The Career Casino

Tombstones

2007-07-23T15:38:00.000+01:00

I recently got told off by some readers for leaving the full sentence that has been this blog without a full stop. Or so to speak. Truth be told, I have been trying to write a final entry for a while now and it's been proving quite tricky. I guess there's so many loose ends to tie up, that getting it all done in one entry becomes an impossible task to strive for initially, and later on an excuse for not getting on with the job.

It seems 10 months of hardcore business studies has not knocked out my engineering analness, so I shall go for a simple 3 part structure.

The first part I guess has to be the dry logistics. After graduating jobless (not an experience I can recommend) I had a final round interview 3 days later which I clinched with an offer. So yes. I will be a venture capitalist. I have no idea what would have happened had I not got it - it would not be worth contemplating. And kids, although in the virtual world of the Career Casino putting all your chips on red and waiting for the wheel to stop worked out for this character, please do not try this at home. It causes sleeplessness and other stress related disorders which after a 3 weeks of steady rest are only just now starting to disappear.

The second part I guess would neatly explain an overview of the MBA. I don't really know how to go about this (which is the main reason this entry is so late). I think for me, the main thing to come out of the whole experience has been the results of the introspection one is afforded when they step off the career treadmill for a year. Things like gaining confidence in going with your feelings, learning to recognise what you like and don't like have actually been pretty big steps for me. Kicking it all away and going for an adventure in the forest also made me realise that I'm done with adventuring for now. Other useful snippets have been realising how poorly Casino owners cope with complete blank piece of paper uncertainty and potential implication for entrepreneurial career paths. But these are all quite personal things, and to be honest I think in a lot of ways stem from my fairly unique INSEAD experience. They may well seem obvious to others - but weren't to me. So I'm not sure how much wisdom I can bestow on others through this process. The studies, although on paper can be made to appear incredibly useful would for me always rank bottom of any list of things I got out of INSEAD. But hey. That's just me.

And the third part? Was it worth it? Who knows. I know for me it was one of the hardest years of my life. And yes, I did have fairly unique circumstances, so I don't want to put people off from applying to the Business School For the World. And right now, I feel that it has indeed been worth it - I have achieved a career transition which would simply have not been possible had I not been to INSEAD for my MBA. And there's a ton of other good things to come out of the whole experience. It's just that for me, I know the cost with which these things came, and if someone came to me now, wound the clock back and said "hit or stick" I really don't know what I would do. Thankfully this is not really on the cards, so that's one less decision to worry about.

So, onwards and upwards. I wish you all the best with your endeavors, wherever they may be or whatever they are. I am done playing and have cashed my chips out. A bientot, as they say in France.

CQW: When do you start?

Momentum

2007-06-23T14:21:00.000+01:00

When I was 12 I went on a train journey to Moscow. It took two and a half days, and during that time your life became adjusted to life slowly passing you by on both sides at a sedate 60kph. Most places you could look on the train would involve at least a slight sliver of change - a glimpse of a granny passing by on a bench, a parked car at a railway crossing. As the journey progresses, you become more and more used to this.

Once in Moscow, you realise the still vision of reality no longer matches your perception. As you sit in a chair you feel the walls are slightly moving - surprised you look up and realise they're not.

The MBA now feels exactly like having stepped of a train after two and a half days. All of a sudden you are exposed to a remarkable commodity - endless free time. Yet the 10 months of hard concentration have trained you to fill your time productively every chance you get - otherwise you'll fall behind. As soon as you sit down and ponder the amazing reality of a free afternoon you feel a jump inside and quickly check whether there really isn't something productive you need to be doing. Apart from some logistics, parties is the only thing left. The closer they get to graduation, the more nostalgia ridden they become.

Given that I'm still unemployed, I'm looking forward to the next part with a certain amount of trepidation. But, no matter what, I'll be glad to exit the INSEAD train and adjust to a life without moving walls. It's been a roller coaster, but now, reality awaits.

CQW: Are you going to the graduation trip?

Next steps

2007-06-11T20:45:00.000+01:00

We weave and tangle the web of our lives, but sooner or later you need to think about the next step. As you can tell, this was proving difficult for me, but just when you're down life hands you down a helping hand, which is always appreciated even more because of the circumstances.

As I was busy bemoaning the difficulties of my current predicament, an old friend wrote an e-mail explaining he would be moving out of London to do a year long secondment, and if anyone was interested they could have his flat for a pittance. A match made in heaven I thought and no sooner did I reply than I was walking around the flat and being handed the keys for it.

Amazing what a calming effect such a simple step of being able to picture where you will be sleeping for the unforeseeable future starting 3 weeks away had on me. But it did. So hats off to luck, and especially when you're feeling down.

