Networking ends when you get that internship. False!

      If you think networking ends when you get that internship offer, you are up for a surprise – it does not! Your efforts to build relationships are far from being over regardless of whether you are interning with your dream company, or you are with a company that you hope will turn out to be the dream company, or you know you will, with 100% certainty, recruit again in the fall. And the fact that you need to turn the internship into a full-time offer is only one of the reasons why. So what are a couple of instances when you’ll need to network? Here are some Groupon examples:

• Networking with your fellow interns – probably, a more pleasant way to think of it is “making new friends.” It’s the familiar drill from the beginning of MBA1: “Where did you live before b-school? What did you do? What do you hope to do after your MBA? How are you liking Ann Arbor?” In the one month between the end of school and beginning of my internship I went through a self-reflection stage and came up with a few “MBA2 resolutions,” one of them being to make an effort to be more pro-active. I think the internship has given me a great opportunity to put thought into action even before school begins again. For example:
• I noticed that most of the interns have lunch together around noon each day in one of the common kitchens so when possible I try to join them. It’s fun and a great excuse to get away from the desk for half an hour. 
• Every week there is at least one email about grabbing a drink after work, going to one of the fairs and festivals Chicago is known for, etc. and I do my best to go. I’ve noticed that if people invite you a few times and you never accept, they just stop inviting you.

• Networking across the organization – at Groupon we have Breakfast & Learns every other week designed to help us learn about different divisions and functions within the company. During one of these events my interest was struck by the work someone on the branding team was doing so I followed up with an email and we set up some time to talk. Not to say that a job opportunity will open for me because of that but knowing one more person and knowing what the possibilities are could not hurt.
  
•  Networking with your HR – don’t think that the role of the HR is done once they give you that call to let you know you got the internship. At Groupon, my HR contact has been really involved in making sure I am enjoying my time and feel I am making the most out of my internship. And when I said I’d be interested in doing something a bit more analytical and strategic she said she’d ask around to see if a team had a mini-project for me.

So get your odyssey on – it’s networking time!

A well-rounded work plan

HI Everyone, it has been a while since my last post. And time has gone pretty fast for my internship; I cannot believe I am halfway already. This is my 5 week out of 10. Currently, after having several discussions with my manager and teammates, I came up with a defined work plan. It was not surprising for me that some thing will be ambiguous, and that I would have to step up and starts my own work plan. By saying this I don’t mean that they didn’t know what I have to do, but I am saying that they were not 100% sure about what would my contribution look like. Which doesn’t surprise me, as in my previous work at P&G things were like this, but I can say that it is a much better way to learn things and develop different skills. It is like a consultant job, without the same pay but certainly without the same working hours. Well, to make the story short, I realized that I could match my personal objectives in terms of skills/experiences to gain, and what Citi needed. So I came with 3 different projects a) Develop a competitive analysis of different potential suppliers b) Develop the template/framework of the steps to follow in order to close a deal of a new business model, with the top retailers of US c) Asses the social media landscape and come up with a strategy that differentiates Citi (and its new business model) from other companies. It took me several meetings and talking with different people to gain sponsors for my projects. Citi, as any other big organization, works a lot with this corporate dynamic of aligning different stakeholders. However I am very satisfied with the outcome, as I will build experience in strategy, business development and social media. Now, in order to get things done, I built a timeline, develop and aligned different frameworks to approach each of the projects, and committed my deliverables, in a very specific way. For example, in the social media I will deliver an executive summary in a word document, and a deck with all the insights, next steps and success criteria. This may sound logic, but when it comes to people, everyone is different. I learned in my previous job that it is better to over communicate and set the right expectations, using measurable criteria. (Similar to the START concept we revised at MO 503). It happened some times before that if these things are not stated, there may be some miscommunications. The other thing is that in big companies, that work as matrix organizations, you never know when a person working close to you moves to a different role or simply leaves the company, so it is very important to have a clear work plan.

That’s it for know, but I’ll keep you posted.

