Last week, I attended TWO career night events in two days, which was so awesome that it warrants a ‘z’ in my title. So what’s so special about a career night compared to, say, any of the corporate presentations we attend weekly during this Anderson MBA? First of all, the food is generally fancier, and there is alcohol. More importantly, several companies are visiting at the same time, and we get to meet representatives who are generally more “representative” of a position we might end up holding right after graduation. For instance, while I enjoyed chatting with Amgen’s Treasurer (!!) after their corporate presentation, it wasn’t exactly relevant to ask her to tell me about her job.
So the first event was the corporate finance career night, where two healthcare companies were represented among others such as Mattel. The way it works is that there are as many tables as there are companies, and we spend 20 minutes at three tables of our choosing speaking with representatives. I was very lucky at my first table, hosted by McKesson, since I was almost the only one there. As a result, I got to speak for 20 minutes uninterrupted with someone currently in their 2-year old finance rotational program. I then spent the last 40 minutes at the Amgen table since their representative had experience doing finance in the R&D department – exactly the kind of stuff that I’d like to do.
The next day, I attended the healthcare career night, where I also sat at the Amgen table, but this time to talk about their marketing rotational program. I feel that I now know enough about Amgen to have a chance at being invited to an interview. I also spoke to a consultant from ZS Associates, a marketing consulting firm specializing in healthcare, and to a global product manager from Abbott Vascular. I think I hit it off pretty well with Abbott since two days later she was gracious enough to tell me I had been selected to attend their day on the job event in San Francisco. I must say that all representatives were very nice and helpful, and I think it is definitely easier to make a connection there than at a corporate presentation because you have a little more face time.
–Zimon
