Ups and Downs of Career Search as an MIT LGO student

Hey all,

I'm writing this sort of as a diary of my recruiting. This is going to be published after I've accepted an offer, but I want this post to be an example of how up and down recruiting can be for LGOs (and similar to other MBAs who are recruiting for full-time positions in their second year). This does not include coffee chats, phone calls, etc... Just companies that I conducted at least first round interviews with.

To preface these entries I want to let you know that my focus was trying to enter the technology industry. The role I was most interested in was to work as a sourcing manager because I wanted to learn more about Chinese manufacturing, but was open to other positions as well.

September 3rd: Received word from Emerson Electric that they want me to fly in at the end of September for an interview! Woo hoo! Job seems really interesting (analyst for their corporate continuous improvement team) and the location is amazing (Susan and I spent some time in Saint Louis and we have a lot of friends there).

September 8th: Received word from Nike that I will not be receiving an offer.

September 17th: Google hangout interview with Nest Supply Chain. I thought it was going to be an informational interview, but it turned into an interview! I think it went well as the director who interviewed me told me to stay in touch.

September 26th: Flew out to Saint Louis for an interview with Emerson Electric. Thought it went well! I had about 4 interviews with senior members of Emerson Electric's leadership team.

October 1st: Two phone interviews with Dell's Supply Chain Strategy team. Wow, case interviews are tough! I should have prepared a little bit more for those interviews.

October 3rd: Woo hoo! Invited to interview second round for Dell's Supply Chain Strategy team in Austin.

October 7th: Interview with 3M for an internal consulting job on MIT campus. The mini-case turned into, what I thought, was a full blown case. Whew... I should have studied some more market sizing cases.

October 9th: First full-time offer from Emerson! YES! Super excited about the role and the team. The role offered was in their corporate continuous improvement office (called perfect execution at Emerson electric) as an analyst.

October 20th: Phone screen interview for Microsoft Supply Chain. They told me that they will get back to me in three weeks.

October 21st: Three first round interviews with Apple for Product Operations, Procurement, and AppleCare.

October 23rd: Told by Apple that I have been selected as an alternate to fly-out to Cupertino. Odd, never heard of being placed in an alternate status by a company for a final round interview... I guess that means that they sort of liked me but not as much as my classmates who they selected to fly-out. I think that if one or more of them decline to fly out, I'll have an opportunity to go to the second round interviews. Also, heard back from Nest (WHOA!) that they want me to fly out to Palo Alto for interviews on the 31st of October (Halloween!). COOL!

October 24th: Civilization Beyond Earth comes out. Great game by the way and it ties into my next update which is with Dell's Alienware team (they make PC Gaming machines).

Interviews from the 28-30th of October take place during MIT LGO's on-campus partner interviewing week. During this week MIT LGO's partner companies interview MIT LGO students for full-time roles. The partner companies I interviewed with are Dell, Amazon, and SanDisk. 

October 28: Interview with Dell for an Alienware product manager position via on-campus interview. Two interviews with Intel for their Accelerated Leadership Program (ALP). Heard back from Intel that I have NOT been selected to move forward in the process that evening. I was a little sad to hear that as I had prepared a lot for these Intel interviews. I think I spoke to over 10 current or former ALPs at Intel. Heard back from Dell that I will be having a second round for Alienware! Yes!

October 29: Two interviews with Amazon and one with SanDisk. I found out that evening that I'll be moving onto the second round of Amazon interviews happening the next morning.

October 30: Two interviews with Amazon (Pathways and Amazon Web Services). Found out from Apple that I'll not be moving onto the second round. A little bummed that Apple rejected me, but nothing I can do about it. Similar to Intel I prepared heavily for these interviews by talking to employees at Apple who were either MIT LGO alums or military veterans.