Networking and a typical week

As discuss previously, all the interns & consultants at Deloitte have a supervisor and an advisor. At the first meeting with them, we will discuss my goals and expectations, based on which my supervisor and advisor will help me to connect with Deloitte employees that share similar goals and had similar experiences. This match making process is really effective; I connected with many people by using this way.

I am working on a 5 weeks client engagement project, which is short and intense. But too be honest, it is not as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe it is because I am staffed in a local project, so I don’t need to fly every Monday. A typical week for me is like:

Monday: in the morning go to get the car I booked in last Friday and drive to my client’s site. In the morning, we will have some internal discussions and project manager will assign some tasks to me. Start from the afternoon, we will have meetings with clients to do first hand researches.  Go back home at around 6pm. During the breaks of the meeting, I will compile the meeting minutes and create decks to document them.

Tuesday – Thursday: Pretty much the same as Monday, but need to arrive at 8am instead of 9am. And we still have intensive meetings schedule with clients.  The project manager will have update meetings with client at Tuesday and Thursday. Occasionally, I will have early morning meetings (5am) with client at other countries. 

Friday: Go to Deloitte office at San Francisco, and submit my time and expense report, book car for next week and have meetings with my advisor and counselor. And I would at least set up another meeting with a partner in the office.

Last challenge

Hi all,

As I told you last time, my new endeavor in my summer internship is to outline the strategy for commercial cooperation between us and our partner company in Mexico. From all the projects that I have been involved within through the summer, this might be the most demanding one. We need to come out with a good proposal for our friends in Mexico and to be honest, this is will be a very hard task considering how well they are doing already in the market. Still, we have some things to offer and we have started conversations with several parties in the country to be able to overcome difficulties.

For now, the trip to Mexico has been postponed until the end of July, when a meeting will take place with our future clients. This is going to be our first opportunity to introduce our company and the things that we can bring to the table. As a team, we are putting a lot of effort in coming up with great ideas for that meeting because that first impression is going to be crucial for the future success of the project.

Also, we are working on preparing a kick-off event for the Mexican market, where we are launching the brand to all parties in the country. We are managing two options to do this, one in mid-August and the other one by the end of the same month. As in past events, we want to get important players from all parties in the business environment where we will work at to join us in one single event, so that everybody can know the faces behind our brand and they have a personalized feeling about the company instead of just a name. Once again, putting everything together will be a big challenge but I’m confident that with the team that I’m working, success will be assured.

Busy busy busy

Work has been really hectic. After 2 weeks with my group, people are starting to give me more work and more responsibilities. There are long-term projects to do on top of everyday responsibilities and random tasks and one-off projects. Hours get really long sometimes. So here's how a typical day for me is like - I get in to work at 7am, check my emails for a while, then head off for a meeting at 7.15. I get out of the meeting at 8am, check/respond to emails, get on the office chat to check in with the people I'm supporting, and if there is nothing urgent, I work on my long-term projects. Throughout the day, tasks will come in. For example, the MD may want to pitch to a client, and I would have to build parts of a pitchbook. When the market closes at 4pm, I will start writing market commentaries and send them off to my supervisors. I will keep working on completing those tasks that are due by the end of the day, and on an early day, I end at 9pm. On a busy day, I get out at 11pm. And, busy days actually happen often. So on average, I work about 16 hours a day. I never had to work on Saturdays, but I do work on Sundays. Usually, I would work about 6 hours on Sunday, but this week, some urgent deals came up and I worked 14 hours today. So that's the overview on each day and how my hours look like in a week. Banking is definitely grueling with its long hours, but I've expected this and take it as natural that this is happening.
As for social life, it can be really tricky to get a balance. After the long hours, I just want to go to bed, rest up, and get ready for another long day. So I don't usually get much social life on the weekday. On the weekends, if it was a particularly long week, I would rest up and relax. I would go out to meet friends, and sometimes hang out with other interns, or get a good workout. Work life balance is important, but since this is a summer internship, I'm prioritizing work over life. Life can come after the summer is over :)

Shhhh....I'm listening....

