What I don’t like about Cambridge – Part II: Careers Team

Following my commitment to share the thoughts on the things I don’t like, I’ll continue with the negative posts. And today I’d like to talk about a very delicate issue, the careers team and its role.
In my view, the careers team should be responsible for mainly three roles:

1.Assisting current students with their career management
2.Raise Cambridge’s profile as a school and ensure as many on campus visits as possible
3.Support and tap into the alumni network

Your view on the careers team will most likely depend on your situation at the end of the MBA. Not surprisingly, people who secured a job early are mostly happy and people who are still to secure a job at the end are not so pleased with the careers team assistance. Having said that, l must tell you I was in the former group, having secured a position before ending the MBA, so I feel I’m fairly unbiased to show my general discontent.

Even before starting to comment on each of the roles I should make a general remark. During the year of 2007/2008 there were two members in the careers team. When we joined in September it was announced the school wanted to add a third person to complete the team. I don’t remember exactly when this third person was recruited but I do remember it was close to the end of the course. Yes…end of the course! I find it shocking that it takes more than 6 months to recruit someone and in the meanwhile a whole class is affected.

Obviously, if the team is small, one can’t expect miracles and I’m sure the team did its best but it is the school’s responsibility to take care of these things. Because Judge Business School is part of the University, many decisions are taken by the University and some processes can be extremely slow. Not sure if this is the reason why it took so long to have a third person.
But having a look at the three roles I mentioned, here are my thoughts:

1.Generally they did this role fairly well, organizing workshops and having at least one 1-to-1 meeting with each student. However, there were many unavailability issues and the response time was fairly slow. We were asked to submit any documents for their screening with 72h notice, to ensure enough time for review. Truth is in many occasions we got answers way after the 72h and at least one (from personal experience), I got comments on documents way beyond the deadline set by the company I was applying to.

2.This is where I think they failed the most. There are some in campus presentations, but Cambridge is clearly lagging behind the likes of LBS or Insead. The top companies generally don’t go to campus nor there is a privileged relationship with their recruitment services. In most cases, we’re simply told to check their website and apply online. I know it’s not easy to have on campus visits, but I would expect more investment in raising the school’s profile.

3.As I mentioned in my previous post, the alumni network almost doesn’t exist, which is a shame. In many occasions, there will be alumni in managerial positions in companies we want to apply to. It was always a struggle to get the careers team to find them for us and (again, using my personal experience), when they did some times the deadlines were gone. Would it be that hard to have a nice database of alumni? Whenever I get contact, I tend to try to help or give advice, and most of my colleagues do the same. So we’re willing to help, but I don’t think current students are provided with the (right) contacts in a structured way. Most of the contacts I get happen because someone knew a colleague of mine pre-MBA.
About sharing opportunities with the alumni network, I think it’s even worse. Like I said, it would be nice to have some kind of bill board where alumni could announce vacancies for current and former students.

These are my views only and may not reflect the general feeling of the class. As I said, some students were happy, other students were very unhappy. It also doesn’t mean the people in the team were not nice, it just means that in my view there was a structural problem with the career management aspect of the MBA. What I also don’t understand is the fact many of the school services were subject to a survey close to the end of the course. Unfortunately, the careers team was not. That would most likely show what was the general feeling.
As an end note, I should say the team has been enlarged ever since, so it is likely that things have improved. This view is based on the year 2007/2008 alone.

Fast paced life

I think one of the consequences of doing an MBA is changing your life pace. Even though I was a consultant in my previous life, I still can’t help being surprise at the pace things go after an MBA. It’s no surprise that the MBA year is really intense and although the rhythm calms down a little bit after the course, I feel like things keep changing at an enormous pace.
Less than a year after the MBA, I already had two full time jobs in two different European capital cities. I also not only changed industries right after the MBA, I changed industries again 7 months after changing industries for the first time.

I’m very happy with my job at the moment, I seem to have an increasing urge to let my entrepreneurial side go crazy and create something. I think one of the benefits of the programme was that it tested me and made push harder. Putting myself out there also made me realize that there are so many things that could be done in a much better way they are being done.

I’m not sure whether it is MBA arrogance or just the will to create something and push even harder. I guess time will tell.

My MBA pass

After working for slightly more than six months in one the world’s largest bank, I decided banking is not for me. Like many MBAs, I was attracted by the glamour and challenges of the banking industry but it didn’t take me long to realise things aren’t what they used to be anymore.

Banks are bleeding inside, the morale is low and the challenges they face are more related to headcount cuts than anything else. Therefore, I decided to move on to a more exciting industry: renewable energy! If you read earlier posts on my MBA projects, you’ll know I did them in this area.

Many people wonder if an MBA is still worth it. As far I’m concerned, I really think it is. The way I see my MBA is almost like a pass that everyone recognises wherever I got. Don’t get me wrong, the job market is still very tight. But I am also positive that without my MBA I wouldn’t be able to change industries again!

