Austin, the Great City!

My summer journey started on a sunny Sunday with a delayed flight from Detroit to Austin, I had boarded a taxi from Ann Arbor to the airport before I got Delta Airline’s text massage saying the flight has been rescheduled from 2pm to 4pm. Eventually, I had a very smooth 3 hours flight to Austin, the great city. On arriving at Austin, I moved straight to the lovely furnished apartment that Dell has secured for me and my family in a beautiful area of Round Rock, Austin. It’s about 4.4 miles to my office.

My resumption day was the following Tuesday, I was warmly welcomed to the company with a one day orientation program, where I met my recruiter, Lisa, one on one for the first time. She is such a pleasant lady. She introduced me to my manager, Roberto, during the meet the managers, who happened to be Ross alumnus. Roberto was excited about me; he gave a brief on my summer project- Marketing Investment Framework-China focus. But we spent most of the time discussing Ross because he hasn’t gone back to Ross since he left in 2000.

Dell’s working environment is new to me, coming from banking. Everything is super-automated. Roberto took me round the department introducing me to his team members and key people I will be working with. They showed knowledge and enthusiasm; and willingness to assist me on my project. I spent most of the week in series of meetings, understanding the nature of my project. We also developed a project plan that specified my weekly deliverables.

Meanwhile, I must express my excitement about Austin with the little time I have spent here. I had the opportunity to tour the city during the weekend; it’s really an awesome city. There are great bars and restaurants everywhere, good food –Italian, Mexicans and Asians to mention a few. The night life also can’t be overemphasized, Friday night was crazy! I was on the popular 6^th street with some other MBA interns, we all had fun. I can’t wait for another Friday. 

Getting Started

I'm now through with the first week of my internship, and it seems like there is going to be a lot on my plate all summer long. For those who haven't read my first post, I am working at Four Wood Capital Partners, an independent private equity and advisory group.

Four Wood just started up in November, so the office environment is extremely dynamic. To start, I found out the day before I began working that our office had already moved from Avenue of the Americas to Wall Street. As for the new office, it's still being put together. There were construction and maintenance crews in and out of the office hanging up art and TVs the first few days. Nonetheless, we still had clients and partners coming in and out of the office every day.

There is a really interesting culture in the office. There are about 25 employees who have all come from really impressive backgrounds in finance, many working on high (and some executive) levels at firms like BlackRock, Guggenheim Partners, and BNP Paribas. Everybody had left very successful and lucrative jobs to join FWCP at the ground level, so everybody there is very driven and collaborative.

This week, I worked on a few projects. First, I set up a spreadsheet for the firms partners and prospective partners with the other interns. I also worked on an investment prospectus for a gold bullion holding company, and set up a PowerPoint for high net worth client strategy. I learned a lot through the process. The rest of the summer will be more concentrated in the private equity area.

Finally, getting settled in New York. I moved in to Union Square at the start of the week. It's a very young area and it looks like there are a lot of people to meet and a lot of things to do. I'm looking forward to what's next.

Argentina, done!

Hello everyone,

If you are following the blog, you will remember I was in Argentina for the creation and implementation of a cooperation plan between two companies. We are entering the final phase of the project, when all the field work is almost done and we are just cleaning up details so that everything runs smoothly. Orders are already coming in and the cooperation between both companies has already started. As always, some problems will appear on the road but hopefully these would not be major and we will be able to solve everything quickly and on the best interest of everybody.

About Buenos Aires, I can say it’s an awesome place to visit. After a month, I’ve been able to do a lot of stuff around here and it’s hard to get bored. Good food, active nightlife, lots of sports and several tourist attractions complete the agenda for anybody who visits the city. Sadly, my stay over here is over and now I’m heading back to the US.

Once I’m back, I still have to keep an eye on Argentina but my main focus will concentrate more on Canada now. We have an event as soon as I arrive to the US with who are going to be our main dealers in Canada so I’ll be heading to the Formula 1 race in Montreal. Even though it sounds as a lot of fun to go to a F1 race, I will be there for work so I’m not sure I will have much time to enjoy it as much as someone that goes just for fun. I’ll see how it goes and let everybody know about it.

Well, I think I don’t have much more for now so this is it, I’ll keep posting on how my internship advances, I’m sure there is going to be much more work and excitement in the future.