Hey there,

I cannot believe that 5 weeks of my internship are already over and next week I hit the mid-point. The last few weeks have been phenomenal in every sense of the word. I have met the most interesting people, learned so much about technology, received some of the best advice on career advancement and had so much fun!

My project is shaping up very well and there are so many dimensions that have been added to it, that every morning, I cannot wait to get to work and get started. I joined the Corporate finance world, expecting lots of spreadsheet modeling, financial valuation and analytics. Yes, I am getting to do all of that, but only 50% of the time. The other 50% of my project is purely qualitative- understanding the products (software!!), studying customer behavior and projecting that behavior for future development and socializing different ways of thinking about processes across different groups within the company ( marketing, product management, business managers, sales, strategy and operations).

With so much time spent on meeting people from so many different departments and functions, I am learning to further hone my communication and relationship management skills. At Microsoft, like any other big corporation, people and relationships are the real key to success; and this has been reiterated by all the C-level executives that we have met so far. They have all attributed their success to their relationships with the right people and influencing skills.

Another skill that I feel I use everyday is that of mindful listening; which can be argued is a part of communication skills, but I like to separate it out because what we mostly learn about communication is how we express ourselves, in written, verbally or through body language. We are not taught or trained to "listen". There have been several times during my conversations with business partners when I have been best served by just listening, and not rushing to share my own opinion of the matter to impress my counterpart.

So what I've learned to do is : don't just communicate, LISTEN. And when you speak AFTER carefully listening to the other person, your words will INFLUENCE and IMPRESS them.

Hopefully I continue to develop this skill as I continue in my career.....

So now Shhhh...I'm listening....:)

Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.

My project is technically on schedule, with a mid-point review planned for the beginning of next week, but that is a bit misleading: With four more weeks to go out of a total of eleven, I may have to present my findings on week nine or ten, "losing" a week critical for solidifying my research and recommendations. Twenty last days (net) which I will spend in part also networking and doing things outside the scope of my internship project, i.e. a networking event with alums arranged Dell HR. How many actual work days that does that leave me with? Objects in calendar really are closer than they appear.

---

What comes to your mind when you think of market analysis? Is it as glamorous as this following bit?

One of my college professors once gave an interesting lecture about how analytically challenging are some engineering problems, yet how dull they are perceived to be and how they pale in comparison with, say, the more glamorous work of doctors and detectives as seen in movies and on TV. Seriously, you see so many medical dramas on prime time yet not a single House, MBA or House, PhD?
(That is not completely true anymore, actually: check out HOU$E OF LIE$ and The $treet. But for the sake of making my blog post unnecessarily long, let's assume it is.)

I can assure you that no one really thinks that market analysis is anything like diagnostic medicine. It is not about saving lives and it is agonizingly slow-paced sometimes. Also low on Latin, although certainly not on acronyms (it does not sound enticing, but can share that I am currently working on a SWOT analysis across all LOBs with a focus on SMB, if you insist!). No annoying patients, either. But it is amusingly about collecting data (test results, symptoms), solving a puzzle (a diagnosis or prognosis) and dealing with ambiguity. Analysis will only get you so far, we know what we know (and that is sadly particularly true in medicine), and the best we can do is work with the best hypothesis we have in a given moment.

That leaves us with the occasional chuckle from seeing how not only doctors blog, but some marketers do, too. There is neither glamour nor glory in market research - and there shouldn't be any, really - but it may amuse you to think that perhaps every now and then it is very much a similar kind of rigorous, tedious work.

Half way through the summer

It is half way through the summer and this is my last post, but it is not the end of my internship. I will stay in Lear until the end of July. Through the past two months, I have learned a lot. The internship has not only offered me an opportunity to apply what I learned in class, but also introduced me to the working environment in an American firm. 

What I have learned first is that big companies have their own database systems. Lear has several systems that are responsible for different activities. What we have learned in Business Information Technology class can help us a lot in real work. I am glad that I took the BIT 311 Excel class. A lot of daily jobs are conducted in Excel.