October 31: One phone interview with Alienware prior to my Nest Labs interviews. Have two more phone calls scheduled with Alienware. All afternoon in-person interviews with Nest Labs in Palo Alto. I was on-site at Nest Labs from 12:30pm to approximately 5pm. I think my actual interviews started at 1:30pm with back to back interviews. What a blur of interviews (I think I had a total of 8 interviews).
Found out later on that evening that I received two Amazon offers (one for Pathways and one for Amazon Web Services)! Amazon's MBA hiring process was amazing, In one week they conducted first and second round interviews, along with sending out offer letters! WOW!

November 3: Cancelled interviews with Dell. Also, let 3M, Microsoft, and SanDisk know that I was not going to continue recruiting with them.

November 6: Met with a Microsoft recruiter and asked if he would re-consider my former email to him telling him that I wanted to bow out of recruiting. He let me know that he was happy that I changed my mind and that he was going to invite me out to interview. Received an email and am flying next Friday to Seattle for Microsoft.

November 14: Interviews with Microsoft Supply Chain in Redmond, WA. Night prior to the interviews the interviewees (about 30 of us) had dinner with some members of Microsoft's supply chain team at a restaurant on campus (Spitfire!). Great food by the way. Had four interviews with various Microsoft employees for 45 minutes each. I thought that their interview process was the best on site second round interviews (I thought the Amazon interviews were great but they happened at MIT). Our home-base during the interviews was a large lounge with food, drinks, and a large TV hooked up to an XBOX on Microsoft's campus!

November 18: Call from Nest Labs with a rejection... The feedback was that they needed someone who did not need as much ramp time as I required (applied for a supplier management position).

November 21: Email from Microsoft. At first I thought it was another rejection email, but was surprised when one of the first words was "Congratulations." Woo hoo! Offered a role in the Microsoft Supply Chain group. Tentatively for a sourcing role, but they told me I had to wait until Monday to find out details.

November 24: Had a call with a Microsoft recruiter. I was selected to fill the role of a sourcing manager for Microsoft! Yes!

November 26: Call with one of my interviewers from Microsoft who is a sourcing senior director. Great overview of the role and the support Microsoft provides to new college/MBA hires.

November 30: Call with a sourcing manager about her experience at Microsoft. She has been there for a year and half and has felt very supported throughout her experience.

December 3: Call with an LGO alum at Amazon Web Services. She is really enjoying her time there and encouraged me to consider taking the job offer.

December 8: Signed Microsoft's offer letter! I'll be heading to Seattle after graduation! 

Running Summary (in descending date of interview):

• Nike: No offer after an internship. 
• Emerson Electric: Offer for a role as a Perfect Execution Analyst role (their process improvement/lean corporate function). 
• Dell: Alienware product Manager and Supply Chain Strategist. Selected to interview Round 2 for both positions but declined after hearing back from Amazon. 
• 3M: Completed a round 1 interview but declined to move further after hearing back from Amazon. 
• Microsoft: Offered a role as a sourcing manager and signed! 
• Apple: Rejected after being placed in alternate status after R1 interviews. 
• Nest Labs: Rejected after in person interviews. One of the few rejections where I was provided any sort of feedback (thank you!). They let me know that I did not have enough relevant experience so my ramp up time would take too long. 
• Intel: Rejected after Round 1 interviews for ALP. 
• Amazon: Offered two roles from Amazon. One for the Pathways program (working as a fulfillment center manager) and a role with Amazon Web Services in their infrastructure group. 
• SanDisk: Completed a round 1 interview at MIT for a Strategic Production Operations Manager role. Declined to move any further after hearing back from Amazon. 

My next blog post will be about what I learned from this recruiting process... 

Long period of inactivity...

Hey all,
I want to let you all know that I have not forgotten about this blog. The reason I am not writing many blog posts is because most of my time that is not related to school has been spent on recruiting. I have a whole blog-post regarding recruiting which I'll publish once I figure out where I'll be heading post-LGO. Other than recruiting I have been spending time on classes.

The four classes I am taking are listed below:

15.792J: Global Operations Leadership Seminar: Required course for LGOs. This course meets once a week for 1.5 hours and features a speaker from industry. We've had some very great speakers and some not so great speakers. I think it would help if some of these speakers were coached in the fundamentals of 15.280 (our communications class at Sloan). I've seen some speakers use powerpoints and just read from them... I've also seen some awesome speakers with some amazing stories to tell about their time in industry.

