(Photo of ~80 2014ers at a Parker Career Center Q&A two weeks before the start of orientation.)
Business school... the place to career switch, career advance, or launch your own business. In the four weeks that I've been in LA, I've met classmates who are coming to Anderson from a variety of geographies (domestic and global), industries, experiences, and with an equally diverse amount of ideas on what they want to do while they're in school and beyond.
To prepare incoming students for the balancing act between school work, clubs, and recruiting, the Parker Career Management Center began offering weekly Q&A sessions during the four weeks leading up to the start of orientation.
I attended a Q&A session yesterday, during which Emily Taylor, an Associate Director at the Parker CMC, and Marissa Levi, a second-year student, provided an overview of what to expect during the year and especially the first quarter.
(Emily Taylor, Associate Director of MBA Career Education and Communications, opens up the Q&A).
(Marissa Levi, class of 2013 and summer intern at Nestle, shares her first year experience during the Q&A.)
The session opened up with what I thought was a pretty powerful graphic, shown here below.
181 firms! That number was significant to me because, as shown in the picture, it proved the truly diverse industries and sectors that people are passionate about pursuing a career in. Some people might think "Wait a second, if the class profile says ~360 people are in a class, where do the other 180 people work?"
What the 181 doesn't indicate is how many interns might work at the same company (in either the same or different divisions.) For example, I heard last night that Deloitte Consulting hired 10-12 summer interns last summer, Amazon had 8+, and so on. Plus the people who choose to spend the summer working on their start-up idea aren't included in that number.
According to the Parker CMC website, "99% of UCLA Anderson students are hired for a 10-12 week internship between their first and second year." For more info on internships, click here, and for more info on full-time hiring statistics, click here.
(Members of the Parker Career Center and their focus areas for advising students.)
During the Q&A, we were introduced to a timeline for career-related activities and all the resources at our disposal.
One of the resources is a one-on-one advising session. All incoming students are matched with a career advisor based on their Career Leader self-assessment results. I had my session with Jessica Christopher, and we spent 20 minutes talking about my background and what functions / industries I'm interested in exploring for an internship. I think we were matched up due to my top scoring career match.
(I worked in Human Capital Consulting previously, so is it a huge surprise that HR Management was the number one career match? Maybe not, but where did Management in Science and Engineering come from? My brothers took all the math and science genes in my family.)
In addition to the Parker Career resources, second-year students comprise Anderson Career Teams (ACT), that are aligned to functions and industries.
Each ACT serves as an additional medium to obtain information on a particular industry / function, and the second-year students provide advice on resume writing, interviewing, networking, and much more.
Lastly, what career information you aren't receiving from Parker CMC or your ACT is probably being provided be one of the professional clubs.
Coming from a consulting background and being sponsored by Deloitte, I'll be involved with the Management Consulting Association (MCA) to keep up with industry trends, but I also plan on joining the High Tech Business Association, Healthcare Business Association, and Sports Business Association as industries that I have a passion for and am interested in for internship purposes.
At the end of our Q&A session, four second-year board members of the MCA showed up to provide an overview of consulting and case interviews. While case interviews are commonly associated with consulting and financial services, they are being used in an increasingly wider range of industries and functions. The session featured a lot of questions from classmates about various aspects of the consulting industry and lifestyle, along with a mock case and the MCA's recommendations on how to prepare for case interviewing by January, when internship interviewing kicks off.
(Preston McCaskill, President of the MCA, kicks off with an overview of consulting.)
All in all, the Q&A session and MCA Case Overview were a great reminder that, on top of all the school work, you need to approach your career like a full-time job. There were gentle hints and nudges about how to prepare before orientation starts so that you can you hit the ground running from day one.
That's all for now! I'll leave you with this pictures of smiling 2014ers, excited to get started with orientation in less than a week and a half!
Until next time,
