Real life begins

Now is the time to begin an exiting new chapter in my life…

That was exactly what I was hoping to say thinking about my future two years ago. I was debating with myself whether the investment in an MBA is going to be worth my time, effort, and even more significantly if it is worth it going back to the life as a poor student, giving up the car, salary and jumping into the deep end of student debts. The feedback from my family didn’t help my decision process neither, they simply told me that it would be a mistake to waste, such a big pile of money on an Education.

For those of you who have followed my blog for a while, you can see that my MBA experience has been an uphill battle with its fair share of ups and downs. I’m happy to share though that it has accomplished all of the things that I ever wished it to. I ended up in an international position in Hong Kong, switching career from IT into Financial services and as a cherry on top is a significant boost to my pre-MBA salary.

Some people might say I got really lucky with my post MBA career, some others might argue that it was a deliberate concentrated effort that I put into it, and the truth would be somewhere in-between. Just like one of my favorite cheesy movies “Shakespeare in Love” says: it will all somehow come together, and it certainly did for me.

Looking back, one of the best things that I’ve learned at Ivey was to trust in myself. And it made all the difference in my MBA experience. I stayed happy throughout the time in school and I landed a great job, even though it did take me a while to find it.

You are the one who knows yourself the best. You know just what you are capable of. The key becomes to find an employer who shares your vision. Rejection in this context is actually quite a lucky event. Rejections do sting your pride, but if you think about it, they are actually quite helpful. For example, without rejections I would have never landed my current opportunity. But unfortunately its not nearly as easy as letting rejections do all the work. You have to be selective as well.

If I would have accepted that first lower offer after my undergraduate degree to go and work in a small town for Phillips Medical machines as a technologist, I can almost guarantee you that I would have not been here or nowhere close to being as successful as I am right now. But temptation is always there, like the IBM asking if I would consider taking a good opportunity, but in Winnipeg... And again you have a choice of either playing it “safe”, taking that sure bet position and a comfortable life, or betting the house that something much better is going to come along.

In Russian there is a saying: “if you don’t risk you won’t get to drink a Champaign”, and so just happens that I really like the taste of Champaign ^^

George

Ivey MBA Career quest, going in “deep and wide”

Let’s make this a part 2 of the George’s MBA career search series. A quick recap of where we left it off last time:

1. Came into the MBA program over ambitious
2. Thought a top tier consulting job was the “it” job
3. Started wondering if consulting was really “it”
4. Didn’t get second round consulting interviews
5. Thought I was a failure
6. Took another look at non-Investment Banking and non-consulting jobs to realize that despite the lack of glamour they are jobs out there that might be just as good if not better that those “it” jobs

Alright so here you might start to get a sense of what the MBA career search really feels like. The analogy that comes to mind is the one of a roller coaster. If you have ever been on one of those crazy high roller coasters, you know the feeling where you rise up up and up, and it seems like you are on top of the world just to be screaming and going doooooown the next moment. Similarly, MBA career search too has a lot of ups and downs. And the first time you go through one of these downs, your get a shrinking feeling in your stomach. You think to yourself: Was it the right decision to spend $100 grand on the MBA, or maybe I should have listened to my family!

So here I was at the end of September, I found myself with no job and at a bit of dead end in my initial industry of choice (consulting). I was at a crossroads; I could continue my career search in consulting, targeting more boutique firms and ultimately lowering my career expectations. Other option would be to decide that despite my initial decision consulting wasn’t the right “fit” for me and move on in my career search. As a bit of side note, I believe human beings are naturally prewired for continuity, from the infancy majority of us seek comfort in routines and familiar environments that we are accustomed to. That in turn makes life predictable and comfortable. Moreover, to make life even easier we create a mental picture of our environment, a map of sorts to help simplify the everyday life. One of the hardest realizations at least for me has been to admit to yourself that your map is wrong and needs fixing. For an instance you realize that you are in conflict with yourself, and you have to tell your old self that she was wrong and that hurts. It does sting your pride but none the less you have to take the “plunge” and just move on.

And plunge I did take…

First of all I decided not to be closed minded to any job posting that comes up on school’s internal job posting website. While trying to look at those posting as objective as I could. That was the wide part of the “deep and wide” strategy. As the result I ended up interviewing for Product Management at Google, Project Executive at IBM, Leadership Development program at Eli Lilly and Company (Pharmaceutical) and a couple of other ones that I would have never considered just few short months before. The only promise that I made to myself was to be honest with interviewers about both myself and what I was looking to get out of the next job. That way I was hoping to make the job search process more collaborative, enlisting employers to help me land an ideal job. I took the principles that at least in theory should make you a more successful entrepreneur and applied them to my job search. Those were an almost unlimited faith in success and the willingness to push yourself forward towards your goals despite people around you telling you it won’t work.

The months of October through February I was going wide, doing as much research on my own as learning in action through interviews. I kept actively reaching out to alumni to meet with them and to understand new industry niches that appeared as a good “fit” for my skills and future career aspirations. At the same time I started to better understand the rules of the game: understand your strengths, realize your weaknesses and look for jobs where there are jobs. Let me elaborate: Strengths and weaknesses help you realize some of the constraints that you are going to be operating under in your job search. And looking for the jobs where there are jobs is a “no-brainer”!

