Strategizing your Career Search

With competing assignments for class, participating in extracurricular activities, and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life, it’s easy to forget the real reason that 99.9% of us return to business school – to get a great job. Fortunately, BC has a phenomenal Career Strategies department that actively engages me and my classmates in preparing – and going through – the internship and job search process. The reputation of BC’s Career Strategies department was definitely a selling point for me when making my decision about b-school. After talking to students at several of the other schools I applied to, BC students had an incredibly high regard for the work that the Career Strategies team puts into its students and the entire internship and job search process.

Now, after being in school for nearly a semester and trying to find as much time to dedicate to the summer internship search, the active engagement and support of the Career Strategies department is even more evident. For those prospective students wondering what career development opportunities BC offers for its MBA students, here are just a few of the highlights:

1 – Crack the Case Workshop:  BC students are fortunate to have this program as part of our orientation, along with a follow-up session later in the semester. With so many internship and job interviews containing a case component, Career Strategies recognized how critical it is to prepare students for this aspect of the interview process. Led by a trained instructor, David Ohrvall, this two-day session provided me with the nuts and bolts of “cracking” the case in an interview. With access to online practice cases, I can continue to fine tune my skills as a I prepare for any upcoming interviews.

2 – On-Campus Information Session Hosting: Obviously many b-schools host companies on-campus for info sessions, but Career Strategies asks students to serve as “hosts” for each of these info sessions. I had the opportunity to serve as the student host for a previous company that was on campus, and not only was it a great leadership opportunity for me to work on my public speaking skills, it gave me one-on-one time with the recruiters and other senior leadership present. I contacted them before the session to confirm details, met with them before the session and introduced the company, and followed up with them after the session.

3 – BC Alum Small Information Sessions: The BC Alumni Network is massive and any BC alum in any company, in any part of the world, is always excited and eager to meet and connect with BC students and other BC alum – no matter what school they represent. I had the opportunity to participate in a small group information session, with about 10 other students, and a BC alum in a senior leadership position to hear about her career experience, time at BC, and her current role. This was a great way to network in an intimate setting with not only someone in senior leadership, but someone with a BC connection who is eager to help and answer any questions they can.

4 – Pre-School Career Assessment & Resume Support: Although you will want to cherish your free time over the summer before school starts, Career Strategies does an amazing job of helping you prepare over the summer for the internship process. Over the summer, I completed a Career Assessment, which evaluated my strengths and weaknesses and general areas of career interest. I also submitted my resume for feedback from my Career Advisor, who provided me with some great tips on tweaking my resume – which had been written with a slant towards my nonprofit experience – to make it more business savvy. Within the first few weeks of school, I met with my Career Advisor and reviewed both my resume and my Career Assessment, which helped her really get to know me and tailor her advice towards the path I hope to take with my career.

5 – Interview Prep: When the time comes for an interview or an informational interview, the Career Strategies team is ready to provide as much – or as little – support as you might want. I met with my Career Advisor to discuss how to run an informational interview and what types of questions to ask and just met with her to prepare for an interview. I know that I am even more prepared than I ever could have imagined with just gaining her insight on ways to tackle specific questions and what types of questions to ask my interviewer about the position.

Marriage + Business School = Challenging!

View of the Boston skyline from the Charles River

Prior to returning to b-school, my husband and I had been living in New Jersey where he had been completing his PhD in Chemistry. We decided that it made the most sense not to have two students in the house, so I would return to school once he had finished his degree. After getting accepted to school and beginning to plan for our role reversal, I figured that we had this whole student thing down pat. I mean, we had already had one of us working full-time and another in school full-time, so how different could it be, right? Well, not quite.

Being married, or in a relationship for that matter, definitely has its pros and cons when you are in b-school. You don’t have to worry about dating, have someone to share the load of household chores and duties with, have someone who is required (whether they want to or not!) to listen to you complain about you day, and always have a great excuse to not go out if you feel like lounging around in your pajamas on a Saturday night! On the flipside, the demands on your time – for school, extracurricular activities, and social outings – can easily make your spouse or significant other feel like they are the third wheel in their own relationship.

While these are all factors that I think all married (or serious relationship types) of my class are facing, I would argue that the small percentage of the female members (all of the wives, girlfriends, fiancées, mothers) of this group are in a unique position compared to our male counterparts. Now, I am not trying to make a statement about women in society and also realize that all relationships are different, but at least in my experience over the last two months, being a “wife” in the traditional sense has been much more challenging then it was when I was working full-time. Things like cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping have become the lowest priorities on the totem pole – but are still things that need to get done – and at least in my house, are things that are not very high on my husband’s totem pole to accomplish!

However, like I said earlier, one of the big pros of being married in b-school is that there is someone there to share the load (even if he is not interested in cleaning the bathroom), so here are a few things that I have found incredibly useful for any wives or girlfriends considering making the return to b-school:

1.    Involve your spouse early: Unfortunately, my husband was out of town the first week of b-school for work in Texas, so he missed some of the early social get togethers. Although he missed the first week, he was at the first tailgate and a few other early social activities, which made it much easier for him to be a repeat attendee at other events. This made it much easier, not only to get him excited and jazzed up for future events, but now he knows (for the most part) who people are when we talk about my day or other events that he isn’t able to attend. Quickly involving your spouse in the b-school world makes it very easy for them to feel a part of the experience.

2.    Find other married classmates: Don’t get me wrong, most of my married classmates and their spouses in the program love to go out and have a good time, but whether or not we want to accept it, we aren’t in college anymore, so while the occasional dance party is a blast – sometimes the lowkey get together is a better environment to socialize. Plus, even for those of us who like to socialize, yelling over music in a crowded bar is not always the best place to meet people – especially if you are the spouse and don’t know who any of these people are! Finding other classmates who are married or in relationships has been an easy way to forge friendships and provide avenues for my husband to get to know some of the other husbands and wives experiencing b-school from the outside perspective. The BC Couples Club also provides quarterly get togethers for students in relationships to provide an opportunity for the significant others to get to know one another in an environment conducive to socializing.