Fun at work

It has been almost a month since I started my internship. All the coworkers are friendly and I enjoyed working with them. My boss, Jon, is different from the supervisors I have worked with. He likes making jokes with us and always takes us out for lunch. Last Friday, we went to the Miller’s in Dearborn. I definitely recommend this place. Their cheese burgers are awesome.

I have been mainly doing two projects right now. One is the fixed asset project. I have identified the assets that have no tags or those have tags but not in the database. To further working on this project, I need to cooperate with the material manager, who is responsible for purchasing these assets. We would start our discussion next week. Another project I am working on is to prepare the journal entries. There are some templates I can follow for those. To prepare for those, I was trained by the assistant controller, Deanna, and need to read some supporting documents. We have prepared for some of them, but not all.

Last Saturday, we had an inventory count. Since all the inventories should be static when we conduct the count, we have to do it over the weekend. We started at 7, so I had to get up at 5:30, which is a pain. Luckily there were donuts and bagels waiting for us as we arrived. The inventory count is not so difficult as I thought. My team was responsible for the resins in the warehouse. We wrote down details about inventories on tickets, and the auditors would audit and sign. Then we collected the tickets and returned them to the accountant. The tickets are very important. Therefore, all the tickets need to be returned, even the voided ones. After the accountant input all the information about the tickets, I helped her audit the information later in the week after.

After the inventory count, I went to the Tiger’s game with Jon and Deanna. The tickets were from the plant manager as a reward for our good performance in SOX audit. It was the first baseball game I went to. Although we lost the game, I still had a great time.

Start your engines

Sleepless in Seattle:

It took me 2400 miles and 6 days to get to Seattle from Ann Arbor. Driving between 6000 feet and the sea level I went through areas with 100 degrees Fahrenheit (in Billing Montana) to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (in Butte up on the Rocky Mountains).

The company gave my family and me an amazing apartment in the downtown Seattle, 50 yards from the water line, 5 minutes’ walk from every major attraction and amazing marketplace that opens also on weekdays.

I think I can say for sure that in the last 5 days since I got to town I did at least 15 miles of unplanned routs just because I keep missing the right turns or lanes on the road.

As I wrote before, I’m interning with the Lync team for the business planning group. I work on a new and excited product that our brilliant engineers develop in order to assess its business opportunities.

Since my building is on the edge of the beautiful Microsoft campus, you could even see some deers walking around the building during daylight.

I believe that the hardest thing for me now is being away for so long from my wife and kids, but I keep telling myself that they will be here in less than two weeks.

Going back to the workplace – they put me in a huge room of me own – I believe it is around 6x6 foot big, but with no one else around. As a former engineer (although I believe that the ‘engineer’ in me would never leave) I used to be in the same room with at least one more engineer, and the work itself was much more fun and more productive. Maybe the business planners who need to talk to customers should have more quiet, but I prefer as much interactions with other human-beings as possible.

Tomorrow I will go to try my first hike around Seattle – hopefully I won’t run into much rain (which is pretty common here).

Till next time,

Good luck guys

Wake up early and enjoy every day

I have started my internship for about two weeks now. Everything is kind of new to me and I really enjoyed my work in Lear Corporation, except that my biological clock wakes me up at 6 even on Sunday. On the first day of my internship, I drove to the headquarters in Southfield and finished the paperwork. After that, Todd Glaspie from the electrical division led me to the Taylor division, which is about 10 minutes from Southfield and 35 minutes from Ann Arbor. 

As I arrived there, everyone in the office welcomed me warmly. I am working in the finance department with the controller, Jonathan Trevathan. The Taylor division is an electrical manufacturing plant. Jon took me to the manufacturing site and explained the manufacturing process of their products. Then he provided me with the list of projects I would conduct in summer. In the first month, I would be working on the fixed asset assessment and the account reconciliation. 

The fixed asset assessment includes identifying every fixed asset that the company owns and tagging those currently without tag numbers or not in the system. In the first few days, I spent most of my time in the manufacturing site to match the machine with the items in the database. The work is tedious, but I learned a lot during that. Now I am clearer about the machine types the company owns and the manufacturing process. The account reconciliation is used to make sure that the amount on the trail balance of every month matches the actual account ending balance. With the help of Deanne Miller, the assistant controller, I prepared the April reconciliation last week. The work includes more than what I learned in class. It is very exciting to apply class knowledge as well as learning new stuff every day. 

