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Caught in the Internship Quagmire
After 8 months at the Cox School, the scoreline reads 3 down and one more to go for the year. I mean, I am done with 3 event filled modules and I have 1 more to go before I embark on the much anticipated GLP trip. While 1st year students had the opportunity to participate in case competitions, pursue elective courses of their interest for the first time in their MBA career and visit companies in Dallas as part of the preparation for the GLP trip, the highlight without doubt was the search for a summer internship. As most of the readers would be aware, summer internship is an integral part of the Cox program and it is compulsory for every student to pursue an internship as it is a credited course within our curriculum. I would like to use this blog to highlight key aspects of an internship search.
Right from the very first day I entered into the Cox School, the CMC has been stressing on the challenges international students face in obtaining an internship. We were always urged to work harder and cast our networking net wider as in many cases recruiting companies do not necessarily recruit students who do not have a work visa or are not US citizens. Hence, from the very first module, we had to be diligent in terms of attending company information sessions, ‘meet and greet’ sessions and mock interviews. We had a course dedicated to managing our career during the first module when all students were exposed to the realities of MBA recruitment and are provided with adequate guidelines and tools to be successful in their internship and job search. The course was compulsory and covered all broad aspects of career choice, planning and job search. While the course dealt with all the macro details of career planning, it also paved the platform for future interactions between the students and career advisors at the CMC so that students could discuss key aspects of their individual career choices. The point to note is that this 4 week course during the 1st module is a pass or fail course and the credit is not given to any student till the final module of his/her MBA program. This has been structured in such a way to ensure that students regularly meet with the CMC during the rest of the program. While students in an MBA program have an inherent responsibility to be concerned about their placement, the structure of this course further reinforces the importance that the Cox School places on helping students with any career concerns.
Apart from personal career advisory sessions with the CMC, we also had at our disposal a plethora of career websites and databases from where we could gather all the relevant information that we needed on companies, industries, career paths, interview experiences, rankings, recruitment calendars and contacts. For students who were undecided on the career paths that they wanted to pursue, the CMC had useful tools that helped such students match their values with an aligning job profile. This sort of focus helped students narrow their search to a list of 20 companies in their domain of choice and ensured that they spent their time judiciously rather than wasting precious time targeting every company having a job opening.
While the above aspects formed the base for a student’s job search, it was for the student to build upon the foundation to ultimately obtain an offer from a company of his/her choice. At this point, one would regularly hear 2nd year students, the CMC, the faculty and fellow students stressing the importance of networking. The word networking, I assume has often been misinterpreted by many as to just meet as many people as possible and strike an interesting conversation about anything and everything that goes on in the world around us. While that might fall under the realm of social networking, the most effective form of networking in a business school comes from meeting with the right people at right forums and quickly making a case for yourself as a driven and passionate individual. One of the second year students once told me that while networking is important, it is targeted networking that will ultimately fetch results and at the same time ensure that a lot of a student’s time is not wasted. It is important to realize that while landing an internship of your choice is paramount, it should not be a consequence of sacrificing valuable time required for equally significant academic activities. Exquisite planning is required to balance the time between your internship search and your academic pursuit. I have been told that in desperation to discover their company of choice students fail to grasp that it is their MBA degree that is actually making them more employable and hence it is crucial for them to do well in their courses as well.
A student might obtain a job offer either through on-campus postings or by applying to a company externally. Students attend most networking sessions since the first module and regularly keep in touch with alums and other executives in their target companies. This sends a clear message that you are serious and are really interested and they might push your case at the time of recruitment. While knowing the right person might not fetch you a job, it will definitely help you get noticed and possibly selected for an interview. Acing an MBA interview is a different ball game in itself. CMC typically keeps reminding us that MBA interviews unlike undergrad interviews are long and rigorous. We should realize that when companies recruit MBA’s, they are not recruiting a Financial Analyst or a Brand Manager but a potential future leader of the company. Our preparation for the interview must be as rigorous to create a great impression on the recruiter. Acing interviews requires adequate practice, extensive research and persistence. I say persistence because in some cases, interviews typically last 3-4 hours and with multiple executives within the same company. After such interviews, it is easy to just give up and move on but students are expected to pursue additional opportunities till they receive a confirmation of employment from the company.
Currently, 1st year students are well ahead of the curve in terms of landing internship placements for the summer. It is interesting to note that the recruiter mix is highly eclectic ranging from high-tech to non-profit. We have had companies like EDS, Exxon Mobil, Frito Lay, Sabre Holdings, Anadarko Petroleum, etc coming on campus to recruit interns. In some cases, summer internships typically lead to part-time jobs during the second year and ultimately lead to full-time job placements. I believe we are on track to achieve 100% internship placement for the 9th year in succession. With the “internship module” out of the way, the focus now shifts towards our preparation for the GLP trip. I just completed filling the Visa application form for the China trip and I am really excited to be visiting the country in May. More on the GLP trip in my next blog. Stay tuned!
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