Which of course brings me to next steps. As I wound (nay, flew) my way down to France from London yesterday on the Eurostar I felt that I am ready to leave the INSEAD bubble. Fitter, stronger and theoretically more knowledgeable, though definitely poorer too. So on we go with the last few weeks. But in a lot of ways the experience is over. Classes no longer feel the same and campus has that jaded, nostalgic feel about it already.

CQW: Have you been invited to the Endgame party? That's the one where each girl gets one invite and blokes can only turn up if they're invited. And the whole thing's anonymous for an extra touch of mystery. And no. I have not. Yet.

Work avoidance

2007-06-02T17:21:00.000+01:00

OK. OK. So maybe the abyss is a bit deeper than I thought, but still. It does have a bottom.

I'm having trouble working. Everything in my life seems to have saturated and reached the point where only a jarring change can get things back on track. The thought of reading another case makes my stomach churn. My ability to focus for an hour and a half in class is next to minimal. Text messages, doodles or plain simply staring outside is the weapon of work avoidance there.

In my spare time, I've got to prepare for another VC interview. You have no idea how much work this entails, and I won't start going into it here. But it does. Buckets and bucketloads of what must be as close to perfection as you can get it otherwise there is no point even trying. I'm really questioning my stamina to get me through this. Today was devoted to VC preparation. In between stopping for biccies, staring from the window, going for walks and Facebook I've maybe spent a couple of hours on it. This is stressful. You have the abyss on one side and an inability to focus on the other. Make it stop. Please.

CQW: Have you got a job yet?

The abyss is just a hole

2007-05-23T11:02:00.000+01:00

...and it's not even that deep. In fact, I think my head sticks out when I stand at the bottom.

Well, it seems one can rent a room in a scummy London flatshare for around UKP300 a month. At that burn rate I've got till Christmas. Which is ages. So that's not that bad.

And then there's all the tactical pots I could cook. It seems from interview feedback that I was a high beta stock - showed lots and lots of promise, but also very risky. Risky because I've moved around so much and might be bored. Risky cause I did make some mistakes in presentation. Risky because my numeracy score was far from top notch. So I'm now considering asking for an unpaid summer internship - what better way to mitigate risk for them than to sign up for a 2 month interview. And for me, well given there's not much else I could be doing for certain that would be an interesting option. It would also tell me whether I would like VC for sure.

Another pot is that I've finally got an idea for business that I think might be worth pursuing. About cocking time I say. For a 24 hour old idea it's constantly revolving around my head. The key driver is that if I'm going to be burning through savings, I'd much rather be doing it making a company than looking for a job. I do wonder whether that's a sign of my insanity though. It also seems I'm homeless as of 7th of July, which is ages. London flatshares are typically done a week ahead, so there's bags of time to find something.

CQW: Have you done your year book entry?

The Abyss

2007-05-21T20:56:00.000+01:00

So along we come to the Abyss. I kind of reached it over the weekend but was refusing to acknowledge it. But a little e-mail I got at lunchtime which started with "Thank you for coming to see us last week. We enjoyed.." actually nudged my head over the edge and showed me the gaping void that is there.

And oh my goodness, what a void. The optimist in me knows in years to come this will be a formative time. But right now I feel utterly lost. Where to begin? Homelessness or unemployment? Take your pick. When in doubt I go by alphabetical order.

Homelessness. My rent-free home is 8000 miles away and is not somewhere I would want to live. Implications? All my earthly possessions to show for 29 years are in my room in France from which I will get turfed out come the 15th of July. I can't really explain how unsettling this fact is. But it really is. The one thing that I've had stablish for the past 10 months will be kicked away, and right now I have no idea what will replace it.

Unemployment. My rent-free home is 8000 miles away and is not somewhere I would want to live. Implications? I will have to enter living hell if I do not find a job before I run out of money. Thankfully I have enough cash to last a while, but this is going to be the first time in my life when this could be an issue. I am dreading this.

Of course, all of this is irrational and illogical - broken down, these are all simple problems with simple answers. But I'm human after all. Yes, I know. I will find a job. And yes. There are storage places you could put your stuff into. And yes, I can find somewhere to live. I'll be OK. I know. It's just not that easy. One day at a time, one day at a time. And yes, the wiseguys say it's my fault for not applying to more jobs. But then dammit, I made a stand for what I wanted and it didn't work out. I'm glad I did that, despite the fact that the Abyss is here.