3.    It’s all about the little things: As is the case with everyone, there are little things that drive us nuts. For me, it’s a dirty house or an unemptied dishwasher or piles of mail, but the one thing that I’ve had to do in b-school (and has been a challenge!) is to let go of some of these things. No one will die if the dishwasher has not been emptied, so there’s no sense in making a big deal out of it. It’s been important for me (while I haven’t always been successful at it), to not take my stress or frustration over these little things that I’m not able to tackle out on my husband. Instead, I’ve had to force myself to not focus on these mundane day-to-day tasks and also to communicate with my husband that these are some things where I need his help (also, not one of my strong suits).

4.    Figure out early what works for you: Before b-school, I liked to use Sunday as my day to grocery shop and make a nice dinner. I quickly learned that this would no longer be possible! My husband and I decided that he would do the grocery shopping and make dinner on Sundays, ideally something that could last for the week. While this may seem too planned out, it’s been incredibly helpful in reducing my stress for the week. This has also been about making sure I am home for dinner every night and that we eat dinner together. Even though this hour could be spent reading a case or applying for jobs, it’s been important for us to make this daily “us” time just to relax and also helps me prioritize my time accordingly.

5.   The Key to Everything is Balance: My husband and I are lucky in the sense that we were living and working in the area for a few months before b-school, so he has his own network of work friends that he can hang out with when I have to spend the weekend doing school work. However, as with most healthy relationships (in my opinion at least), my husband wants me to hang out with him and his friends! It’s been important for us to try to coordinate our increasingly busier social calendar to make sure that we are balancing all of our groups of friends – b-school friends, work friends, and other friends in the area. Obviously, there are some weekends where this is more challenging than others, but it’s been important for us to make sure we are spending as much time TOGETHER with our friends – so that means that we can’t do EVERYTHING.

Decisions, Decisions...Choosing an MBA & Boston College

View of Gasson Hall at night

Why an MBA? By the time you arrive at b-school, you’ve answered this question hundreds of times. However, by the time you sit down in your first class, the answer you might have given before you took the GMAT, or the answer you gave during your Admissions interview, or the answer you told your uncle over the summer before school started, may be completely different. At least, this was the case for me! For me, the decision to get an MBA can be summed up in one word: change (which is probably why my answer was ever-changing).

Not only had I wanted to change the organizations that I had worked for, but I was ready to experience a change in my role and perhaps even the industry I had worked in over the past 5 years. Most importantly, I was ready to change myself – not in a drastic way – but to change the knowledge and skillset that I hope to bring to my career and to future organizations – whether for-profit or nonprofit – that I will work with down the line. I knew that in order to make these changes, both internally and externally, I needed to go back to school and knew that an MBA would allow me to influence my career and the organizations in which I will work, the most effectively.

But why BC? Deciding to come to Boston College was an easy decision. Obviously, when weighing the various factors that influence your choice of the best b-school for you, there is PLENTY to consider. For me, coming from a more non-traditional background, the two questions that were most important to my decision were:

1)      Which program stresses not only gaining the business skills I need to be successful in my career, but focuses on how to be a socially conscious business leader?

You already know the answer to this question, but BC! Unlike many business school programs, BC has a mandatory service requirement for graduation. While any added extracurricular activities tend to make any MBA student a little nervous, having started at BC, I can honestly say that the student body is generally committed to service – and not only committed, but excited to engage with the community. Invest N’ Kids is a program that brings local, at-risk youth to BC for tutoring and mentoring throughout the semester. A number of my classmates immediately jumped at the opportunity to get involved with this opportunity (and by the end of the semester – all of them will have already completed their service requirement!).

I’ve elected to serve in a different capacity, as a Board Fellow with a local nonprofit program, where I hope to fuse my previous experience in the sector, with the new skills that I’ve developed over the first six weeks of business school. I couldn’t be more excited to learn about what nonprofit I will be placed at for the semester and begin the process of supporting my project.

While the service element is a key component of BC’s uniqueness as a b-school, the commitment to producing socially conscious business leaders is integrated throughout our coursework – which was another key element for me. This was something discussed during my interview and again when I visited campus after I was admitted, but I can now say that everything I was told is 100% true. The Carroll School has a set of core values that the faculty and professors stress upon us to follow and uphold. We even had an assignment this quarter to write about our Core Values, forcing all of the First Years to identify what “makes us tick” as ethical individuals both personally and professionally.

2)      Which program has the people that are the best for me?

The minute I stepped into the BC Admissions Office, I knew that BC was the right place for me. Greeted by a warm, engaging Admissions team, who were genuinely excited to get to know ME (not a candidate, or an applicant, but ME), I knew that BC was it. This was reinforced by my visit after I was accepted to BC and I had a chance to meet current students, other admitted students, faculty, and professors who stressed one thing: the sense of community. The sense of being a part of such a powerful, committed group of motivated, intelligent, passionate individuals exuded from every member of the BC community that I met with on campus. For me, I needed to be a part of an MBA program that promoted this inclusive network. As soon as I arrived, I knew that I belonged.  After being at BC for six weeks, I can say that I made the best decision for me. I have classmates willing to set aside time to help me understand the accounting or statistics homework that I might be struggling with or read the paper that I want to make sure is grammatically correct. The community is here to support its members to ensure the success of the group, versus the success of the individual.

No matter what, any MBA program give you the business toolkit that you need to succeed. However, it’s critical to identify what type of program will allow you to thrive.