I like the working environment in the office there. Everyone is friendly and willing to help each other. People make jokes all the time. There is “Movie & Lunch” every Monday and Wednesday. We saw MacCruber last week. The movie is not my favorite style but hilarious. I heard that the movie next week would be fun as well. I love working there.

First stop, Buenos Aires

Hi everybody,

I think I’m one of the few that has already started his internship and I’m already on the road. As I mentioned before, as a part of my summer endeavor, I’m involved in the creation and implementation of a cooperation plan between two companies for three countries, being Argentina one of them. I arrived to Buenos Aires a couple of days ago and started my work with Magneti Marelli’s local team almost immediately. Being Peruvian, the cultural change is not that big with Argentinians, but there are still some differences. Just as a reference, soccer and BBQ are great topics to start conversations over here.

My stay in Buenos Aires will last for a month and by the end of May, I should have been able to define what the plan over here is going to be and implemented everything so that cooperation runs smoothly from the first day of June. It’s a tough assignment, but the local team has been highly supportive and I’m sure that we will be able to achieve our goals.

On the other side, being in Buenos Aires for a month is amazing. I had the opportunity to walk around the center of the city yesterday night and there are some great places. I was close to a place called Puerto Madero, which is a river walk with a lot of bars and restaurants. Food is incredibly good in all of the restaurants and I’m guessing night life is good as well – yesterday was a weekday so I have not been able to explore it yet.

I’ve only been here for a couple of days and until now, it has been great but I’m sure after a month here I will have much more to talk about the city. My first weekend here is coming up and I’m lucky enough to have some MBA friends who are here on vacation, so I’m sure that it’s going to be fun.

Sleepless in Seattle! after being well fed in India!

Hi all! I am Nupur Bagaria, MBA Class of 2013. A brief introduction is in place: I am born Indian, raised in Africa for 17 years, did my undergrad and first job in Southeast Asia (Singapore) [and became a citizen there because I absolutely loved that country!] and worked for the last 3 years in New York. And to make my life more interesting than just globe trotting, I have now decided to switch industries from financial services to high-tech! Prior to Ross, I worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers in the banking and capital markets space. Now for the summer, I will be going to Microsoft in their Office Division- Corporate finance.

But before I take you to the world of Windows 8 and Office 365, I would like to share my MAP experience with you because it was in the true sense of the word- UNIQUE. I was part of a team of four consulting for the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). This organization, which is an amalgamation of public and private individuals, has created the world's largest biometric database! They have taken on the task of issuing biometric identities to the 1.2 Billion people in India. As you can imagine, this is no mean feat. In fact, they have amazed the world by issuing approximately 200 millions IDs within a year of establishment. My team's MAP project revolved around developing the application ecosystem for this identity system. We realized that this system has the potential to transform the lives of millions in so many ways, especially the under-privileged.

As part of the MAP, we traveled to India for 3 weeks. We had the opportunity to meet with the Chairman of the UIDAI- Mr. Nandan Nilekani- co-founder and ex-CEO of the multi-billion dollar IT company, Infosys. For the uninitiated, here is a wiki on Mr. Nilekani=> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nandan_Nilekani and several other very senior government officials in the organization. In fact, we had a chance to speak with Mr. Nilekani right after his meeting with the IMF Chief- Ms. Christine Lagarde! (see picture).

My team found that the UIDAI has shown exemplary innovation in several ways (organizational structure, technology, technology management etc.) and its impact on Indian residents is so massive that I fall short on words. For those interested, here is the website of the UIDAI=> http://uidai.gov.in/ Thank you Ross for this unique experience!

Well folks, I can go on and on about my MAP project, and the excitement that I have for my summer internship is similar. Interning at Microsoft will be a game-charger for me. First- it will be a switch from the world of banking and financial services to high-tech, second from the east coast to the (much warmer!) west coast and thirdly from suits to business casual :) I have heard the techies are fond of denim and t-shirts and am really excited to experience that!

And now I will go back to being busy with what I plan to do throughout May- CHILL.

Stay tuned for my next post- till then- Chao!

Internship - Booz & Co

Hi all, this is Omair Rana Ross MBA Class of 2013.

I am from Toronto Canada, but prior to joining Ross I spent my previous 18 months working in London UK as the European Business Manager for a Software firm.

This summer I will be interning with Booz & Co (a Management Consulting firm) as part of their IT Strategy Practice in Chicago. I've been offered a position as a Summer Associate, and am looking forward to my first assignment.