Ding Dong

2007-05-20T16:54:00.000+01:00

I have been dinged. And to add insult to injury, I have been stealth dinged. And to add pain to injury I've been stealth dinged for what was undeniably dream job. The logistics go something along the lines of: interview Wednesday, no news since then. What should have happened is interview Wednesday, call on Thursday to arrange interviews with the top 2 people in the firm on Monday. I know this because it did for someone else. But not for me. For me, no call, no e-mail no nada.

Alas, I'm now scratching head and looking with wonder at the calendar. Unemployment and homelessness in t-(less than 2 months).....

On the bright side, my stress levels seem to somehow be incompatible with that basic fact - something is bound to turn up. Which is nice.

CQW: Are you wearing a dinner jacket to the Ball?

Schoolboy Errors

2007-05-17T19:04:00.000+01:00

Interview came and went. Presentation was OK. But then I totally crashed and burned on the questions afterwards methinks. In a rare moment of detailed analysis I shall go into more info.

The company I was looking at was one that the VC fund had invested in last year. The information they had given me was from that time. In my presentation I said that it was a good investment at that point in time and that they should do it (of course - given that they did do the investment it would have taken a lot of balls and even more evidence (which wasn't there) to say something else). I then went on to look at what happened in the company and marketplace in the past 12 months. Overall, I said that they had done well, but not as well as they could have done. My words were 8/10. More worryingly, things in the market were moving in a way which I did not think beneficial to them. However, I stuck my neck out and said that they were still a good investment today, though my VC should not take 100% of the current funding round and look for some other investors in order to protect against the downside.

So far so good. But then the killer question. "Say someone's approached us with regards to buying the company today. What would you say is a good price?". And off I went. Making a favourite Belgian breakfast dish, rather than answering. Eventually I says, well, you've been in for 1 year, so anything above a 50% return is good. Which is wrong. Really quite wrong. Because if that was the case, the company would not be a good investment today. So there. Now you know. Oh and they sprung one of these numerical tests on me that involves lots of really simple but detailed calculations under time pressure where my error rate goes up to 99% and I end up punching random numbers into the calculator. So I don't expect to hear back from them in a positive way. Pity really as I really liked the people.

Anyways. It's looking like an unemployed summer in France, which frankly is rather nice. A bientot.

In other news, I am reading Katherine Campbell's excellent book on Venture Capital - "smarter ventures - a survivor's guide to venture capital through the new cycle". I can highly recommend it. To underscore that I was interviewed by a celebrity CEO yesterday, the book is peppered with quotes from them. Quite a weird feeling to be reading quotes from someone in a book on the train to your interview by them.

CQW: Are your parents coming to graduation.

Crap Listener

2007-05-15T10:14:00.000+01:00

Remember that post about my Psychological Issues in Management report? Well, I got it marked yesterday. And oh my. What a read the professor's comments were.

Clearly, I knew I'd done a bad job. But you always hope, don't you.... That maybe, just maybe what you perceive as a whole load of rubbish listening is actually really good.

Well, never fear. I think the professor really went to town (and rightly so I should say). Comments to my responses, marked on the interview transcript went along the lines of:

What?
WHAT?????
What are you doing?
LISTEN!
What a silly question!
I hope she survived the interview…..

And to add make things really bad, just like a really good parent would by playing on your own guilt, he finished with his final comment - "It is dangerous to be a poor amateur psychologist. Sorry." What a guy!

So basically, I think I need to take listening off my list of skills. Pity really as I think it's quite important. His basic thesis is that I completely failed to listen to my client and instead I projected my own preconceptions on her. And I know he's right.

In other news, I'm down to the last 4 for the dream Venture Capital job. They have done a clever thing and have made me do a presentation on a company they are considering investing for the final round. The panel will include the CEO and who knows who else - though most likely the partner working on the investment. Which means that all my time has been spent in PowerPoint since last Thursday. I am bricking it to be honest - these people will know everything inside out and back inside again. Nearly there now though. Tomorrow's the big day.

CQW: Are you going on the graduation trip?

Gut Feel

2007-05-09T21:23:00.000+01:00

I could bore you with tedious details of how I spent the break. But I somehow feel that would betray the spirit of this blog (I stayed here for a bit and then I went to Barcelona). Instead, today I think I'll write about gut feel.

Specifically, seeing as it's the topic of the past six months, I'll write about gut feel and career moves. Or to really get into it, I'm going to write about that very special feeling when something feels so right it actually feels right as opposed to yourself convincing yourself it's really right because you think that's the right thing to do. I am sure I make myself clear as ever.

