applicants, a one page resume is not the norm.  Having lived in Australia, India and Nigeria, where you drive on the other side of the road, I know how difficult it is to create an effective one page resume. At my summer internship company, interns are expected to have up-to-date resumes on day one.

It is important to network during the internship as well....not only with prospective companies but also within prospective business lines at your current internship company. 

Networking within my internship company or your (going to be) company starts with defining your summer project in a manner that gives you maximum outreach possibilities. Summer projects are not very structured, most are fairly ambiguous and they involve working with cross-functional teams. It is important to set expectations with your supervisor, setting and planning regular meetings and getting contacts with the relevant teams upfront. Most companies will also ask you to get a few referrals at the end of your project and hence you need to continue networking within the organization.  Needless to say maintaining cordial relationships with one’s supervisor is critical to getting a job offer. Towards this, learn your bosses’ management style and adapt so that you seem amicable, approachable and friendly. Also, your work will most likely involve a presentation to management about your project’s achievements and so it would be a good start to brush up presentation skills upfront.

To conclude: networking, defining your summer project and maintaining an amicable and good relationship with your supervisor is critical to converting your internship into a full time job offer.

Understanding My Manager!

Hey guys, I’m back to share my first few weeks experience at Dell. First of all I feel good going back to where I started my career in terms of function - marketing. However the first question is: Is marketing in banking the same as marketing in Hi-tech...Hmmm not totally the same but you need the same set of skills which I got. Understanding my manager could have been a great challenge, working with a director that has been on the job for over 15 years, perhaps his expectations should be high. Fortunately I have a good manager that understand my predicaments and knows how to express complex situation in a simple illustration. He’s a great listener and good on feedbacks. He gives weekly feedbacks on my performance. Also I had meetings with some of his team members and they shared a valuable insight on working with him.
On my project, after several brainstorming sections with my manager, I had to come up with a presentation on the project’s high level framework and weekly deliverables. I never imagined how wide the scope of my project was until I had a one on one presentation with some directors. Probably everybody has a different perception on the project. Going by everybody’s suggestion, it’s obvious the project is going to take forever. At this point I concluded that it’s important to have a strategic section with my manager on the possibility of narrowing down the scope of the project so as to be more focus.  
I made my manager see reasons why it’s necessary to be more specific on the scope of the project and he agreed with me. So I was able to identify the problem to be solved. And he came up with list of relevant people that their insight and feedback would be of value to the execution of my project. I did schedule one on one meeting with them and their response and contribution has been awesome. I have started to think of how I can build my future career around these great people.

"If you build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful."

Okay, so this latest blog entry sees me posting from the wonderful city of Seattle where my stomach has been treated to the gastronomical wonders of 99-cent oysters (self-shucked), geoduck sashimi, fresh salmon and awesome Chinese food. As you can tell from my incessant focus on food after having spent too many months in Ann Arbor, I am truly a Singaporean at heart. Ironically, I don’t recall drinking more than two cups of Starbucks since I got here so that’s one prediction I got wrong.

What I did get right was the dynamic, fast-paced and innovative can-do culture that permeates the workplace here at Amazon’s main offices in the South Lake Union district of Seattle. While most people see the firm as an e-commerce giant who offers everything from cell phones and Kindle devices to streaming video and fresh groceries, it really feels like a big startup where everybody works hard to deliver the best possible experience to the customer. The excitement and energy in this place is simply astounding, something you would not expect from an industry giant with a market cap of $100B.

And when it comes to Amazon, the customer is truly king. Other firms may pay lip service to the notion of customer care, but here at AMZN, it’s not just a customer focus – it’s a customer obsession. You see it everywhere, from top-level managerial decisions down to the way the call centers handle inquiries. It truly makes a difference in the way the company works and it is this that differentiates Amazon from all the other companies out there.

For all my misconceptions of Amazon being an exceptionally frugal company – door-desks come to mind –  I found myself surprised to be given a keychain, water bottle and Kindle Touch on my first few days at work. In fact, everyone got brand new Lenovo Thinkpads, which might have more to do with the firm’s rapidly expanding headcount than actual employee pampering, but it feels good to have a new laptop to work on. So for those of you out there who were concerned about that whole frugality thing, fear not.