I took a clean piece of paper, and I wrote my direct work experience, so out came the experience with Wealth Management industry, Product Management experience with Technology and finally some Sales experience. Then I started thinking about my other interests, such as Project Management, Leadership and Finance. Then I wrote down my weaknesses, but I’m not going to tell you those ;)

And finally after months of searching, BINGO!! One of the things that I accidentally got involved in at school was a helping to put together a transportation conference. The purpose of the conference was to bring together majority of stakeholders for the upcoming Québec – Ontario transportation corridor and to get process moving on public policy framework for this project. One piece of the project that I found of great interest was the use of public private partnerships (P3s) to help finance and build the infrastructure. On top of it, the more I researched it the more I was getting convinced that this is the perfect thing for me. I thought that this industry will not only let me leverage my experience with Public policy and project management but also be a perfect fit with my interest in Finance. Lastly, talking to alumni and doing research made it sound as if there’s a lot of potential for growth in this industry thus creating a lot of potential opportunities.

Now it was time to go deep…

I spend the next three months doing exactly as planned: strategically trying to hammer at the P3 market here in Canada. I reached out to major organizations such as Infrastructure Ontario, Greater Toronto Transportation Authority (now Metrolinx), banks, and contractors, basically you name it. And things were going great. I’ve applied to a job at a major player in the Ontario P3 market. I spoke to their CEO, HR and couple other people. I felt that the prospects of me getting the job were good. I even had people trying to help speed things up internally. Now let me bring you back to my roller coaster analogy at the beginning of this post. It felt as if I was on top of the world and could smell and touch that P3 Job. But fortunately for me I would get a chance to experience that again couple of times during the summer. Did I mention that I love roller coasters? So needless to say the P3 job never happened for me.

Next on the list was an international career. I spend significant part of my life in Moscow Russia and speak the language fluently, so I thought why not look for a job there. Furthermore, the job situation in Canada and North America has been deteriorating significantly throughout the year leading to a recruitment freeze on both Bay and Wall Streets. Again working my contacts and alumni I was actually able to come quite close to getting an internship in Moscow Russia with European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). And again up I went on that roller coaster getting all excited at the prospects of joining EBRD and helping them put together a policy framework for micro financing in Russia with potential for a permanent job after the 6 month internship. But you guessed it, at the last minute EBRD cancelled the position as they didn’t get enough applicants. All I could do at that point was to smile and think that this all felt too much like a déjà vu over and over again. How can one operate if even such a basic thing as the lucky three rule has failed you ahaaahah (consulting, P3, and now EBRD)? I knew though that instead of putting my hands down now was the time to push it even harder.

But what I didn’t know if that my luck was about to finally take a turn for better.

The art of luck and the science of success when it comes to an MBA job search.

First of all I want to Thank all of you who directly or indirectly asked me about my MBA job search and wished me luck. It’s been quite an involved process and I’m glad to report to you that I have landed my dream job. Sorry to keep you in suspense, now I can finally write to you about the MBA career management and job search at Ivey. I’m planning to do it over a couple of separate posts so stay tuned.

Let me start off by making sure that we are all on the same page, I write this post with an underlying assumption that the objective of the majority of people pursuing an MBA is to get a better job, myself included. It typically happens either through landing a position of increased responsibility in their existing firm/career path or through switching into a totally new industry upon graduation. I say majority as there are always exceptions to a rule, and there might be people who are either looking to start new businesses, are working in a family business setting, or just decided to do it for fun (don’t laugh I met people who have done just that).

MBA is no doubt a hyped-up degree, at least at this point. And with it comes a warning: use with caution as a targeted career advancement tool. Just like a surgical scalpel it’s not a universal tool and is only as good as the hand guiding it, you being the hand in this particular analogy. So one has to not only have a good idea of what you want to get out of the MBA but also be realistic about one’s own skills going into the MBA. On the flip side it’s also seemingly hard to believe whether there’s actually any real content behind all that hype, and if it is worth investing perfectly good $100,000+ into the MBA when Porsche Cayman might seem like a pretty good investment at least in terms of a subsequent gain in popularity.

Consider the following though, I did a rough first year Return on Investment (ROI) calculation couple of days ago, using the numbers from my new job. I also compared that to the ROI from my undergraduate computer engineering degree. Turns out that the undergraduate first year ROI for me worked out to be in the order of 10-12% while ROI for the MBA is at least four times as much. Not bad… Having said that, there are number of conditions that might affect your MBA ROI, for example you being in right place at the right time; level of salary going in and the condition of a general economy upon the graduation.

Let me now rewind the clock a year and a half back and take another look at my expectations going into the MBA (and whether they were entirely realistic)

At the time, my view of the MBA world was shaped by the information I gathered from MBA portals on Business Week and Financial Times websites, student blogs and school placement statistics. Moreover, in the beginning the recipe seemed unbelievably easy: add three magical letters (M, B and A) behind your name and your salary doubles or even triples, what can be easier, right? Then came the question of why does it cost $10,000 to get an MBA at some schools while at others it’s a cool $100,000+ for the same three letters. Maybe you get those letters in “gold”, joked I with my friends back then. The answer is of course as with any other product the final price is a combination of variety of factors. Brand premium is certainly there for a top tier schools as you are paying for prestige of attending a school that has distinguished history. There are a lot of tangible things though that you get at a top tier MBA School, such as:

• ability to forge strong connections to your classmates who are bound to have a future multimillionaire or two amongst them


• access to the responsive alumni network that has a lot of senior decision makers amongst it’s ranks (read people who can hire you or back your next business venture)


• there’s also the quality of recruiters that the university is able to attract


• and finally, the higher quality of education (although it’s becoming more of a plain vanilla component with a lot of lower tier schools able to provide at least as good of education)

With the top tier MBA program you get all the high quality ingredients, while with the third tier program you might get a great education but that alone might not be able to propel you forward in your career by as much.