I'm a job hopper. 5 jobs in 6 years is a tough deal to sell (it can and has been done - trust me). But what's interesting is that every single time I've jumped job I've always had worries about the next step. For startups it was worries that they'd go bust (they did). For big companies it was worries that I would become a tiny cog in a great big machine (I was). For consulting it was worries that I never really knew exactly what they actually did day to day (I didn't). And so even though all the jumps made sense, the older I get the more I learn to listen to the little quiet voice at the back of my head that says "Yes, but!". That's probably the same little voice that was telling me that it was great that Google dinged me because of a whole bunch of reasons for which it would not have been right for me.

So imagine my surprise, when looking at the Venture Capital thing, I find that voice strangely absent. I spent the first half of the break relaxing. Or rather I relaxed while researching Venture Capital. Doing this off my own bat, it was almost like a hobby. An incredibly intoxicating and enriching one. There's so many things to research. Companies, people, track records, directions. Pages and pages of web to search.

And as you search you build a picture in your head. A picture of small VC funds comprised of oddball people fascinated by learning and keeping abreast of innovation. With an interest in money and business, but more focused on the buzz of making a technology happen than shouting to the world that their IRR has consistently exceeded 20% since the great depression. People that work with entrepreneurs day in and day out. People that can help with all aspects of running a small company. The more I read, the more I liked.

And the more I read, the more I noticed I didn't have that little voice in the back of my head that would always be there before the next career jump. I think I've found my vocation. Over emotional? Probably. But then, it's one thing finding it, another thing getting into it. So keep those fingers crossed. I'm down to the last 8 in one endeavour, and have another potential option that I need to start preparing for.

CQW: What did you do for the break?

Humorous Housemates

2007-04-28T11:31:00.000+01:00

My housemate wrote this - it put a smile on my face and also gives an insight into the ding dynamic.... Pardon the formatting, HTML not a forte.

JOB HUNTING: A PRACTICAL USER GUIDE

Interviews

Case interview Series of thought experiments in which you pretend calculators were never invented

P Equity interview Mythical event, rarely seen, bit like the Loch Ness Monster

McKinsey You are in the presence of God: bring gold, frankincense and myrrh

interview

Goldman interview As above (but forget the gifts, they don’t need the money)

Feedback In the unlikely event that they remember who you were, they are likely to question either your “fit” or “commitment”…best avoided

Assessment centre A sort of MBA Big Brother event. Never believe that any part of the program is “informal” – someone, somewhere will be observing you with a clip board.

Dings

The basic ding You will experience in many forms: checking your email or hearing your phone ring may inspire panic

The stealth ding You only find out you’ve been dinged when you find your best friend is off for the final round interview in London

Back stab ding You are dinged after the formal job offer: was common during the dotcom meltdown; American Express are only recent practitioners

Google Ding After a process that is a cross between one of those Japanese endurance game shows and a Guantanomo Bay style interrogation…you are dinged unceremoniously

Reverse ding Pay back time…you finally get to ding someone…provided you have more than one job offer

Miscellaneous

Internship They pretend to pay you; you pretend to work

Career Service An INSEAD division intent on making you into a management consultant and gathering statistics to help attract applicants to INSEAD, best avoided

Career counsellors Overflow psychotherapy service used when professional psychiatrists on campus are over-booked.

Application analytics (we are MBAs after all!)

Primary ding rate No. dings for 1^st round/Total number of applications.

A good quick and dirty indicator of your application situation

Secondary rate No. 2^nd round acceptances/No. 1^st round interviews.

Used in addition to primary rate by any professional analyst

Conversion Ratio % 1^st round interviews converted to job offers…

the free cash flow holy grail of application analytics…

Job Multiples As in “Dunnett is trading at 5 times”: 5 job offers, but only one body to carry them out.

End of term

2007-04-28T11:25:00.000+01:00

As ever, the end of term brings that inevitable feeling of "I must go somewhere else so that I can have a break". I'm convinced this is a feeling which is also a little bit of a crowd issue - as soon as term finishes, people scatter to the global winds quicker than one can say "It's the end of term". Myself, I had an interview scheduled in the middle of my break which I could only reschedule recently and hence I was left without an escape plan.

As the past week progressed I felt more and more the need to arrange something. Until the last minute yesterday the plan was to drive to Barcelona. And then I awoke this morning to 27C weather in a French village that is utterly picturesque with all the flowers in bloom. I asked myself what's wrong with a holiday here? And so Barcelona got postponed. Maybe by the middle of next week I would have had enough of idyllic French life, but for now the feeling of not having to go anywhere, do anything or any immediately looming deadlines is overwhelming.

I leave you with a poem - the grand finale of "Psychological Issues in Management". It's translated from Spanish, so please no critics.

Traveller,
There is no path,
You make the path as you walk
As you walk, you make the path.
And when you look back
You see the path
That you will never travel again
Traveller,
There is no path.
Only the wake of ships
Upon the Ocean.

