Fellow blogeteer Jesse Ferlianto reminded me today that it has been a long time since I've contributed to the blog, so you can thank him for the fact that I'm going to tell you all about how I spent the US Thanksgiving holiday.
Last weekend, while most of you were enjoying the turkey and the NFL, a motley collection of 21 UCLA Anderson students went to London for the 7th annual career trek there. This year, I organized it alongside three classmates of mine. The trip is in conjunction with five other US MBA programs and is cut across three verticals: finance, consulting, and the newly-created sports / entertainment. Across all of the schools, we were approximately 80 students.
The trek was a success all ways around! Personally, I was on the sports / entertainment verticals, and the companies were extremely receptive to us being there. We got to meet some very senior people from a variety of exciting firms, including the NBA, NFL, IMG, ESPN, Harrah's, Disney, Paramount, Fox, and NBC Universal. Above all else, I learned that while they all work for US-based companies, they have loads of opportunities to expand their business in Europe - in many cases, moreso than their US-based colleagues, who are facing a fragmented saturation of the American sports market.
I'm also really happy that the finance and consulting verticals came out really well, too. On the finance vertical, we saw Prudential M&G (the asset management arm of the UK's largest insurance company), Aerium Finance, and State Street for asset management; Carlyle and Providence Equity for private equity; and Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Nomura, Credit Suisse, and Citi in investment banking. The feedback I got was that the companies were all stellar, and within the finance industry there was a decent amount of variety as well.
On the consulting vertical, we saw McKinsey, Bain, and BCG, as well as Deloitte, E&Y, PWC, A.T. Kearney, Roland Berger, and Gallup. This was the longest vertical of them all: the first meeting was at 12noon on Wednesday, and the last meeting on Friday afternoon! But the feedback I got was that it was worth it, especially given the breadth of the companies and divsions that we visited.
I'm also very proud of how we at Anderson did in terms of setting up meetings. We arranged all of the sports / entertainment vertical - the Anderson alums there were nothing short of fantastic for us - as well as 2-3 headliners in both of the other verticals (McKinsey, Deloitte, Prudential M&G, Providence Equity, Credit Suisse, and Aerium Finance). Big kudos to Abhijit, Pete, and Vivek for helping me make this trip happen.
More than anything, I think we showed a lot of multinational companies that, contrary to popular belief, Anderson students are willing to seek out job opportunities outside of LA. We came prepared, had great questions, and were extremely professional as much as possible.
One thing that US MBA programs are known for are these sort of career treks, where you get to visit a variety of companies in different verticals. Anderson frankly has been lagging other schools in this endeavour, but hopefully as the London trip continues to expand, we will be able to catch up. Organizing the trip is extremely rewarding because it gives you direct contact with all of the people that you want to keep up with anyway -- so now you have delivered something for them, which differentiates you from the rest of the crowd.
Bottom line: these are the trips that are so critical to the MBA experience, and this one in particular is one that you should keep in mind for next year should you get the chance to join us here in Westwood.
Reach out to me off-line if you want more details!
-- Sreesha