Also the experience has confirmed that the best way to learn is to ask a lot of questions. When I first started the project of account reconciliations, I had a lot of questions at first. However, I hesitated to keep asking the assistant controller, because I was afraid that I would interrupt her normal work. Later she clearly told me that she understood that I had just started and was more than welcome to help me with my questions. To work more efficiently, I usually went through the work first and made sure that I myself could not solve the problems.

Meanwhile there are some improvements I can do. I am still working on the fixed asset project, which is the biggest project assigned to me from day one. To finish this, I need to cooperate with the maintenance manager to tag the untagged items and modify the entries in the Fixed Asset System. However, he is always very busy and we have not finished tagging the assets yet. There is not much time left, so I definitely need to find a better way to cooperate with him. Or I should try to reach out to other people and see whether they can help.

In all, this internship has benefited me a lot. I got to know many great friends and learned from them. No matter in which company I will be working, the experience I gained today can definitely help my future adjustments to the new working environment.

3am wake up calls, 6am flights, avoiding the consulting 15lbs!

Hi all,

I am behind on my blogging! I am behind on a lot of things!!! The life of a consulting intern :)

My experience I would say has been atypical of that of other consulting interns both within my firm and at other firms.

I was fortunate to be staffed onto a project that was just starting up. It was follow up work with an existing client. However as it was starting up, the goals and directions were vague and fluid. In the first 6-8 days on the job, my tasks changed 3 times which included changing the manager(s) that I reported too twice.

In regards to reporting and just working with the people, it has been excellent. When consulting firms tell you its all about the people, the really do mean it is all about the people. My team is fun, engaging, and overall a brilliant group. What I find really exciting is the motivation of each member in the team to ensure I enjoy my experience and to provide mentorship. They are investing a lot of their time and resources into me as the intern, as they want to ensure that I do join the firm next year (at least thats how I perceive it!).

While in contrast, I am evaluating the firm, work, people, etc to ensure that I want to join the firm full time next fall. It's an interesting dynamic

So the reporting structure is very fluid. I have junior and senior mentors that I touch base with on a weekly basis, project managers, and then practice champions (those who over see the IT practice). Not to mention the myriad of firm Partners who are available to meet. It really is an open door policy for me to discuss my goals, challenges, needs with several people within the firm. Not nearly as hiearchial as I was expecting.

Now what makes my experience more atypical than most are two events:

i) In the lobby of our hotel last Tuesday night, as I was heading towards the bar to relax after a long day I walked into Shaquille O'neal. Now I'm not a small guy, I'm 6'2, but when I stood next to Shaq and shook his hand, I felt like a child. He was enormous. And one of the friendliest, if not the friendliest, athlete I ever met. He sat with us, chatted, took photos, and did the same for anyone else who approached him. He was in town filming a movie with Adam Sandler

ii) My project has been delayed. So I am currently "on the beach" so to speak, as the firm finds me an additional project. I really am getting the full consulting experience. Let's see how this plays out


In terms of getting my work done. I really do have a lot of freedom. Tasks are assigned to me, and I 'm expected to go get it done. My tasks have ranged from researching reference examples, modifying excel models, and building customer facing power point slides. In each case anything everything I have produced and shared with my manager has come back with "this needs work!". But that's ok! That's the way we learn in consulting. It's trial and error, iteration, receive and act upon feedback. It has been a great learning experience, in a positive environment.

Anyhow, enough of my rant for now

Until next time

Omair

Social is the way to go!

Being social is the way to go…..interns at my sponsor company network regularly not just with each other but with Senior Leaders from within the company. This helps with building networks across the length and breadth of the company.

However, most individuals work in cross functional roles, requiring one to connect with different teams to get work done. This “cross functional” aspect of every job role helps one develop the network one needs to explore other opportunities further down into their career.

Interns from different schools also come together at carnivals and various MBA oriented networking meeting s specifically organized for MBAs to get to know each other. Besides this, the interns have formed special networking groups on Linked in, Facebook and other social networking sites. This encourages interaction long after one has moved on to other opportunities.

