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JUNE 2003 MBA JOURNAL: HOME STRETCH Scott Anderson: Second Year Winds Down "I'm zero for about twenty and the interviewers don't look at a log of how many of their colleagues I've spoken to and how many BusinessWeek articles I've read on the industry." The good news is that I don't go around asking for help with the job search. That advice was unsolicited. In fact, I get lots more (more both in terms of quantity and quality) unsolicited advice and offers of connections from classmates and staff at the GSB. I've gone to career service coaching meetings, subscribed to helpful job posting lists, and have been in contact with human resource staff of firms that my GSB friends are going to work for. So people definitely want to help, and I appreciate it. The bad news is that this abundance of advice and connections is spread across industries and geographies, so there is no easy way to manage it. Even for someone with a Microsoft Access database for organizing their personal network, this could be overwhelming. For someone who has crashed his hard drive, his sister's hard drive, and a pocket PC all in the last month, it's a nightmare. (You'd be surprised how many trend-blind friends I have who are still willing to lend me computer services in spite of my Midas touch.) As I've alluded to before, there are several things that make the second-year job-search more difficult than looking for an internship (other than the fact that the job ideally will last longer than 10 weeks). One is that, for the most part, campus presentations and on-campus recruiting for second years ended in the fall, and the off-campus job search obviously requires lots more time and initiative. Second, the job-search has become less focused. The slow job market requires you to case a larger net. Plus, my interests keep broadening. After deciding investment banking wasn't for me after my summer internship, I pursued a fixed income research position this fall. No luck there, and the act of opening up my mind to other pursuits put me on a slippery slope. Without any background in business, I don't feel I need to leverage my previous experience. And my main criteria are quantitative analysis and finance, so that leaves a lot of things open: I've interviewed for hedge funds, asset management, and economic consulting, and I will soon look at a data-driven marketing position. I don't want to exaggerate the amount of time I spend obsessing about the job search, but recently I have started to see concepts in a few of my classes that are particularly relevant. I just finished Canice Prendergast's class on managing the workplace, which covers the optimal compensation and reward policies for maximizing employee productivity and effort. One of the policies we discuss is promotion and what conditions must exist for promotion to be an effective method of motivating effort on behalf of the employees. Admittedly, this lesson is common sense, but the bottom line is that promotion is an effective motivator only if the employees think they have a legitimate shot of getting the promotion, and if they feel like their efforts are noticed and appreciated. So, the expected return on effort goes down significantly if there are 30 people competing for one promotion -- or if the promotion typically goes to the boss's drinking buddy or to the lucky researcher, who in spite of putting in less time than her peers, happens to stumble upon the next blockbuster drug. Sounds suspiciously like my job search: I'm zero for about twenty and the interviewers don't look at a log of how many of their colleagues I've spoken to and how many BusinessWeek articles I've read on the industry. But I know in this bad job market, putting in this effort is all the more important. (And I can't complain too much, as I have had a steady stream of interviews, courtesy of the GSB resume book distributed to prospective employers who are not on campus.) From a firm's perspective, a tough job market means they will have lots of resumes for each position. Looking at each candidate's initiative is the only way they can distinguish between candidates who really want to work for them and candidates who are just mass-mailing resumes. (As detailed in a recent BusinessWeek article, Dave Fein, a classmate of mine at the GSB, landed a job with Toys R Us, in part, by visiting different stores and proposing changes in his interview.) I just started a venture capital finance class with Professor Scott Meadow. Each case examines whether a different business idea merits funding. The one thing that strikes me about all of the profiled entrepreneurs is their willingness to energetically follow up lots of leads (whether they be for potential customers, funders, or employees), knowing that 95% of their efforts will not pan out. Similarly, success in the job-search requires an entrepreneurial mind-set. Opportunities don't fall in your lap just because you have a good idea or because you're qualified to do a job well.
BW MALL
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