Training will take place in Washington followed by 8 weeks of client work. I'm expecting a significant amount of travel, but I should spend every Friday in my home office.

Even though I don't have too much information about my actual position, I do know that the people at Booz & Co all seem to love their jobs. It will be extremely challenging, long hours, but the quality of the experience and personal development opportunities at this firm are second to none! It will be awesome!

My wife and son will be with me, and we plan to enjoy every weekend in Chicago which is one of the best cities to spend a summer!

Ideally if all works out, I should be able to convert this internship into a full time position. As my son was born in Michigan, it would be great to live and work full time in the United States!



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

Being a Noogler!

Sunny California, here I come!

I am super excited to be working at Google this summer! The role is exciting and so is the company – I thoroughly enjoyed my interview experience and enjoyed speaking with the ‘Googlers’. In addition, before I started my MBA I had set my mind to focus on switching industries - from management consulting to technology and getting a chance to intern at Google is indeed incredibly exciting.

My role will involve improving processes. With this internship, I hope to create impact within the financial operations group of Google, get to learn about its culture and make a lot of friends. I cannot wait to begin, work hard, make new friends and enjoy the Google cafeteria! I also cannot wait to learn how one of the world's most innovative companies does business! In addition, having completed a very successful MAP project at Microsoft, it will be interesting to compare and contrast the cultures at both these awesome companies! 

I also intend to learn a completely new skill outside of work (true to Google culture) during my internship – this could be anything from learning how to play a new instrument to picking up a new sport.

More to come as the months fly by! Stay tuned!

Dearborn, here I come!

Sabrina here again. It's been a while since I talked about my search for my internship, but I've been swamped doing everything that needs to be done to prep for an internships in addition to actually making sure that I can pursue my internship (meaning, making sure I get work authorization to stay in the US for the internship).

In case you were waiting in anticipation, I got my dream job for the summer. Although I was somewhat industry agnostic, I wasn't role agnostic. I wanted a strategy role with a sustainability focus, and I got it. I'll be a Sustainability Intern at Ford, specifically focused on social sustainability. I know that doesn't give you many clues to what my role will actually entail, but picture, working on scorecards for how everything plant and facility will measure itself against water sustainability and human rights objectives, working on a special pilot with the US State Department in Chennai India, and looking at Urban Mobility Futures to help define what potential strategic futures Ford must anticipate and shape their strategy around.

Not only is my opportunity exciting, but I get some incredible exposure to Senior Executives. Not only do I work for the head of Social Sustainability at Ford (who he, himself, was hand selected by Bill Ford for the role), but his boss, the Research and Development function and Ford of India. The projects I am working on are high-profile and game changers for both Ford, the industry and business in general. I'm excited to find my way into Bill Ford's office one day over the summer to share some of my ideas - and this is not even a lofty goal, it is something that seems to be quite realistic.

Lastly, my internship truly represents what I believe work-life balance is. My boss knows the benefits of flexible work arrangements. Even though I am sure that I'll be working lots, mostly on my own accord from my passion for this role, I get the opportunity to work from Ann Arbor two days a week when I don't have meetings at Ford World Headquarters. This way, I get the opportunity to cut down on my carbon footprint and having some time to sit, read, think and ponder some great ideas and solutions to the challenges Ford has put in front of my for the summer.

This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for me - one that I wouldn't have had available if I hadn't come down to the U of M and pursued my dual degree through the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise.

May 14th can't come soon enough!!

Citigroup ! New York !

I am going to be in New York this summer! Joining Citigroup as a summer Financial Management Associate (SFMA). I’m very excited about this opportunity and things I can learn from it.

It was not part of my plan to join the financial service industry before coming to Ross for my MBA. However, during the recruiting process, through my interactions with Citigroup’s employees, I fell in love with the company and its culture. People who work at Citigroup are very talented and humble. The company has a true global perspective and promotes diversity. So the take away here is we should be open minded towards different opportunities. Even though most of us came to business school with a specific industry and functional area in mind, there are things that surprise us, and we should be ready to take adventures.

Given my previous retail industry background, I knew very little about financial service industry besides merchant banking system. I’m expecting a steep learning curving this summer. In fact, the learning process started months ago during my interviews - I learned about tier one common ratio from an SVP of Citigroup.