So to come back to my initial expectations, I though getting into one of Canada’s top business schools pretty much guaranteed that are you will become rich by the age of 30 i.e. get a great Consulting or an IBanking (CIB) job with a top tier firm (plus the associated competitive compensation package). In retrospective, that was obviously a bit of an overestimation on my part. Allow me to elaborate: on the first day of classes I realized that I wasn’t so special in my preference for the post MBA career, meaning that pretty much all of my classmates wanted to also get some flavor of a CIB job. That presented me with a bit of a pickle as there was only a limited number of spots available at the top consulting firms, in past years top tier consulting firms combined took five – six people from of each MBA class. So having 40 people compete for those 5 available spots did start to sound like a bit of competition. None the less I was quite confident in my abilities to prove to a top tier consulting firm that I was the right guy for them.

To be honest, at the time I was completely blinded by those highly desirable CIB jobs, and simple logic worked wonders: if everybody else wants it means those CIB jobs are great. It was clearly the case of “group think” where we all wanted those top tier jobs and thus it made it so much more desirable to get them. For me it translated into good three months of research as well as endless hours of interview practice getting ready for those tough consulting interviews.

As far as the school initiated career activities go, less than a month into the program we started getting a constant stream of visitors from consulting, finance and industry. Each trying to shed a bit of light on exactly what they did in their day to day jobs. Furthermore, two months into the program we had a career week in Toronto, where there was a selection of top firms lined up for us to meet. Full days of various industry information sessions, company hosted info and mingling sessions, mock interviews, and one-on-one meetings. It was then when we first started to get a real sense of what different industry jobs are all about, and how they stack against the CIB jobs.

And then came September, the month that majority of top tier CIB firms do their hiring (a year in advance). I had a couple of first round interviews and that’s as far as it went for me in consulting. Ouch… I being rejected?! Of course I was initially somewhat disillusioned and disappointed, although the more I thought about it the more I realized I was relieved deep down, as right around then I was starting to doubt that consulting was really the place for me at this point in my career. I figured, on the bright side those consulting interviews are really rigorous at testing whether you are going to be a good “fit” with the firm’s culture. Based on their extensive experience firms have a pretty good idea if you’d do well in their consulting environment. That in turn saves everybody unnecessary pain and suffering of discovering two months down the road that you hate your new job and want to quit.

If you are considering Consulting you have to really ask yourself if you are ready to work 70-80 hours a week, IBanking is more along the lines of 100 hours. Granted the pay for either stream is quite competitive at mid $100s for the first year, including year end bonus. Furthermore, IBanking is used to be a steeper climb after the first year vs. Consulting. The Subprime meltdown in 2007 in US might change that.

One of the most common MBA student traps is that students typically equate those top tier CIB jobs with all the future glamour. Seeing their peers get those sexy six figure jobs early on makes people naturally think they missed out on a one in a lifetime opportunity and now it’s much less likely that they will land any kind of a decent job. And taking a look around I saw that my situation wasn’t all that unique and there was a large number of my classmates that didn’t get those dream (or so I thought at that time) jobs.

October was a month when one could sense some tension in the air at school... The question of the month in October was whether MBA was the right decision for me. I mean here you are having invested big chuck of your net worth into your MBA education, going knee deep in debt and it turns out you can’t get the job that you wanted so much, it sucks! to say the least. Furthermore, the question that lingers on your mind at that point is: So what’s next?

From the information sessions earlier in the year we saw that Industry and Corporate Finance (ICF) jobs have their own very tangible set of benefits. You not only get the hands-on experience of seeing your ideas through but you also maintain your quality of life (relatively of course). Despite the initial impression the compensation is actually also competitive, especially if you consider it on a $ per hour basis. Furthermore, those ICF jobs are not as volatile as the CIB jobs, which are highly related to how well economy is doing at the given moment.

More about my job search in the next post…
George

Ivey’s China Teaching Project

Written by: Rebecca Liu, MBA 2008

In recent years, the business world has been eyeing China with great interest as untapped opportunities continue to emerge. The Chinese capital, Beijing, is known for its rich culture and extensive history, preserved in its many landmarks such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. The world is also counting down to the August 8th start of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games to be held in Beijing. You can imagine how honoured I felt to be part of the team to represent Ivey for one month to teach an undergraduate course at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University for their School of Economics and Management (SEM).

You can find the full post on the Ivey MBA Business Week blog (Click here)

KEY MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2009

What does one do when you have a bit of free time on your hands after finishing an MBA? The answer is of course simple: you put together a prediction of key marketing trends for next year!



I bet that the top three marketing trends that will impact how Canadian marketers do business in 2009 will be:

• Mobilization
• Personalization
• Greenification

With the cell phone technology becoming more advanced, marketers need to dial into a new wave of mobile linked promotions. Apple has been leading the trend in this area, with their iPhone, which is going to be launched in Canada July 2008.