Typical days  start with most employees taking  a ride on the company’s shuttle to the office.  These busses are green and help lower environmental costs down.  I  found an interesting article in the NY times on the shuttle service. You can read it here.

Typical days are divided into working on business as usual work and ad hoc projects.

Business as usual work involves meeting  and interacting with ones manager and other team members on your routine work: this could be  developing analyses, research output, coding or developing reports for business.

Ad Hoc projects are more strategic,  short term in nature and more cross functional in orientation.  Meetings are regularly conducted via Google Hangouts or working lunches. This avoids the travel but saves time and allows the team to focus on critical tasks.

The days also include dining at one of the several cafes on campus, biking to a meeting at another business location and jogging on campus. Google’s work culture is legendary. I found an interesting article on the culture in the Time of India. You can read it here.

Alumni of several international and national schools work at Google and the cafes are also a nice place to interact with them and build your global network.

Time to go for now but be tuned for my next post on my observations on the tech industry as  a whole.

Taste of Taxation

Till two weeks ago, I could never image myself working on a taxation project. I thought taxation was a necessary evil, something corporations cannot avoid; there was no creativity involved in the work. However, meeting my manager completely changed my view on taxation.

My manager has spent her last 20 years working in taxation field (both public and private sectors), and has great passion for her work. She sees taxation as a constantly changing field. Thus, finding the best practice in taxation never ends. Given the Financial Management Associate program goal is to provide us an overall understanding of all 6 Citi corporate finance functions, my manger started our conversation with stories of tax involvement in corporate entity spin off process and M&A project.

My project specifically involves the 52 billion dollars Deferred Tax Assets that Citi has on its balance sheet. Recent financial service industry regulation changes require banks to have more capital on its balance sheet. Traditionally deferred tax assets were treated as part of bank’s capital. However, under Basel rules, only 14 billion out of the 52 billion DTA that Citi has can be classified as its capital in Basel calculation because of the contingency nature of tax assets. This makes trueing up tax balance from legal entities to business units an urgent task.

Besides working on my taxation project, I also gain insides of Citi’s business operation as the summer speaker series and leadership training continues through the summer. Earlier this week, Prof Scott Snook from Harvard Business School came to Citi talking about finding a sweet spot (amount what a person’s good at, other’s appreciation and personal passion) as an import factor of becoming an effective leader. To ensure I can learn as much as possible from the internship experience, my manager also includes me to other business meeting outside of my project.

Project goes on

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over two weeks now since my last blog. So what’s been happening with my internship and life in Ann Arbor? There’s a lot, both at and off work. As I mentioned previously, I was heavily involved in a project, trying to set up a new operation center in Danville, IL. This new center is the product of the home affordability refinance program as part of US governments’ efforts to help home owners with their mortgage payments. Because of forecasted popularity and big increase in customers’ responses, the Bank decided to recruit more than 170 new staff in order to handle the workload. My colleague and I, however, expressed our concerns about the prospect of finding so many people locally at managers’ conference meeting because of very limited size of the talent pool. Our concerns were shared by other senior managers too. As a result of that, we decided to expand our recruiting area to Champaign, IL that is about 40 miles away from Danville. As the project’s getting bigger and more complicated, several departments, including offices in Dallas, St Louise, HR and IT are working very closely to ensure the success of the new office. I will go on a road trip again later this week to provide support and assistance needed in Danville. So how’s Danville? Some might ask. Well, we couldn’t even find a nice restaurant to spend our daily meal allowance of $70 each in town. You can imagine the rest.

Despite the challenges and pressures that I have to deal with for this project, life outside work in Ann Arbor is pretty good actually in summer. I started to play tennis in the evenings and weekends with several new friends that I met in the local tennis club. I had BBQ party with some other MBA students who also happen to be in Ann Arbor in the summer. We went to the pub to watch the Eurocup final’s match between Spain and Italy on Sunday. So my summer here has been a really good experience so far and I am really enjoyed it.

Happy July 4^th everyone and I will update you again in two weeks.