CQW: Are you around for the break?

High Stakes and Dashed Hopes

2007-04-25T18:11:00.000+01:00

Some events in life generate such a mixed bad of complex emotions, it's hard to know where to start writing a blog entry about them. But never fear - at the Career Casino all tastes are catered for and we shall attempt even this challenging feat.

Having adopted the high risk strategy of only having two jobs that I had applied to that I was genuinely interested in, imagine the situation I was placed in when one of them dinged me on Monday. I could try and write reams about the how's and the why's of the ding, but to be honest, I'm kind of looking at it as a black box. The employer in question has a specific policy of not providing any feedback. Given that I thought all my interviews went something like last time - great but not stellar, I can only assume that the standard required cuts somewhere between here and the stars. Alas it seems I do not meet it, and so attention must turn to alternative options.

But before we do that, perhaps it it worthwhile noting the immediate reaction yours truly had on the train back to Paris. Although gutted, a little space in my heart felt a wave of relief. Relief that after 6 years of work in down and dirty High Tech engineering I will be forced to do something a bit more left field after INSEAD. Being asked to write code in interviews really made me question what the point of the past 10 months has been. The sense of de ja vu I got between walking around said employers' office on Monday and experiencing bus loads of bright young things being hired to fill a posh half filled office full of the shiniest technology money can buy reminded me of my first job ever at Cisco Systems back in 2000. I stayed there for 6 months, before decamping to a startup. And although the de ja vu is most likely my mechanism for coping with the rejection, I'm glad it's there. It makes that bottomless pit I find myself staring at at the moment that more manageable.

Just what is at the bottom of this pit? Well, when you have 2 and you lose 1, you're typically left with just 1. In my case this is a job with a VC fund I'm interviewing for in a couple of weeks time. Somehow that seems highly interesting the more I think about it. Funny how a reduction in options focuses the mind. I am now busily trying to somehow hedge my position. In an industry that employs around 500 people Europe wide this is not an easy game to play. But I try. I'm off to have my first power dinner with an external speaker at the school. Please sir, can I have a job?

CQW: Are you finished with classes yet?

Coursework Fatigue

2007-04-17T18:58:00.000+01:00

The MBA marketing brochure goes to great pains to stress how intense the INSEAD MBA program really is, and how even though it's only one year it actually covers 80% of the material covered on a two year program. Having done some Marketing courses I've learned to take it all with a pinch of salt - certainly I think the INSEAD positioning statement of "A year to change your life" leaves some important facts out such as that most (yes, OK. Not all) of the changes achieved involve consulting at one end or the other.

However, back to coursework. I'm fatigued. I've had enough of coursework. And I seem to have lost all ability to get the energy/stress levels necessary to do a remotely good job on any of it. Next week has a feeling not unlike the view from the window of a car broken down on a high speed train line. The tracks have started vibrating and you're debating whether the car might start or whether you're better off opening the door and running for your life. I think there's a minimum of 3 big pieces of work due. A big piece of work is something around 20 pages long. I don't even know what they are yet - and believe me, normally I'm the organised one. Interestingly, all of the people in my groups have similar approaches - someone is bound to blink first and start doing work at some point. Oh well. But for know, interview preparation is a higher priority. A certain employer plans to interview me for 10 hours on next Monday. I can't wait.

On a more refreshing note, I'm reading "Howards End" by EM Forster. It is one of the best books I have read in a long time. The writing zings and tingles with emotion that makes it quite exhausting to read. I am almost afraid to finish it - it is like an elixir. I leave you with a quote that I think is particularly apt for the job search period.

"Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who is prepared and is never taken."

CQW: What will be the first thing you buy once you get your dream job offer?

The end of the tunnel

2007-04-16T20:39:00.000+01:00

Continuing the theme of the sunsetting MBA, things have moved another step closer to their natural conclusion. People have started getting job offers. And some are even getting offers for things they genuinely want to do. Imagine that. Not being one of the chosen few to have drunk from the fountain of the desirable job offer, I can only pontificate that the sense of relief must be immense. My flatmates are certainly showing it. Now they can really concentrate on the things you want to do rather than the things you have to do. Only do the studying you want rather than some wanton chase for class credits. Oh the life. A lethal cocktail I should imagine, when mixed with 3 parts perfect summer weather.....

Meanwhile those of us who remain jobless as yet are continuing unabashed with the Career counselling. Today we covered themes. By starting off on a blue sky walk around the things I've done recently and have enjoyed the counsellor distilled some themes. For me these are revolving around impacting people's lives with technology, learning and entrepreneurial control. I've now got to come up with a spectrum which represents each of these themes to various degrees. You may think this is easy, but each spectrum must consist of at least 10 points. Which is where it becomes complex. Do you create more impact by starting a venture or by growing it? These are the sorts of questions which keep circling around my head.