Second version of iPhone is going to be equipped with a new generation of location-aware software created in collaboration with Google Inc. Furthermore, expected to retail at a price of $199 (under a 3 year contract), iPhone is going to be quite affordable compared to other Smartphones on the market today. What does that mean for marketers in Canada? It means that with the increased popularity of the iPhone marketing spending on mobile medium is likely to receive a significant boost; in particular companies are going to start investing more into mobile advertising and building their mobile presence.

There are already services in US that allow promotional coupons to be sent to user’s cell-phone once they are in the vicinity of a particular registered business, maximizing the potential for lead generation and conversion. Combine that with the fact that new generation of Smartphones will likely allow for a far more granular measurement of marketing ROI and there’s a real possibility that mobile marketing dollars are going to be the biggest growth area next year.

As Canadians increase the use of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS technologies available in majority of new Smartphones, their mobile experience will become more personalized. Prior to these technologies such level of personalization was only available sitting in-front of the computer. With the mobile personalization, depending both on their location and preferences users would be receiving selected promotional information on their mobile phones that could be made much more relevant and appealing to them. This also lessens the traditional gap of time and distance between when a consumer sees an ad and when they can actually buy the product which in turn would increase the effectiveness of promotional activities.

Furthermore, as marketing dollars continue transitioning towards online medium, social networking sites will start to play an even more important role in 2009. Websites like Facebook and MySpace as well as other niche players will increasingly help marketers to deliver their message effectively through the clutter to their target audiences. This will be made possible through the abundance of personal preference data that users willingly share on those sites.

Gas prices have skyrocketed over the last three years. Last year alone the price of gas shot up 31%. As gas prices increase, the topic of energy starts to occupy greater share of consumer’s mind and so does the related topic of environment. Hence, Greenification is becoming another hot topic. As companies continue to attempt differentiating themselves in consumer’s mind being the Greenest is finally starting to pay off real dividends. Therefore metrics measuring how Green is the company perceived by its target segment will provide an additional insight of potential sales driver in 2009.

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Now we'll just have to wait a year to see how close I really was ;)

George

McLoving it!

Who would have thought following two words could be found in a same sentence:

1) McDonalds™ and Love
2) Subway™ and Pizza
3) Me and MBA-grad

None the less McDonalds marketing slogan is "i'm lovin' it". Subway, which is a major sub chain in North America, has recently added 90 second pizzas to their menu (maybe they should also think of changing their brand to Sub + Pizza way = SuPway). And, YOU GUESSED IT: I’ve graduated from the Ivey MBA! Big Yay for George!!!

It has been a challenging year with its fair share of ups and downs, lots of learning not only about variety of business topics but more importantly about myself. Comparing MBA to my undergraduate experience I’m tempted to say that the undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering taught me how to research a narrow topic in-depth while MBA taught me how to think broadly about business problems.

Lots of people ask me if I’m happy about my decision to pursue the Ivey MBA and if I had a chance to go back would I still do it. The answer is resounding YES! Now let me elaborate a little bit about what I mean, it will also help to explain the ups and downs that I’ve mentioned in passing above. Interesting nature about Ivey is that it stretches you to the limit and then some, and that’s what really helps to build your capacity to succeed. Not only does it do that, it also trains you to think like a good manager by looking at problems broadly.

Combination of a case teaching method and large number of brilliant professors has been two real highlights about my experience at Ivey. Cases are real situations that managers are faced with in their everyday activities. It trains you to recognize patters of problems analyze those situations systematically and act accordingly to resolve them. After a year of Ivey it feels like you’ve been in a management role for at least 5 years based on the number of management problems that you’ve seen and collaborated as a team to resolve.

As anticipated, it turned out to be one expensive year. The final number is hovering close to a cool $95,000 including living expenses and an optional trip to China, and excluding lost wages. I’ve also told my family to forget buying me a watch as a graduation present and instead to get me a sturdy helmet to safeguard my head which now officially is the most expensive asset that I own!

The other day I was pondering a question whether I could have lasted another year if Ivey still had a two year MBA program? The answer is a simple NO. First of all my finances are stretched to the limit with the one year MBA. Second, going back to life of student has been fun for the first 4 months, but I’d like to go back to having an income, rather than just living off student loans. Finally, talking to alumni from the two year program it sounds like it was fairly tough to keep the same level of focus on education over the span of two years.

I want to thank everybody for following the blog over my year at Ivey. One last part of my Ivey experience that I want to share with you is the whole career search process at Ivey. I’m planning to write it once I accept a job offer.

Cheers,
George

Book recommendations from my favorite Ivey prof

Following is the list of book recommendations from Robert Nourse, my all-time favorite professor at Ivey. Bob taught Entrepreneurial Manager elective for us. It was truly amazing to have somebody with his level of experience sharing insights and knowledge with us. Bob founded Bombay Company and grew it from one store to 432 stores; he was named 1993 Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. magazine. 

Guy Kawasaki,  The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested Battle Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything, (New York: Penguin Group, 2004)

One of the early pioneers at Apple, Guy Kawasaki is the founder of the venture capital firm, garage.com. He’s down to earth, humorous and practical.  You should, at minimum, read something he’s written.  If you like this, you’d also enjoy his earlier book, Rules for Revolutionaries.