15.818: Pricing: I am not technically taking this course as I am a Teaching Assistant (TA for short) for the course. This has been an eye-opening course in learning how products are priced. The Professor, Catherine Tucker, is great and I am having a great time learning and TA'ing the course. I highly recommend this to Sloanies/LGOs who have the opportunity to take it in the Fall.

15.769: Operations Strategy: Another required course for LGOs. I took this course in the Fall versus the Spring because Professor Don Rosenfeld and Professor Zeynop Ton are teaching it in the Fall. I think in the Spring the Professors will not be as good. This course is a great overview of many operational concerns for companies ranging from IT, workforce management, supply chain, and process improvements. We've had some excellent guest speakers from Toyota, Flextronics, and other companies.

15.013: Industrial Economics: This course came highly recommended from the previous LGO class. I am enjoying learning more about how economics impacts industrial companies. We recently covered how network effects impact how new standards are formed from CDs, DVDs, and video game systems. One principle that this course has taught me is that companies with high fixed costs, very low marginal costs (think internet providers), and competitors lead to vicious price competition. This is very helpful in understanding why companies like Boeing and Airbus struggle so much in regards to pricing their airplanes. They have to keep their production lines running and generally sell their airplanes near marginal costs.

ESD.341J: Engineering and Architecting Software Systems: This is my one engineering course for this semester. It covers various software topics like cloud computing, online security, and internet insurance. This course has been very helpful in evaluating various recruiting opportunities as I am investigating opportunities in the tech industry. The final project consists of a 10 minute video. My partner and I decided to make our video about the Electronic Sports industry. I did not realize HOW large and fast growing this industry is. If you have no idea what I am talking about, take a look at League of Legends and the number of people that play that game.

I did not think recruiting would take so much time, but the time it takes to apply, research (online and through phone calls with alumni at those companies), interview (on campus, phone, and on-site), and consider has been a lot more than I thought it would be.

Back to blogging and Cambridge!

Hi blogging fans!

It has been a long time since my last blog post. Last week my wife, two boys, and I arrived back in Cambridge. We moved into a new place just a block away from our old place, and we are mostly settled in now. Our friends from church graciously volunteered to supervise our movers move our belongings in storage to our new place. So when we arrived all we had to do was unpack!

I don't have too many excuses for not blogging during the internship, but the primary excuse is that I did not know how much of my internship I could share with you all. At a high level my internship was evaluating different inventory strategies to increase the profitability of Nike's seasonal products (like fleece and sandals). Very interesting internship and I look forward to writing up my results as part of my thesis. I feel very blessed to have been at Nike with a great supervisor (thanks Ben!) who is an alumni of MIT (graduate of the SCM program). I also had a great project mentor (thanks Hugo) who went to Stanford for a PhD in Operations. Without Ben and Hugo I would not have been able to finish my project. Overall, I had a great time at Nike! Apart from work, Nike hosts an amazing internship summer class with outings and special talks by Nike senior leadership.Also, playing Ultimate Frisbee once or twice a week was great experience.

Now that I am back in Cambridge, I am slowly transitioning my mind-set back to being in graduate school. I have been receiving a deluge (well more like a few a day) of emails requesting updates and additions to the class I am TA'ing (Pricing). The Professor and course content are held in very high regard so there is high demand for the course (over 50 on the wait-list for the first section alone!). This semester I am taking:

• Industrial Economics: Another course with a long wait-list. Good thing I bid correctly and got in the first try.
• Operations Strategy: Required course for LGOs. Taught by Don and Ton this semester (I think this is the last semester Don Rosenfield will teach).
• Architecting and Engineering Software Systems: One of the courses I need to take for my ESD MS.
• Global Operations Leadership Seminar: LGOs are required to take this course two semesters.
• Pricing: I am the TA for the 10am section!