Meanwhile my New Business Ventures group seems to be disintegrating into chaos. Having been abysmally disappointed by the selection of ventures on offer at the start of the class, I decided I might as well pick one which would be fun. So I went for the crazy lemonade option - at least we'll have fun making lemonade. Sadly that's all we seem to have done - there's no business plan in sight. So I've just pulled my group out of the pitching session - we were scheduled to present to some investors in a days time, and frankly with the amount of work we have done we would have been laughed off the campus.

CQW: Do you know who got Bain London?

Light relief

2007-04-12T21:43:00.000+01:00

If you're bored, have a listen to this. It is a song designed to inspire Shell (one of the on-campus recruiters) employees into delivering shareholder value. Yes. It really is for real.

My flatmate told me a Chinese proverb I like : "to consider someone a true friend, you must have eaten at least a kilo of salt together".

The conurbation of Fontainebleau and Avon (roughly 50-60,000 people) has precisely 18 taxis. They do not work on weekends, nor after 7PM on weekday evenings.

Overachievement

2007-04-12T21:32:00.000+01:00

Sometimes you find something in life that really inspires you. And you feel like it would be a great thing to learn and you that you would really like to excel at it. Like for example, doing the Rogerian report for Psychological Issues in Management.

So far this has most likely been the highlight of the academic experience offered at INSEAD. The Rogerian report is basically practicing the Rogerian technique for listening. You pick an unsuspecting soul, foist a tape recorder on them and spend 45 minutes practicing active listening whilst they talk about something they have feelings about. So far so good.

But then you have to write a report about it all. Having gotten really enthused about the whole thing, clearly I want to do a good report. And so I start. And I realise it's blooming difficult. And after I don't know how many hours (at least 16) on the report, I think I have finally come to the realisation that success at writing reports on Rogerian interviews is not something which will adorn my tombstone once I depart this life.

I must admit I feel a slight sense of frustration at this realisation, but there we are. The report is done, and it is sadly disappointing. I wish I could improve it, but I just don't know how to. Certainly, I think I am far beyond the point where diminishing marginal utility of time spent kicks in.

I guess part of me also feels like I'm letting the professor down with this - he's the kind of granddad professor you want to impress with good grades. Or at least I do. And I know my report is a stinking pile of poo. Never mind. In business you learn to try hard, but once you realise a bird ain't flying to cut your losses and run. So there we are. The report submit button is pressed. Let's hope there's a surprise blog entry in the future on the grade I receive, but honestly, you're better off putting your money on a three legged horse.

Industry and Competitive Analysis

2007-04-10T12:26:00.000+01:00

I sometimes wonder just how much in step I am with the whole campus opinion on various courses. Take for example Industry and Competitive Analysis. This is a course which professes to give you an idea of how to evaluate industries and find sources of competitive advantage. It is one of the P4 "blockbuster" courses. That's a course which gets above 4.5/5 on the professor evaluation. Once a course achieves this, people pick it just for the hell of it - the general opinion is that it is better to have a crap course taught by an excellent professor than vice versa.

So, diligently, I thought something that pulls a 4.93/5 would be worthwhile. What a stinker it has been. In a lot of ways it reeks of consulting to me. The readings are superbly academic. And yet they cover what are fundamentally fairly basic concepts. Like for example you need to know where exactly it is that your company adds value - e.g. production, marketing or distribution. And quite often people don't so they go off and invest in the wrong thing. Hardly rocket science. You'd think. Except this simple concept is couched in academic papers written in the 60s when the English was even more flowery than this blog.

And a lot of the class material, seems to me anyway, is of the sort where the 20/20 hindsight has added wonderful perspective to it. Time and time again things get explained along the lines of "This is the correct answer and is what the company should have done. Only a stupid person would do something else". Consultant speak once again.

Another gripe is the handouts. The professor has been doing this course since the beginning of time. And yet, the handouts have a feel that is very much "My first handout" feel to it. I am pretty certain that at some point in the handout generation process Clippy popped up and said "Looks like you're trying to write a handout. Would you like some help?". At which point the professor said "Do you know who I am????" and vanished old Clippy into a puff of smoke. With a shockingly bad handout being the direct result.

Moan over. It's my birthday. I am definitely older, but the question is, am I wiser?

CQW: What electives are you doing for P5?