Fareed Zakaria,  The Post American World, (New York: Norton, 2008) 

This book won’t be out until the first week of May, but it’s widely-anticipated and, because Zakaria speaks extensively, its content is somewhat known.  A naturalized American of Indian descent, the author is the editor of Newsweek International.  He’s a brilliant thinker and you’ll find his insight into the rise of China and India, and their impact on the advanced economies of the West, fascinating and thought-provoking. His earlier book, The Future of Freedom, was a New York Times bestseller.

Collins and Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York: HarperBusiness, 1994, 1997)

This is certainly not a new book and, technically, not one that deals exclusively with entrepreneurship.  But the authors, who are Stanford researchers reporting on a six year study of 18 successful companies, have a lot to say about what makes a visionary company and vision is an important ingredient of any entrepreneurial venture. That’s why I like it.

Lewis, The New New Thing (New York: Penguin Books, 2001)

Different than other books on the list, this is a biography.  It looks at Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape  and Healtheon.  There was an earlier hardcover edition, but this is the paperback.

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Enjoy!
George

Is there a best time to start an MBA?

By: George

So it’s been a long road but you’ve finally made the decision to pursue an MBA. Congratulations! Now there are a couple of things you might want to take into the consideration when making the next decision about when you actually start your future MBA. As usual, please keep in mind that following are just my personal subjective thoughts and may or may not work for you and are definitely not meant to act as de facto rules.

In this blog post I will discuss couple of potential factors that might affect the ROI of your MBA investment. In particular I will focus on those factors which are associated with the timing of an MBA: such as current economic conditions, your age and years of experience.

Following discussion is going to based on a 12 month MBA program format as that’s the type of program I am currently attending here at Ivey. You might also find it interesting that one of the reasons why I chose Ivey was because it is a bit easier to plan around since it’s only a one year program. Shorter program means lower probability that economic conditions are going to shift drastically while I am at school affecting my career search strategy.

First, let’s talk about global economic conditions or at least economic conditions of a country that you are planning to start your post-MBA career at. Even though I was not able to find any empirical data to confirm this, one can probably sense that the type of jobs that a brand new MBA grad would be going after are a bit tougher to find during a period of economic recession as compared to a period of prosperity. It is especially true for the high paying consulting and investment banking jobs; those types of jobs are highly correlated to the GDP growth. Having said there are still all kinds of jobs available during a recession. Industry jobs are usually much less dependent on the economic cycles (See following interview). What the economic slowdown or a recession means is that MBA grads would typically have to be much more proactive in their job search, orienting their search towards the hidden job market. Unfortunately, there might be some unforeseen consequences associated with graduating during the tough times: "A growing body of research on both MBAs and undergrads suggests that graduating into an economic downturn will substantially reduce lifetime earnings" (BusinessWeek).

Furthermore, I’m going to take a subjective view that Canadian economy is still tightly coupled closely to US economy (good thing that IMF agrees). If you combine that with the fact that US economic recessions has lasted on average 11 months with longer ones taking up to 16 months to unwind and are typically followed by an average of 57 months of economic expansion. The logical conclusion would be that the best way to start your Ivey MBA would be within a year or two after a recession has passed. That appears to be the best way to capitalize on ones investment if that would be the only factor that you are looking at. (Recipe 1: Add a one US Recession, wait for it to cook for 11-16 months, and then add the Ivey MBA within a year or two)

To make it a bit more fun, there are a couple of other factors that get added to the mix. Years of experience appears to be another good one to look at. This one is particularly interesting one for me personally, as I only have three years which is on the lower end of the curve for Ivey. Talking to number of people in the industry and Career Management team at Ivey, the optimal number of years appears to fall in the range of 3-5 years. You would get the biggest % boost to you salary. Lets assume that the average salary for 4 years of experience would fall somewhere around $60,000 per year and even if you get the average $85,000 salary upon graduation that’s a 42% boost to your salary. Not bad! However if you wait another 3-4 years and you are already making around $75-80K/year, the starting salary might not be that much higher than what you had going in. I also know couple of people that came in expecting pay cuts right after the MBA, hoping that MBA will ultimately act as a strategic tool which will help to increase the longer term salary ceiling. 4-5 years of experience in would also allow you to take the full advantage of the learning opportunity available at Ivey. (Recipe2: add 4-5 years of solid experience and the Ivey MBA, mix well)

The last thing I’m going to mention is role of one’s age. I will be honest; being on either extreme of the age spectrum has its potential challenges. For one, it might be a bit harder to “connect” with your classmates. Having said that there are enough people with diverse backgrounds and in various age groups that there’s always opportunities to socialize and form life-long friendships. (Recipe3: Be yourself and respect others, age matters not)

So let me quickly recap this post: Years of solid work experience is probably the single most important factor contributing to the high ROI of an MBA. Graduating during a recession – a bit more stressful but doable none the less. Those are universal factors that might affect you ROI in Ivey, there are certainly variety of other factors such as personality, ability to learn, etc that also affect ROI as well, but they are much more individual, and therefore I can’t speak to those.

Having said all of this, keep in mind that there are always exceptions to every rule, as correctly pointed out by an Anonymous reader of this blog. The example that comes to mind is the one from our Venture Creation elective class when we had a chance to talk to couple of Ivey grads who founded a successful business right after their graduation (PolicePrep).

I hope you found info in this post useful.


