This post is a part of the Alumni Spotlight series where we highlight an Anderson alum and learn what they have been up to since their time at Anderson. We will also get hear about their favorite Anderson memories and get their advice for current and prospective MBA students.
Today we are featuring JJ Haglund, Anderson Class of 2015.
What brought you to Anderson?
What first grabbed my attention about Anderson was the list of top employers and who recruited there. Before I even realized what career I wanted to pursue I was just impressed that so many grads went to Disney, Nike, Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and the like. Then the more I learned about the school and the culture, the more I wanted to be there. The collaborative environment and sense of community really resonated with me.
What have you been up to since graduation?
Since graduation, I started working for Adobe as a PMM for the Marketing Cloud. I moved back to Utah, where Adobe's Digital Marketing headquarters is located (corporate HQ is in San Jose). I've still been able to maintain ties with my Anderfriends though - my job sends me to the Bay Area about once a month. We also took trips to Hawaii and Yellowstone this summer as a family.
Tell us a bit about what you do at Adobe.
My product marketing role is pretty typical for a tech company - a lot of messaging, positioning, and sales enablement. The other day I realized the famous "3 Cs" is actually pretty applicable to what I do. I sift through a lot of Analytics data to try to understand how customers are using the product and sometimes I do customer surveys or interviews. I have to stay on top of what our competitors are doing so I can position against it. And you're the subject matter expert for whatever product you're on so you have to understand the company in and out.
Can you tell us what was the recruiting process like for you?
My recruiting process was mostly traditional, on-campus recruiting. I was applying to both traditional marketing roles at companies I thought were cool (Disney, Nike, Toyota, etc) and product marketing at tech companies (Adobe, Twitter, Qualtrics, etc). But I ended up getting my internship at Adobe through my own existing network. After getting passed up by Adobe's on-campus interviews, a friend connected me to the recruiter and interviewed with her separately and for different roles than the on-campus stuff. They were about to offer me a role in sales operations when the PMM job I'm in now opened up and the rest is history. Basically I just did a combination of everything they teach you in the Parker series!
What advice would you give people considering an MBA/UCLA Anderson?
My advice would be to be more focused than I was on a particular role or industry. I was all over the map, applying to anything that sounded interesting or cool. Try to do that before you even apply to business school. Pick the school based on the job you want afterwards and aggressively pursue that course of action.
If there was one thing you wish you would have known when applying to business school, what would it have been?
No one in tech cares what grades you get so I wish I would've known to just relax and not stress about those first quarter Econ and Stats exams!
What is your favorite memory of your experience at Anderson?
I had a lot of great experiences at Anderson: presenting a marketing strategy to execs at NBC, the Dragon's Den in Sanjay's "Google Class", flying out to New York to present our AMR project to DIRECTV executives, the Anderson ski trip to Park City and hosting a tour of historic Temple Square in my hometown, road tripping up the PCH with my family, watching my Utah Utes beat the Bruins at Rose Bowl stadium, and taking my kids to Disneyland on my Fridays off... to name a few! It was an amazing two years.