Becalmed

2007-04-09T19:09:00.000+01:00

These past few days I feel becalmed. The eye of the storm that was first round interview passed last week. MBA students were scattered like straws through the forest of dings, rejections and 2nd round invitations. And then the sun struck. Not a "Maybe I'll show my face" strike, but a strongwilled, "I'm here to stay for 5 days and there will not be a single cloud in the sky" kind of strike.

And so you try and carry on as before. You try and get the willpower to do the latest Industry and Competitive Analysis reading (it's drier than a cheese cracker if you ask me, but I seem to be in a minority). You feel obliged to run on the MBA treadmill arranging group meetings and case studies and job applications. But you just can't as it is too nice outside. And so you pop out outside, just for 5 minutes of course. And you breathe in the fresh spring air and remember that there's a world outside the MBA. And for the first time you feel almost ready to leave the protective wrappings of the bubble and re-enter it. Fitter, stronger and ready for the next challenge. But just before we start that, maybe a few more minutes in the sun won't hurt.

It's the end of consulting inteview week

2007-04-05T15:41:00.000+01:00

Finally. It's over. The week of consulting interviews. The whole campus has been running around like a headless chicken trying to get jobs with consultancies. And people get dinged and people get depressed. And there's hundreds of uncomfortable conversations. They all go along the lines of

A: Have you heard from company X?
B: Yes. I'm interviewing next week.
A: Ah. I haven't heard.
B: (realises A's just been stealth dinged and gets uncomfortable. That's when they a company doesn't have the decency to tell you they've dinged you and instead stay quiet)
A: Oh well. Never mind. There will be another one.
B: Yeah. I'm sure.

And on and on. I must say I'm quite pleased to not have gone through the whole consulting melee. On my end I'm through to the final Google round. Which I think means I'm taking the foot off the madman application process. I'm pleased to have the confidence of knowing that a "Shell Downstream Process Manager" will not be something seen on a business card with my name on it at any point in the near future. There's just not much point applying for random things in the hope I get something. I seem to have two leads in the hand which are quite exciting. If something really exciting comes along then I'll apply for it, but for now I hope one of my leads goes somewhere. Which probably means I may even have to start thinking about things like hobbies to fill my time again - people are not readily accessible at the moment what with all the interview malarkey running about at the moment. Crikey. It's almost like I'll be a normal person again as opposed to an MBA student on steroids.

A Melange

2007-04-04T19:59:00.000+01:00

I keep meaning to try and have meaningful, well structured entries to this blog - most likely to satisfy one of the primary reasons I'm writing it - in order to learn how to write better.

But sometimes, I guess life doesn't come in useful bite size chunks that have a well structured beginning, middle and end. Sometimes the chunks are too small, and sometimes so vague you can't even be sure if they exist. So in order to meet the dear reader's insatiable appetite for content, they shall have to put up with a melange of an entry. This is where structure is abandoned for the sake of information.

The days are longer. You have no idea how much joy this brings to my life. I can now officially pull off a 12 hour day at school and still be home before dark. This allows me plenty of time to go for a walk and look at the ducks by the river - an important aspect to the sanity maintenance process necessary in P4.

I am writing my Rogerian report for Psychological issues in management. The process is mind numbingly difficult. I am supposed to describe the person I interviewed as they see themselves. So far so good. I am then supposed to describe them as I see them. I tried this and then I realised, the two are exactly the same. Which leads me to conclude that I've achieved absolutely nothing in terms of putting myself in their shoes - if I had I can't imagine there would be no difference between how I see them and how they really are. Oh well. Maybe listening skills is not my forte.

I went into an interview today. After 5 minutes, I said "Look, I'll be honest with you, and after the presentation I saw last night I feel there's very little chance I'm a good fit for you company's culture". The guy agreed and said I would most likely be bored there. So we parted in good company and spirits. When was the last time you were so honest?

I am invited back for 2nd round VC interview. Unfortunately they scheduled this right in the middle of the break. The dilemma of going to an interview for a position I really want, and having a holiday (I really, really need it) is a bit of a pain. I've asked to see if they can move the interview - a collective fingers crossed from the audience may not go amiss here.

Google is great, though my performance could have been better. Should know by Friday whether there is any progress there.

I have completed my Work and Life stars in my career counselling. My counsellor proudly informed me that I'm one of the lucky bunch who seem to have compatible demands from their Personal and Work lives. I inquired what happens to people who don't and she said "Well, they either are the sensible sort and sit down and decide which one is more important and focus on that, or if they're unlucky spend the rest of their life chasing an impossible balance". I gulped and thanked myself for having compatible desires.

CQW: What are you doing for the P4/P5 break?

Onwards and Upwards

2007-04-01T19:49:00.000+01:00

Some days I think INSEAD is like a video game. There's a kind of tempo to every week. After this long into the program, you become used to it. But every now and again, just like a video game, you progress up a level and all of a sudden the tune starts going that little bit quicker. The end of level boss draws nearer and nearer.