Till next time,
George

P.S. Here's an intersting collection of thoughts from BusinessWeek magazine about Graduating into a Recession

P.S.S. For those of you wondering, I did not end up buying the Asus Eee laptop. I had horrible experience trying to purchase it online at The Source by Circuit city which totally screwed up my online order loosing it in the process, so I’ve decided to hold off on that purchase until I can find an easier way to buy it (read not involving The Source)

One MBA Woman’s Perspective: on doing the 1-year Ivey MBA

Guest writer: Rebecca Liu
Date: March 22nd, 2008

I feel fortunate to be a woman in this day and age. It was only a few decades ago that women excelling to management positions, let alone studying for an MBA, was considered rare. These days, the business community not only welcomes more women in the senior management ranks but even encourages it. The issue is whether enough of us women are willing or able to answer this call.

My class is perhaps somewhat unique. There is typically a 30% composition of women per cohort, yet mine started with 17%. Understandably, it’s a big commitment to step away for a year. There are women in our class who have husbands and children. I come from the dynamic world of IT consulting yet even I considered whether it was worthwhile to study in London, Ontario for a year. Yet I feel that this has been the best personal decision I’ve made in my life – at least so far! I would definitely encourage any woman who wants to understand management and/or get to senior management to do her MBA. Ideally, it would be after about 3-6 years of work experience, as this gives you enough work experience to fully grasp the concepts and enough to leverage the greatest impact in your career, and probably the best time for minimal disruption in your life. However I firmly believe there’s no time limit for when to invest in your own education.

Now the other question may be whether the high male to female ratio has hindered me while in the program. And my answer would be a resounding no. Being a woman has not stopped me from being elected to the Ivey MBA Association executive team as VP Internal. It hasn’t prevented me from participating in the activities that I truly wanted to be part of, such as the Ivey China Teaching Project or Community Consulting Project. There’s also a club for Women in Management, run by Ivey students. In the past, senior executive women have been asked to speak to us, including our own esteemed Dean Carol Stephenson. But keep in mind that there are times when there is only one woman in a team of 6. This could be reflective of what teams are like in the professional world as you start advancing in your career but it’s better for women to learn how to deal with these situations now. As a woman, the key is to leverage it as an invaluable learning opportunity within a safer environment than the professional world. You’d be surprised how much learning you can get out of it and even more rewarding, how much of a positive difference you can make.

I’m looking to take the greatest opportunities that life can offer me regardless of my gender. The rewards that I’ve gotten have far outweighed any challenges I’ve had to face in the program. These past 11 months have taught me to manage my time much more wisely. And it’s allowed me to reflect on who I really am, and what my greatest strengths and areas of improvement are. It has ultimately steered me into understanding what I truly want and need from both professional and personal standpoints. I’m confident that the Ivey MBA will enable me to more effectively seek and more quickly achieve all that I want.

Cheers,
Rebecca

P.S. Dean Carol Stephenson has written a wonderful article on how a diverse board that includes women has benefited organizations. Check this Ivey Business Journal article out at: http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/view_article.asp?intArticle_ID=507

Effectively leveraging Public-Private Partnerships to meet Canada’s growing infrastructure needs + Ways to get involved @ Ivey

Today I'm going to try a different approach, instead of making this a monologue about a general MBA topic I'm going to write on the specific subject of private-public partnerships (P3). Moreover, I have a twofold goal in mind for this post: first, I want to illustrate one of the numerous opportunities to get involved in extracurricular activities here at Ivey as well as to give you a backgrounder on P3s and using them to make Canada more competitive.

Lets start at the start: having expressed my interest in "getting involved" to a member of teaching faculty back in September, I was right away contacted by the director of The Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management here at Ivey - Dianne Cunningham. After chatting to Dianne I was sold on the idea of volunteering my time to help organize the upcoming Transportation conference. The conference had a mandate to focus on policy recommendations for making the ON-QC transportation gateway a reality. The piece of the conference that was of particular interest to me was the consideration for private funding, operation and maintenance of the continental gateway infrastructure.

Having finished the three day conference earlier today, I can say it was a truly amazing experience and I'm really glad that I got involved with Dianne. It not only gave me a great deal of insight into the way government thinks about private sector but also supplemented nicely my previous knowledge about P3s. Moreover, I was really surprised to find out that parts of Canadian government are actually quite dynamic. In particular, I was really impressed by the forward thinking that exists at the very top of such organizations as Metrolinx (former Greater Toronto Transportation Authority) and Industry Canada.

Having singled out the conference experience as an example, I want to stress that there are various other opportunities to get involved @ Ivey. You can pick the flavor and level of commitment that fits you interests best. Those opportunities include but are not limited to the MBAA, Leader Project, China Teaching Trip, Ivey Connects and the list goes on.

So now lets talk about the exciting stuff: the concept of P3s, or the emerging multi-billion dollar opportunity like I like to refer to it. The concept is based on the fact that there are different areas that public and private organizations excel at. A partnership between public and private entity allows for the transfer of risks to parties most qualified to handle those risks. For example a private company operating a public highway will likely be better qualified to handle day to day risks which translate into a lower cost of operation while government would still carry the overarching set of risks associated with the variability of demand for the highway.

Recently, there have been an increasing number of success stories associated with the use of public-private partnerships in various infrastructure projects around the globe. UK has been a pioneer in using the partnership approach and has illustrated to the rest of the world potential rewards which can be achieved through a smart use of public-private partnerships.

As the result of its efforts UK is seeing an increasing level of private investment in its infrastructure renewal and its brand new infrastructure projects. Currently between 10 and 13 percent of all public infrastructure investment in UK is originating from private financing initiatives helping the country to significantly narrow its existing infrastructure gap.

