I survived my first quarter!! No, I didn’t just survive; I flourished! But it wasn’t easy. Over the last three months, I was stretched and challenged in ways that change a person. I had 36 hours of things to do each day, and I had to bring my A-game to everything. First quarter classes are extremely rigorous and Google was recruiting on campus Day 1, so for 12 weeks I did a calculated dance between academics, recruiting, and social activities. It was intense and I’m a better version of myself because of it.
Sometimes I would be on the phone to my parents and would have to stop myself and say, “It might sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. I love this. Every email I send, every informational interview I do, and every hour I put into studying is all about me and my future. It’s not about my boss or the organization I work for. It’s about me. It’s a uniquely selfish time and I love every minute of it.”
All of the hard work paid off, and at the end of the quarter, I accepted an offer for a summer internship (stay tuned for more about that in a future post). However it’s not about the destination, but the path you take to get there, and I really enjoyed the recruiting process. I recruited for human capital consulting and internal human capital management roles at tech companies. It is a field that is gaining interest at Anderson as more companies think strategically about how they manage their employees. Companies make presentations daily and nightly on campus, but here are my top four favorite recruiting events of fall quarter:
- MCA Firm Kickoff – At Anderson, a lot of the recruiting takes place through on-campus professional clubs. The opportunities for consulting are run through the Management Consulting Association (MCA). At the MCA Firm Kickoff, over 15 top firms sent representatives to meet Anderson students. Each practice was stationed at a cocktail table, and for three hours, students could walk around and network with each one. It was a formal yet casual affair, and the perfect venue to make a good first impression with a variety of firms. The event was also on the night before the Statistics midterm, so it served as a good lesson in balancing academics and recruiting.
- National Academy of Human Resources Foundation – The NAHR hosts an annual dinner and meeting with its fellows in New York City each November. One of the NAHR Foundation initiatives is to include select MBA students in the event, with the goal of attracting “top first year Master’s students to the HR profession.” I was chosen to represent Anderson at this year’s NAHR dinner, where I had the chance to chat with CHROs from a range of Fortune 100 companies. It was inspiring to hear from executives who have shaped the HR function over the last few decades.
- Deloitte Human Capital Case Workshop – Deloitte has one of the leading human capital consulting practices and a growing office in LA. So I jumped at the chance to learn from some of the best at a case workshop they did on campus. Five practitioners, who were all also Anderson alumni, generously spent four hours on a Friday walking us through the Deloitte approach to casing. They provided us with valuable feedback after we worked through a practice case in groups. The day wrapped with a happy hour at a bar in West LA, which was a great way to get to know the Deloitte HC Anderson team a little better.
- Days on the Job Tech Trek – Fellow Student Voice Blogger, Piyush Jain, published an earlier article that talks about this week in more detail, but to quickly summarize: for one week in November deemed “DOJ Week,” classes were canceled and Anderson students flew all around the country, visiting companies they are interested in. The High Tech Business Association (HTBA) organized the Tech Trek, which allowed me to jet up to Seattle, then down to San Francisco and visit Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, Visa, LinkedIn, eBay, Intel, and Autodesk. It was an incredible opportunity to network with Anderson alumni working at each of these companies and experience the corporate culture first hand. I was able to ask recruiters about strategic HR summer internship opportunities and hear about their human capital issues. For example, we toured Visa Inc.’s recently-opened innovation outpost in the heart of San Francisco. As Visa prepares to do a lot of tech hiring, the new office is a statement of how Visa is branding itself to compete for top talent against other companies.
After such a rewarding first quarter, I can’t wait to see what the rest of the school year has in store for me. Here’s to an incredible 2015!
The group of Master's students who were selected to participate in the 2014 National Academy of Human Resources Annual Dinner and Discussion Meeting in New York City.
Anderson students who visited Adobe during the San Francisco "Days on the Job" Tech Trek.