For me, things stepped up a notch on Friday, with the commencement of real interviews. Completely failing to realise the wonderful advice of "do some interviews you don't care about for practice", I somehow seem to have managed with the ones I want the most being the first in my schedule. The first one was with a UK VC fund that invests in high-tech early stage companies. It certainly sounds very exciting, and definitely something I'm interested in. Pity I only had about 18 hours notice to prepare for it. It went OK though nothing more. In reality I think that likely means failure - the fund itself has 15 investment partners (read: tiny) and they're interviewing about 30 people for positions. So I think anything less than "That was absolutely stellar" is probably not good enough. Never mind. Tomorrow is Google day.

I have done a lot of retrospection last week, and come to a certain conclusions. One of the major ones is that I've been giving myself an inordinately hard time over the past year. About not being sure I know what I want to do. About not really meeting the ridiculous expectations I had set myself for this year. About just how badly I cope with uncertainty in reality. It's almost like there's a part of me I've left out in the cold for the past year. So I opened the door last week and brought in the almost gangrening part of my personality in from the cold. It felt nice and warm, and I think I'm getting that tingling sensation when blood flows to bits that have been too cold for too long.

So for now, I shall float on the sea of possibilities that opens up and not stress about where it all ends. I am giving things the best shot I can, and at some point the dice will land with certain numbers on them. I hope tomorrow they land with sixes, but as we all know, anything can happen in the Career Casino, and that's why people come to play here!

CQW: You're looking sharp in your suit. Who is it for?

First Battle Shots

2007-03-26T19:03:00.000+01:00

I got the feeling I'm part of this army today. The INSEAD students vs. employers. We're all marching into battle, and the employers unleashed their first set of arrows - in the form of first round interview rejections. There's people being felled all over the place. And the war drum beats faster and faster. Next week could get messy!

Adaptibility & Comparitus

2007-03-25T16:38:00.000+01:00

One of the curses of being fairly adaptable is over sensitivity to your surroundings. I'm a firm believer that only through understanding one's surroundings can one really adapt to them. Great as that is in theory, I'm starting to realise some shortcomings to this approach. I guess this is one of the 'left field' advantages of taking a year out and not working - you get time for all sorts of curious thoughts to pop into your head.

But I hear you ask impatiently - shortcomings? Well yeah. I've coined the term 'comparitus' - OK, so it's not brilliant. It's the process of constantly comparing. And believe me, when you do an MBA, there's so many things to compare. What classes are you taking? What grade did you get in X? How long did your group take to do Y? How many interviews have you got? Are you busy with dinner tonight?

The things is, I'm coming to the conclusion that this is a pretty efficient way to get oneself depressed. You can never know everything about the 400 other people doing an MBA. And so you sample. And then extrapolate. And guess what - when you sample, there's selective sampling bias built in. So when you ask someone and they tell you that they have 3 interviews already, you feel like everyone else must have at least 5 and you having none is a sign from a higher power that you're really not that good. Or at least that's how it is if you're going through an insecure patch like myself.

Which brings me back to the whole adaptability thing. I had to write an essay on "Adapting to a truly foreign culture" for my favourite class of the year so far - "Psychological Issues in Management". My main point there was that there's a conflict between self and the interface between your surroundings. If you spend all your time adapting, your self kind of disappears under a layer of glue moulded to your surroundings. So I guess what I'm expressing in a fairly voluminous manner is that I've decided to try and adapt a bit less and be myself a bit more. I think that's quite a challenge - Psychology professor is adamant people never change, and he's someone I'm inclined to take seriously. But I like projects. At least interesting ones.

CQW: Did you get BCG interview?

Arcade Fire

2007-03-24T23:33:00.000+01:00

Frequent readers may have noticed the shameful bid for publicity this blog has experienced in the past week. In a bid to play around with Google search rankings (at the moment a search on "career casino insead" goes nowhere near this blog) I have linked to some other student's blogs.

The next stage in the tarting this blog for the masses is a move into the audio/visual dimension. What better way to do this than to stick some piccies up of the Arcade Fire gig I went to in Paris.

You'll be spared my attempts at music reviewing cause I need to go to bed. The gig was good. Not amazing (they insisted on playing lots of songs from the new "Neon Bible" album, which is not that good). But when they played songs from the first album it was amazing.

It was so refreshing to be out there in the real world with real people enjoying some music and completely forgetting about the whole MBA/job thing.

The real surprise for me though was the support band. They were ace. You too could have a listen to their music here. Maybe you like it too.

Good night!