There has also been a number of public-private partnership successes right here at home. BC has taken a leading role in the use of public-private partnerships while other provinces are following its path, including such successful partnerships as Highway 407 and Royal Ottawa Hospital in Ottawa. (Not to say that those haven’t faced their own fair share of challenges)

Due to a number of significant successes of Canadian projects, public opinion has started to gradually shift towards support for these types of initiatives. Moreover, there has been upswing of interest and increased public investment into public-private partnerships in Canada. Various stakeholders are starting to quickly realize that the public-private partnership approach is one of the most effective ways to bridge the widening infrastructure gap that Canada is currently facing, which by some estimates has already reached $125 billion. However, care needs to be taken to satisfy the need for the continued education of Canadian public about advantages and successes of using P3 approach to ensure that Canada continues on the path of progress towards wider adoption of P3s as one of the key considerations for future infrastructure projects.

It is really encouraging to see that the Government of Canada has finally made a significant commitment to the “winning combination of transportation and public and private partnerships”. Furthermore, by supporting their investment of $33 billion into Canadian infrastructure with a $1.26 billion national fund for public-private partnerships, as well as allocating additional $25 million over 5 years to set up federal P3 Office the Government of Canada has created a clear path to success by allowing businesses an opportunity to what they do best, increase Canadian competitiveness. As a future business leader I see this initial step as opening a great potential for Canada to bring our infrastructure back up to the world standards and increase our country’s competitiveness in the global business environment.

Public-private partnerships will allow for a significant value building activities. It will not only help to create new growth opportunities for a number of Canadian businesses but it will also allow those businesses to gain the necessary expertise in time to enter emerging public-private partnership market in U.S. Our neighbor to the south of the border has been slightly lagging behind in adopting public-private partnership approach which might spell a great opportunity for those Canadian businesses which can figure out successful models of structuring partnerships and working with public institutions to build value for their host countries.

More interesting yet, is the fact that a single dollar invested in public-private partnerships is likely to have a multiplier effect for both Canadian infrastructure and our economy. It will do so by attracting additional investments from both businesses and private investors. It will also have positive effect on Canadian economy by helping to create net new jobs as companies look to build their internal capabilities to take relationships with public institutions to the next level of collaboration.

Furthermore, partnerships will help to unleash the true potential of the public infrastructure through a combination of a long-term focus on efficient construction and operation of those assets. Depending on the model of operation chosen, public-private partnerships might also be able to help better align the costs associated with use and maintenance of the transportation assets with the particular users who are directly benefiting from the use of those assets. For example, through a system of tolls for users of Highway 407 its current operator is able to maintain high quality of maintenance and service for that highway, users are in turn benefiting directly from a more efficient transportation infrastructure which 407 is able to offer them. One challenge associated with near monopolies

However rosy the recent picture, the initial support for public-private partnerships can rapidly reverse if not enough care is taken to ensure string of successful projects. Therefore, to reinforce current public support, it is absolutely imperative to work close with private sector on early projects to not only ensure that businesses have the capabilities necessary to deliver a project, but also that both private and public partners are absolutely clear on the roles, responsibilities, rules, as well as the nature of risks and additional commitment that this new partnership structure involves.

Finally, as with any new approach, public-private partnerships have their fair share of risks and potential challenges. However, all those risks fail in comparison to potential benefits to Canadian economy that can be gained through this innovative partnership approach.

Till next time,
George

Globe module and electives

In this post I will briefly describe our MBA journey at Ivey starting from where I left it off last time (month 4 of 12) up to our current point in the program (month 9 of 12).

After we finished module 2A (Finance, Strategy and Accounting) at the end of August and wrote our 48 hour report we had a first week of September off for our recruiting efforts. During that time there were number of self organized groups of students that went to London UK, Calgary, Toronto, and New York to meet with alumni and potential recruiters.

Just to put things in prospective, the main recruiting cycle for consulting and finance falls on mid September. That resulted in at least 20 job postings for each consulting and finance with couple of new postings coming up every day. With recruiting in the full swing we have entered our first elective cycle with an option to choose one or two out of the following three courses (Financial Strategies for Global Success, Competitive Analysis and Negotiations).

Electives are quite an intense experience, with three hour classes for each course running for two consecutive weeks. You get immersed in the course material to that degree that you start having dreams about it… which is kind of scary; especially if it’s an accounting elective :) In my experience electives don’t feel rushed but they do fly by in a blink of an eye, just imagine, you do the whole course in only two weeks.

I definitely recommend Bob White’s course, Financial Strategies for Global Success, as a must have for people going into finance. It’s generally considered one of the harder electives with a lot of material packed into it. That is also the course that really separates the future investment banking gurus from us mare mortals.

After those two weeks of electives we had the last week of September off for consulting and finance job interviews. Interesting fact to note: by the end of September close to 15% of students in the class have already landed jobs.

October 1st marked the return to the core MBA material, this portion of the course is called Globe module. The purpose of this module was to expose us to issues facing a global manager. Although we have covered fascinating topics ranging from Corporate Governance to Environmental impact of doing business it still didn’t feel like the module accomplished everything that it set out to. That was a bit unfortunate as we had some great professors teaching in this module. The nice part about it was that the time during this module felt quite relaxing (we had every Friday off for recruiting purposes) and I was able to put some quality time into my extracurricular activities and catching up with friends whom I’ve ignored for the past couple of months.