In addition to class I am an officer in the Sloan Christian Fellowship (SCF) and still a member of the Tech Club (but no longer an officer). I think I'll have to spend a lot of time on my thesis this semester because I don't want to be finishing it during winter break. Also, I have to reserve some time for recruiting this semester. Sounds like a busy semester, but I hope to balance my time so I can stick to my exercise routine. Also, I hope to have some family time as well! Seems like a lot, but hopefully it will work out. 

John

Internship at Nike!

Hey all,
Wow, it has been a while since I have last written! Whew. Since Domestic plant trek a lot has happened:

• Family and I moved to Oregon.
• Experienced a huge snow storm in Oregon (shoveling snow... I thought I was done with that when I left Boston! haha).
• Started working at Nike.
• International Plant Trek.

I don't really have much of an excuse for not writing any new posts, except that I am not sure how much I can write about my Nike work on this blog. At Nike I am working on a supply chain project to optimize inventory management for Nike's replenishment business. The principles I learned in Operations Management and Logistics Systems have been invaluable for this project. I thought managing inventory would be easy prior to LGO, but I have since learned how difficult it actually is! If you have too much you are left with excess inventory and if you have too little you lose sales! 

Nike so far has been an amazing experience. The campus is beautiful and the collaborative work culture is refreshing. Work really has be socialized with most groups that would be affected, so what ends up happening is that there are all sorts of meetings you have to attend or schedule. Nike also has a great gym (what else would you expect from a sports company) with all sorts of classes and pick-up games. I'm playing ultimate frisbee (I am one of the worst players, but that is ok!) and attending some pilates classes. In addition, I've started to bike to work (only 6.5 miles one way to work) as well so I have started to get back into shape. 

The reason I have time to write this post is because I am sitting in Portland's airport waiting to catch a flight to Boston. What is funny is that I actually paid $75 yesterday morning to get an earlier flight. What ended up happening this morning was that my flight actually was delayed so I would miss my connection (in Denver) to Boston. So now I am arriving later into Boston and out $75. I hope United Airlines refunds me that amount, but we'll see what happens. I'm just glad that I am arriving in Boston at all now... The reason I'm going to Boston is for LGO's Midstream review where I share what I have been working on at Nike to my classmates.

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 10-13 Raytheon, Dell, and Amgen

Hey all,
This is going to be my last post about the domestic plant trek. Sorry about the lack of photos, but the last half of plant trek was a bit of a blur! Below is a summary of our whirlwind of visits the second week of plant trek.

Monday: After the Amazon distribution center visit, we all rode on a bus to Raytheon in Tucson, AZ. We were on the bus for approximately 7 hours and arrived near midnight in AZ.

Tuesday: Visited Raytheon in Tucson. International students were not allowed on this site visit because the products that they manufactured were for defense applications. After the visit to Raytheon we flew to Austin, TX to visit Dell. Most of us went into Austin for dinner. A few of us went to Stubbs and enjoyed some famous TX BBQ!

Dinner at Stubbs in Austin

Wednesday: Dell executives all the way from Michael Dell (whoa!), Jeff Clarke, and others spoke to us at Dell. This was by the far the most top heavy of LGO visits. Dell seems to have some great plans in place for revitalizing their company post-privatization.

Thursday: Travel day to San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the evening Amgen hosted us for an appetizer reception.

Friday: Visit Amgen's manufacturing facilities in San Juan! The plant where they bottled, labeled, and shipped off their biologics was very impressive.

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 5-9 Amazon Dinner

Hey all,
Quick blog post about the last few days:

Day 5: Drove to Seattle from Portland. While in Seattle we ate at Tamarind Tree, great Vietnamese food by the way, and visited Pike Place. Afterwards we had a dinner with Amazon.

Lunch at Tamarind Tree

Lunch at Tamarind Tree

Pike Place Starbucks 

Day 6: We visited two Boeing facilities (Everett and Renton). 

Boeing future of flight museum. 

 Day 7: Day off in Seattle. Hung out with my friend Bryan from graduate school.

Day 8: Flight to LA from Seattle. A few of us spent some time with Josh's family in LA. Thanks Josh's family for the hospitality! We ate very good Korean and Japanese food in Orange County.