More importantly, I’m going to an industry where I have very little experience and I will be based in a different country. I can’t imagine I would be able to do so without my MBA. I think having the name of a top business school in my CV opens me doors that otherwise would be completely closed.

As far as my personal experience goes, I highly recommend doing an MBA!

Goals and expectations: reality check

On the 8th of September 2007 I was one week away from starting my MBA. I was still in my home country and had many expectations and some goals I wanted to achieve with and after the MBA. In this blog, I listed most of them so I could go back some day and compare what happened with what I expected.

A bit more than a year has passed now and in this post I want to do that exercise. I will list again my expectations as of 2007 and will comment on them as of December 2008.
This is a very interesting (and nostalgic) personal exercise that I hope can help some of the readers too. So here it goes:

Looking back at my expectations, it seems like I achieved almost all of them with distinction. It's actually very rewarding to look back and see how things turned out to be in all items. If you are thinking of doing an MBA, as I was in 2007 maybe this will help you make up your mind!

The job hunt

This topic is one of the most important ones for someone doing an MBA, and shame on me for not posting about it before!

I guess getting a good job is one of the main reasons to do an MBA. We all have the expectation of landing a great job in the end and most of us have the expectation of changing careers and industries and usually an MBA is a great means for doing so.
Unfortunately, the world has changed really fast. When we first started the MBA, we all were living in a different world. The economy was doing well and the expectation was we all would have jobs at the end of the MBA. As time went by, we started to realise the world was changing. We all were in the middle of a crisis with an uncertain duration and unforeseen consequences. Finding a job under these circumstances is harder. But it is even harder when you are changing industries, which is exactly most people enroll in an MBA for.

I started my job hunt around February 2008, which is rather late. I should have started before and I advise everyone to start as soon as possible. Obviously, it is hard to know what we want a month into the MBA. And I had many areas that I wanted to explore and investigate a bit more. I applied for many different things and was called for some interviews and I guess I used some interviews to practice and to know a bit more about some companies.

Job hunting can be frustrating. Sometimes we get interviews sometimes we get rejections and we don’t even know why. It is very important that you check your CV and Cover Letter with friends and colleagues so you don’t get myopic. Many times I was under the impression I had the perfect profile for a vacancy, but the ones who got called were the ones with totally unrelated backgrounds. So, sometimes it is a gamble. And we need to keep our hopes high and not give up, as it is very stressful too.

In the end, I had job offers from banks and consulting firms. Having been a consultant previously, I decided I wanted to try the banking industry. Joining a bank in a middle of a crisis is a risky move, but I thought it would be interesting to see a crisis from the inside.

So right now, I’m working in Canary Wharf, London, for one of the biggest banks in the World. I joined one of those MBA tailor made programmes which will allow me to have rotations in different functions and different countries across Europe. It sounds interesting and it has been a learning experience so far. Let’s see what the future holds!

Time to get focused

Up until now I think I have tried to enjoy all Cambridge has to offer, that is, enjoying great social events, getting to know all the new people and all that. I have been doing my assignments and homework but that’s pretty much it. Still, it seems like I have no time to do so many things I’d like to do!

But today I had an 1:1 finance coaching session and I think it made me think about my goals and what I should be doing by now. The thing is recruitment for financial institutions has already started and within a couple of weeks some application periods will be over. It’s a little bit odd that everything starts so soon. We barely had time to learn anything about finance and we are already supposed to be preparing for interviews. I think that is the disadvantage of the one year programmes. We have little time to figure out what we want and even less time to prepare ourselves for all the crazy recruitment processes.

So I’m now trying to get a bit more focused and I hope to start sending some applications soon enough. I guess the partying days couldn’t last forever, right?!

Career Leader

As stated before, one of the reasons that made me choose Cambridge over other options was the feeling of being unique and having a very personnel approach due to its lower class number.
I haven’t started the program but it feels like it has already started. After connecting future students through Camtools Portal, enabling us to access an enormous career database and giving some reading suggestions for the summer, we have been recently given a new task: completing a set of tests which are part of a Harvard developed tool known as Career Leader. Its goal is to highlight our main motivators, strengths, weaknesses and awareness of ourselves and try and match our personalities with the most suitable careers for us. The results are given to us and to Cambridge’s careers team so that they can meet with us on arrival and discuss the possible paths and best strategies. It just gives me the feeling they are all working very professionally and that comforting.

As for the test, it seems pretty reliable and its results were no surprise to me. They just reinforce what I know and what I want.

Interestingly enough, as time passes by and I’m more aware of what each career means and implies instead of being surer, I’m having even more doubts. I guess I’m realizing this year will be so intense I shouldn’t even have any predefined ideas. I should keep an open mind and try to seize the opportunities and make the best out of this year.

I’m hoping things will just come naturally.