Random AMZN fact: One of the buildings here is named Rufus after a dog belonging to Amazon’s former editor-in-chief. Thanks to his pioneering efforts, everyone’s four-legged best friends are welcome in the majority of Amazon’s buildings.

To sum it up, my first few weeks here at AMZN have been a blast with a high-energy workplace, enthusiastic colleagues, brand new buildings, great (albeit expensive) cafeteria food and high-impact projects. I look forward to updating everyone on the wonders of elevators with whiteboard walls in my next post.

In the meantime, if you love your music, check out the Amazon Cloud Player (now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch) which allows you to access all of your music, wherever you are, on all the devices you use. Buy once and enjoy your music everywhere without worrying about storage on your devices. You get 5GB of free storage for starters and can upgrade it starting at a mere $1.75 per month. Visit www.amazon.com for more details.

Some of my new colleagues on the third floor.

Formula 1

Hi again,

So, Argentina is over. As I told you before, soccer is a big deal and I’m attaching a little video I took in the stadium while watching the last game the national team played in Buenos Aires. But well, I’m back in the US but this doesn’t mean excitement is over. Before leaving for Argentina a month ago, I started preparing a kick-off trip to the Formula 1 race in Montreal for the cooperation between Magneti Marelli and Mopar in Canada. Time is flying by and as soon as I got back from South America I had to go to Canada.

Gladly, after a busy week working with planning and logistics, everything worked perfectly during the weekend and the attendants went back home extremely confident on the future of the joint venture between both companies. But the trip was not all work. The main event of the weekend was the Formula 1 race, which happened to be extremely exciting. Formula 1 fans reading won’t let me lie when I say that the way in which the race developed made it one of the most exciting ones in the season so far. Attached, you will be able to find a video of the first competitors on the last lap of the race, with Lewis Hamilton leading.

Continuing with the kick-offs, now I’m on the planning of a trip to Miami in a couple of weekends with people from Mopar Mexico. Hopefully, the success of this event would be as good as the ones before and the relation between professionals of both companies start with the right foot. On my next post, I will talk more about how the event went and my future plans for the internship.

It’s always sunny in Chicago! At least during the summer it is :-)

Chicago skyline

It’s been a week of many firsts – first week of my internship, first time living in Chicago, first time living completely on my own – no roommates, no nobody. I have to say seven days ago I was pretty anxious about how this adventure is going to turn out but so far so good!

My first week at Groupon went by fast – I actually cannot believe 10% of my internship are already gone between learning about the company, getting to know my team and getting back into work mode. I feel really lucky that the culture at Groupon is pretty laid back, people are extremely friendly and welcoming, willing to help and yet giving you the freedom to go explore on your own and define your own adventure, which makes the school-work transition pretty seamless.

I am a part of the Marketing team and more specifically the Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) team which is mainly focusing on consumer activation. For perspective, Groupon has about 40 million subscribers out of which only about 30% are active users (meaning they buy Groupons) at any given point of time. And that’s when the CRM team comes into play – the goal of the team is to get as many subscribers as possible to become active users and also to reward our best subscribers for their loyalty. 

As you can imagine, like any online business Groupon has no shortage of data, however the big question is how to organize and synthesize these data in a way that’s meaningful and allows people to make better-informed decisions. That’s what I will be tackling this summer – identifying KPIs (key performance indicators), thinking about consumer segmenting and then designing and working on implementing a reporting system. But before I can do all that I have to learn Groupon-speak. It always amazes me how many acronyms people use at every firm!

Outside of work, I’ve been exploring Chicago. I have to say before coming here I didn’t quite understand why all the people who’ve ever spent a summer in Chicago say it is so amazing but a week in I am starting to understand. There are so many events and festivals organized by the city authorities! Just this past weekend there were at least three festivals – an arts fair, a blues festival and a ribs fest. How amazing is that?! I am really excited for what’s yet to come and I’ll keep you all posted.