Eating lunch at Shik Do Rak

 Day 9: We had a great time visiting Amazon in LA.

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 4 Nike!

Hey all,
The end of day 3 was nice because we had the fortune of being allowed to access the Nike employee store! I bought a few gifts and some new running shoes (the Nike free Hyperfeel). I spent the rest of the evening with my parents.

Day 4 was a heavy dose of Nike in general and Nike supply chain in particular. We arrived at Nike around 8am and received free Nike shirts (see me wearing mine in the below pictures). Our first formal event was a talk by two Nike VPs of Manufacturing/Sourcing. It is amazing to learn about the challenges that Nike faces as it continuously innovates on its product and manufactures its products in Asia. Afterwards, we had a talk by Nikhil who some of us met when he interviewed us a few months back. He spoke about his role as a Nike Supply Chain strategy Director.

In the late morning we went on a tour of the Nike campus. What an amazing (and LARGE) campus! Very well laid out buildings and art strewn about the area.

We closed out our Nike portion of the day with a visit to their IHM facility (in house manufacturing) which manufactures airbags for Nike shoes.

Army and Navy jerseys!

Hey

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 3 Travel to Portland

Hey all,
We passed an uneventful night in the Marriott downtown. We are all now awaiting our flight from DTW (Detroit) - DEN (Denver) - PDX (Portland). We are glad that as of 9:55am no delays/cancellations are reported for our flights! So far so good.

One thing I was not prepared for was the weather here in Detroit. It is -10F! Feels like -35! Wow... I went outside to get into the mini-van and I felt like a blast of cold hit me in the face! 

Below are some pictures of us waiting for our flight at DTW.

Domestic Plant Trek: Days 1-2 Driving to Detroit

Hey all,

If you do not know, all LGOs are required to attend the Domestic Plant Trek, a two week trip in between the fall and spring semester. We fly (and drive) around the country visiting various partner company manufacturing facilities and headquarters. I'll try to keep my blog updated with what happens during plant trek so that I can keep a record and let you all know what is happening.

Day 1 (January 5th)! The original plan was to fly from BOS-BWI (Baltimore)-DTW (Detroit) to visit GM. We were set to leave 1pm, so I got to the airport a little early at 10am. While in the bus heading to the airport David lets me know what our flight from BWI to DTW has been cancelled so we should stay home until more contingency plans are made. I was already there so I stayed and helped out our fearless Scott figure out how to re-route our Southwest Airlines tickets to either Detroit, Denver, or Portland. Detroit would be nice, but we were planning on heading to Denver (our connection to Portland) or straight to Portland (where our next stop was Nike!). The earliest we could get out to PDX (Portland) was Wednesday morning, so that was unacceptable.

With my head hung low, I returned home thinking that we were going to miss GM AND Nike.. Little did I know that later in the afternoon our domestic plant trek committee decided to rent mini-vans and have us all DRIVE to Detroit! That sounds like a desperate plan, but desperate times call for desperate measures! So about 40 of us met at BOS to rent mini-vans. I rode along with Xiaodi, Raf, Ellen, and Willow in the Van Guard! We drove all night from 5pm to about 9am this morning. During the way we encountered some treacherous weather (thanks Raf and Ellen for driving through most of it!), but we eventually made it safe to Detroit. 

Raf and Willow were considering heading to the second GM plant in the afternoon, but the rest of us were too tired to head out. After breakfast I slept for 3 hours and feel immeasurably better. Most of us have missed GM's plant tours, but we do get to have dinner with some GM executives tonight. 

UPDATE (7 January 2014): We actually did not make the dinner at the Heritage Center with GM executives, but we did have dinner with ourselves in the hotel! 

Driving to Detroit!

More driving to Detroit

Another picture of our drive

Breakfast at the GM center after we arrived into Detroit

Picture taken from the food court at the GM Renaissance Center. This was our celebratory breakfast meal. 

Thanks to Ellen for taking these shots during the drive. 

Eating at Andiamo's in the GM Renaissance Center (GM HQ and where our hotel was)