 Even though I haven’t received my project for the summer, I know my internship will start with a series of training sessions (including current topics in the banking industry, and technical finance & Accounting skills), and business overviews from senior professional within the finance faction. This process will prepare me for my summer project. Through the SFMA program, I will have the opportunity to work closely with senior-level finance managers in key functional specialties including Controllers, Treasury, Financial Planning and Analysis, Investor Relations, Strategy, and M&A. 

Amazon.com - and you're done

Greetings, one and all! Welcome to the first of what promises to be a series of entertaining and enlightening blog posts covering my summer internship. If you enjoy reading about life as a MBA intern in the U.S., you’ve come to the right place.

Perhaps some introductions are in order. I’m a first-year Ross MBA student (the school endearingly refers to us as “rising MBA2s”) from Singapore who will be interning at Amazon this summer as a product manager with the Kindle division. While I do know the general scope of work, the full details will only be revealed to me once I get to Seattle due to the relatively sensitive – some might call it secretive – nature of the product.

Having come off a demanding MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Project) with Chrysler, I’ve gotten reacquainted with regular working hours for the past 7 weeks or so and am expecting myself to be able to hit the ground running when I start in Seattle at the end of this month. If you’re reading this and thinking about applying to Ross, make sure you stick in references to MAP no fewer than 15 times in your “Why Ross?” essay.

Amazon’s summer internships are known to be pretty intense, sink-or-swim affairs. While this may be a deal-breaker for some, I’d like to think that I’m ready for it having been thrown straight into the deep end many times in my previous career as a consultant. This really is an opportunity for me to explore the technology/e-commerce industry in-depth while working in one of the big four tech firms (Google, Apple and Facebook being the other three) that are set to define the future of the industry. In particular, Amazon’s Kindle is a key area of interest for me given its importance to the firm, with Bezos touting the Kindle Store in the company’s latest earnings report. Surely it can't get more exciting than that?

That wraps up my introductory post. Stay tuned for future episodes where I share more fascinating stories on Seattle, Amazon and what will likely turn out to be a burgeoning Starbucks addiction.

Enjoying summer in Chicago!

Hi all, this is Stefana – an MBA1 in transition. After 5 busy weeks in South Texas on-site at IDEA Public Schools and 10 hectic days wrapping up MAP from Ann Arbor, I am finally home for a one-month break before I head back to the US for my internship with Groupon, Inc.

For me this is shaping up to be a busy summer. I am kicking it off with a month or so in Europe where my time will be divided between Bulgaria (where I am originally from), Scotland (where one of my brothers goes to college) and Germany (where my cousin has been living for years). Once done with my “mini Euro trip,” I’ll be heading back to the US where I’ll spend 10 weeks as a marketing intern with Groupon in its Chicago office. And then – off to China, touring Beijing and Xi’an with the in-coming MBA1s.

In terms of my internship – there are still a few unknowns, like the exact project I will be working on for example. But what I do know is that I’ll be with the marketing team and it seems like my quantitative marketing research background will come in quite handy. I think this internship will be a great opportunity to show initiative and take ownership of my project and my overall summer experience.

I am excited to be joining the Groupon team since everyone I’ve met so far has been really nice and friendly. Overall, I am looking forward to making some new friends and enjoying summer in Chicago which from what I’ve heard is quite splendid. What I am not looking for is the moving experience – and to make things even harder and more stressful I have just one day between when I get back to Ann Arbor and when my internship starts in Chicago. We’ll see how that goes…

Sleepless In Seattle,

That at least what my new manager told me. A week ago I met my senior director – who will be my boss's boss in the summer and he already gave me the assignment for the summer: "Hard Work". So let us start from the beginning, I'm a MBA of 2013, going to intern with Microsoft in the Business division. I will work on a product in the name of "Lync" and hopefully will touch all the business aspects for the product (business planning, marketing, product management and engineering). One of the most exciting issues about this summer is the fact that Lync is one of the newest products from Microsoft and has the potential to replace all the internal phone-system servers with a computer based communication system.

That is only half of the summer, since I'm taking my family with me to Seattle and intend to spend as much time as possible with them. I will drive my car the 2,300 miles to Seattle from Ann Arbor while my wife and two kids will fly out to Seattle (6 days instead of 5 hours). On our way back we intend to cross the country on a long roadtrip and visit the Yellowstone National Park and Mount Rushmore.

I really hope that I would be able to combine those two main tasks – family and internship – and to enjoy every minute of the beautiful summer in Washington.