Following Globe we had another intense cycle of electives in which my personal favorite was Corporate Financial Reporting with Rick Robertson. Here’s an amazing professor and one of the very few people who can energize you about accounting for an 8am in the morning class. Simply amazing!

Two days after finishing the second cycle of electives large part of our class went off to an optional 10 day China study trip (CST). More on that in one of the future posts.

Finally, on January 7th we’ve started our current, pre-final leg of the Ivey MBA journey. This is module 2B and we are coming back to the core material. Our current courses are Marketing, Operations, and Managing information technology. I have to say that Marketing classes with Niraj Dawar have been an eye opening experience for me. I will admit, in the past I thought of marketing as a bit fluffy, but our time with Niraj has totally changed that perception. I guess the fact that Niraj is one of the top professors in his field doesn’t hurt neither.

Till next time,
George

To Fall or not to Fall?

And if to fall than when? (Figuratively speaking of course)

 

I have been repeatedly asked by potential students the following two questions: What is the difference between the two cohorts Fall (starting in September) and Spring (starting in May)? And is there an optimal time to start the program? I will try to answer the first question in this post.

I am myself a member of the Spring 2007 cohort, so I might be a bit biased towards our cohort. Spring cohort is advertised to be specifically geared for people interested in getting into the consulting and finance jobs. The main reason Spring cohort is positioned that way are the so called historical recruitment cycles for those two industries. If you think about it, those same employers are actively recruiting from major MBA programs all over North America and are therefore doing it in the beginning of the second year of the typical two year program, which incidentally falls on months of September and October. Those are pretty much the only two industries that recruit a year in advance, meaning that those students who are recruited into those firms would start their jobs in the fall of the following year.

The tricky bit comes from the fact that if you are a member of the Spring cohort you are competing for the same jobs with every other major MBA school in North America. While members of the Fall cohort are flying solo as there are no other major schools that function on the same schedule (at least to my limited knowledge).

Furthermore, from what I understand about finance and consulting jobs, if you are a good candidate you will get hired no matter when you are applying to them. Having said that members of the Fall cohort might have to put in some more proactive work to connect with the firms, and in return will enjoy lack of competition from their peers at other schools. If you ask me, it’s actually not a bad trade-off.

Theory aside, our cohort has tracked much stronger when it comes to finance jobs while the previous Fall cohort enjoyed a good track record when it came to consulting jobs.

In addition there are couple non recruiting differences between cohorts: Spring appears to have a higher male/female ratio (more guys) as well as quite a competitive spirit. It’s probably due to the nature of jobs that people are going after in our cohort. In general there wouldn’t be as many women who are going after the Investment banking and Management Consulting jobs as those types of jobs typically don’t mix very well with a family. Fall cohort has a Health stream mixed into it, meaning that there are 4-5 PhDs and M.D.s in the class, which makes for a very interesting class dynamic. While Spring class shares part of the curriculum with an AMBA stream (Accelerated MBA’s are students with an undergraduate degree in business from University of Western).

Fall cohort starts at the same time as the main university so they get a chance to do a lot more social fun stuff at the onset of their program. Spring cohort, on the other hand, starts when the main university finishes in May and majority of undergraduate students leave the city for the summer. So Spring cohort gets to do a lot more outdoor sports stuff instead.

Overall, jokes aside, there’s no clear advantage of picking one cohort over the other. To figure out if one cohort “fits” you better than the other you might want to consider coming down for an actual visit, sitting in both classes and talking to students from both cohorts.

In the next post I will try to share my thoughts on whether there is a best time to do an MBA.

Till next time,
George

Happy New Year!

С Новым Годом! Which is Happy New Year in Russian (pronounced S Novym Godom). All the best wishes for 2008 and good luck to all of you trying to join the Ivey family this year!

Special thanks to all of You, our readers, for making the first year of the Ivey MBA blog such an overwhelming success. Having started at the end of February 2007 this blog has seen almost 5,000 unique visitors from all over the world since its inception.

Thank you for all the emails asking for a follow-up posts. I guess people are finding this stuff at least somewhat useful. I'm personally guilty of not having written in a while and there’s a good reason for that: it’s been a very busy couple of months with school, recruiting and the other fun stuff all happening at the same time!

Good news is that graduation is only 16 weeks away and I’m about 15 weeks away from running dry on my student loans. One might say its a good timing, while others might argue that it’s the pure genius of an evil mind, either way I can’t believe that our cohort is so close to being done…

So here it comes! Over the next couple of weeks I’ve set myself an ambitious goal: I’m hoping to write a couple of new posts talking about our Globe module and the second round of electives which we finished in December, our China study trip, advantages/differences between the two Ivey MBA cohorts, and finally some general fun stuff about the city of London Ontario. So one might ask: Is this goal a bit too ambitious? - Maybe. But is it impossible? - Never!

Finally, there’s now hope of actually saving my back while I attempt this near Guinness record. I’ve ordered myself an Asus Eee laptop which is supposed to be a new disruptive innovation coming from Asus. Weighting a mere 2lb (1kg) and advertised to cost only $200, in reality it costs $400 (hence the above mentioned one week shortfall in my self financing though student loans) it will hopefully act as my muse and will also be much easier to carry around on my expeditions to Starbucks.

Till next time,
George