Not enough hours

Heading into the summer, I hadn’t really given a ton of forethought to what my social situation would entail. After all, I had never lived in a major city with other kids my age. How much effort could it take? To keep the theme of this post simple, it takes a lot.

At Four Wood Capital Partners, most people are in the office around 8:30 and we typically work through lunch until the end of the day, somewhere around 5 o’clock. Being that there are only 3 interns in our office, we get a lot of tasks delegated to us across a range of investment and analysis functions. I realize there is a lot more to my summer than solely going into the office every day.

In addition to work, one of my main objectives for the summer is to network with as many people as possible in the banking/finance industry. Having done a lot of homework on the industry and talking with professionals during the school year, it has become clear that relationships are highly valuable in achieving recruiting and career goals. I try to talk with people in the office as much as possible to see who they know, and who they can introduce me to, as well as drawing information from their own career experiences. Outside of the office, I aim to connect with Ross School alumni and family friends, who can help me learn more about the firms where I will be looking to recruit for next year. All relationships are valuable.

Another set of valuable relationships is the ones built with peers. The kids in New York go out on most nights of the week (the hours vary widely). I follow in suit, and am looking to make friends and connections that will stick around beyond the summer.

Long story short, there truly are not enough hours in the day. I’ll continue to explore both the professional side and social side of New York life, and I will happily sacrifice my sleep to get it done. Thankfully, New York has Starbucks and RedBull found on every corner.

Running along!

Since my last post, I have made a lot of progress in my project - I had a chance to interview almost 20 people to gather information about my project...but first, let me start from the beginning.

I enjoyed my first (almost) four weeks - with Google I/O happening, to going out with my team for a fun bowling event, lots of things have transpired over the last few weeks.

Google I/O was clearly the highlight for me - what with sky-divers jumping in with their Google glasses revealing the new Jelly Bean Anrdoid OS, these have been exciting times for us.

On to more serious topics - I defined a clear work-plan for my project after multiple conversations with my team. This helped me establish a good pace and clear targets to achieve every week. I worked off that plan and I am making good progress with my project. I have my usual weekly one on one meetings with my manager and more frequent meetings with the person in my team who is guiding me on day-to-day activities. My manager and the team have been really helpful in giving me the autonomy at the same time providing inputs when I ask for them. In addition, access to people is tremendous. Meeting other interns and exchanging notes with them makes me believe that this situation is not unique to me - all interns have tremendous access and have been receiving great help from their teams.


At this stage, I feel comfortable to start thinking about the solutions for the business challenge that I had been given. Navigating in Google means talking to a lot of people, collaborating and coming up with a solution that is actionable. 


On a more personal front, buying furniture, going out, meeting my friends in the bay area have all been a lot of fun. The weather in the bay area needs no mention - it is fabulous all year round!


More on my next post.

Balancing work and life…!
Hey guys… I’m back to give an account of my social life. Having spent six weeks as a marketing intern, the going is getting tough.  My manager is keen about deliverables now as I am due for mid-project presentation.  An eight-hour working day seems not to be enough for me any longer that I sometimes stay back after working hours to work. After five weeks of gathering data, marketing research and strategy brainstorming, it’s now time to put my thought together and analyze all related data. Also my project requires that I develop about two models. Practically a typical day is occupied with series of meetings from one on one to group and brainstorming sessions. However I have been able to achieve 50% of my project.

Despite my work’s tight schedule, I have managed to create sometime for social life outside office hours most especially during the weekends because I know the important of balancing work with life.  There are a lot of places in Texas to have fun and are family friendly. Last weekend I was in Dallas Zoo with my family. It was fun! My kids had an awesome time in Dallas. I have gone hiking and swimming within Austin with my family and fellow interns as well.

I have been able to leverage my series of meetings to build network within Dell community. Also there are a lot of social events like happy hours; speaker’s series to mention a few that provides platforms for socializing and networking within the organization. As an international candidate changing career, it’s quite important to take advantage of these events to learn about America and Dell work culture while building industry knowledge.