Winter Independent Activities period

Hey all,
During January there are no regularly scheduled classes, but you can take some Independent Activities Period (IAP) courses from January 5-30th for credit and just to listen. Below are the classes I took (which were all optional but I thought the content was worthwhile):

6-8 January: Distributed leadership class which was a 6 unit course. One of the main topics of the class was the Sloan 4 Capabilities Leadership Framework (http://mitleadership.mit.edu/r-dlm.php). We had learned this framework in our Organizational Processes class during our first fall, but this was a great re-introduction of the topic. I think the most insightful portion of this class was learning about the four player model (http://mitleadership.mit.edu/r-fpmodel.php) which was based on research from a family psychologist. The framework of the four roles used in decision-making has helped me think through decision-making at home with my wife!

12-16 January: Non-credit Conflict Management class. Great class on learning about managing conflict and running training sessions. This class helped me to understand how much my own personality and experiences influences how I engage in conflict with others.

20-23 January: Non-credit Mechanical Assemblies course. This course used to be offered during the a regular academic semester, but Professor Whitney retired (emeritus) so he just teaches over IAP. Professor Whitney spoke a lot about constraints and datum flow.

26-28 January: 3 unit course on Military Leadership. The only day we actually met for the class was the first day, because we had our first big blizzard on the 27th and 28th of January. I was supposed to help lead a small group on the last day of training (on an obstacle course), but that was cancelled.

Overall, I enjoyed the classes I took and found them worthwhile. Many of my classmates were on trips (either through G-Lab or other classes) during January though. I went light on credits last Fall because I was TA'ing pricing, so sitting for 9 credits in January helped shift some load off of this Spring's course load.
Joh

Things I learned during MBA/LGO recruiting

Hey all,
I hope you all are enjoying the cold (at least those of us in Cambridge are)! I'm in the midst of Independent Activities Period (IAP) which ranges from January 5-30th where students take seminars/short courses or just take time off. I've been taking courses every week on different topics (more on this in a following blog post). I do want to follow up with some things I learned during recruiting.

To put this into context, the extent of my 'recruiting' experience is constrained with trying to find work after the Army. While at West Point and Stanford I did not really think about finding a job because I was committed to the Army. After the Army I narrowed down my search to companies in the energy industry. During LGO internship recruiting I applied off-cycle (internship starting in February) and only applied to Nike. For my full-time recruiting I focused on companies that had work related to technology.

I applied to companies with technology work mostly due to the influence of LGO international plant trek. During international plant trek last year (LGOs went to Shanghai and Seoul) I was inspired to learn more about manufacturing in Asia. Ideally I wanted to find work where I would have some business responsibilities and engineering/manufacturing responsibilities. I did find a job which fit my criteria and am very satisfied with the outcome. The three main things I learned from recruiting are:

1. Switching careers is difficult but not impossible: At the beginning of full-time recruiting I was trying to switch from a career formed around the military and energy industries. The MBA program presented me opportunities in technology, but there was still a hurdle in convincing interviewers that I was really interested in tech and that I could do the work. I think that if I had at least completed an internship in a tech company it would have helped.
2. Internship experience can be important for full-time recruiting: Many interviewers asked about my LGO internship experience. Drawing from those experiences helped me draw parallels to work I may do at the companies I recruited with during full-time recruiting. 
3. LGO's limited selection of internships/partner companies can hurt you if you are narrowly focused: I specifically wanted to end up in tech and thought that by heading to Nike I could end up in their consumer tech  business (fuel-band). Halfway through my internship (after networking with folks in fuel-band) Nike stopped investing in fuel-band and got rid of many engineers on that team. In hindsight I should have tried to head to an internship with an LGO partner in tech. The drawback is that due to the limited number of partners, there is less control (from my experience) with what type of internship experience you can obtain (either function or industry). 

I think the disadvantage of less control over internship recruiting as an LGO is more than compensated for by the strength of alumni in certain companies, the manufacturing/supply chain focus (which is a plus for me), and the plant treks in regards to full-time recruiting.