Some advice to future generations
about their job search (and more…)
Many of you came to
INSEAD (or business school in general, although I am writing this note for
those who are planning their year at INSEAD) with idealistic assumptions about
the way it will develop. I used to be the same and unfortunately I did not
listen carefully those who were telling me about the job search as the main
goal of your business school education. In the best times, MBAs were graduating
with 4-5 job offers. This looks ridiculous now, when about 50% of the graduates
do not have jobs at graduation. This situation should not stay for long either
– at the time when this note is being written (fall 2003) there are some solid
sign of improvement. Still, you must prepare for the worst to survive – do not
be star-struck by the glamour of the MBA and post-MBA career, but approach the
process realistically to get the best value from your MBA experience.
There are some basic
facts which one should know prior to applying for an MBA (but many of us have
not heard about them). You are lucky if you are reading my notes at this stage
– you’ll have more time to get prepared. If not – so, you should start NOW!
- Start your job planning as early as you
can
- It will be very helpful to have a job offer
before starting your MBA – either from your former or a new employer.
- If you do not – start from the beginning.
Make a target list of the companies you would like to apply. Do not rely
on imagination, do it systematically. Open the I-Care database (the one
you can find of the desktop PCs in the “application” folder). It allows
you to search on various criteria, including location and industry. Focus
on the industries (or locations) you are interested in. You will be
surprised to see a bunch of companies which you never heard about.
Moreover, you will be surprised to see the names (and contact details) of
people who never studied at INSEAD. (You may ask “how?”). This is an
internal database of INSEAD, use it as the main
source of invaluable information which you can use in your job search.
- Don’t cold-call people without sending
them an email describing your point of interest in advance. I used
different types of messages:
- For someone very senior (either MBA, EDP
or anybody else who happened to be in the database) I sent a message in
two or three paragraphs with my CV asking for any kind of assistance in
respect to the job opportunities available in his or her company. The
best thing they (or their assistant which happened in many cases) can do
for you is to forward your message to some of their colleagues or HR. It
is anyway better if your letter flies down from the top of the
organization than from the outside. Basically you have no risk, my yield
(of what, responses, offers?) was slightly under 50%.
- For HR people I used a full-length
motivation letter and attached a copy of my CV. Depending on the type of
organization, HR usually reacts either formally (slowly) or spreads your
CV around pro-actively. The risk is low, the yield is low too.
- I tried to approach MBA fellows who are
not very senior by sending a short message describing the area of my job search
and professional interest with a request to speak over the phone. Don’t
send a CV – they will ask for it if needed. Those who come back to you
normally provide you with their phone number and a time when it is better
for them to speak. Do not ask them answer your questions in writing –
they do not have time for this. The chat over the phone is something
different – it does not take much effort. You can expect a quite high
rate of response – more than 50%. I also think this is the best way of
finding jobs.
- It is better if you know about some
positions available (e.g. you saw the role interesting for you on the
company career web site). Using this information you can start digging
deeper in the organization and be more specific in what you are looking
for.
- It can be best to start with your compatriates and those alumni who speak your native language.
In most cases they would give you at least a feedback and will speak to
you. While many of them may not be able to help, sometimes they can advise
about contacts which may lead you to an interview (something akin to Mary
Boss’s infamous suggestions for informational interviews]. You may easily
obtain the list of the contacts from the I-Care by searching through the
field “nationality”. As you may guess, the list is not limited to MBAs
only – there is a bunch of executives and others in the database,
do not be shy to write or call them if you are really interested in the
company they are working for.
- Contacts in I-Care (not all of them
though) are updated on the regular basis. Do not scrap the contact if your
mail to him bounced back – it may happen if a contact was not updated.
Browse other contacts in the same company, you may find out that the email
address domain (after @ sign) or the sequence of the name.surname
(which is typical for email naming) is different from those you have used
in the mail which returned. Be inventive – you can apply these rules even
for the contacts from the database which do not have email at all. In the majority
of cases it works! In the worst case you will receive the message like
“Sorry, the person you are writing to has left the company” or the same
rejected mail. If you have a gut feeling the person your
are trying to get in touch with could help you, do not lose this
chance!
- If it is just an email to a senior guy,
you may wish to follow it up with a phone call. I know,
it is not that easy to cold call people and to ask them about a job. You
can significantly increase the probability of their help if you give them
a call following the letter. They will recall you then, be sure (but do
not wait too long –follow up within one week, no more!) We generally like
persistent people, so be one yourself! Do not let
them scrap your mail, remind them about yourself
(although in a polite way)! Again, in the worst case you will end up
speaking to his secretary, but do you have something to lose?
- Regarding one’s CV:
- Do it in advance. Those who arrive in
September and aim on investment banking will suffer. Hiring season in IB
is traditionally in September-October, so you should either plan your
admission for
January or if you are unlucky to come in September (which
has its own advantages and disadvantages).
- Make it “short and sweet”. You will be
amazed how better your CV look if you use short sentences building on
your achievements.
- Use INSEAD’s
address as the forwarding address – they maintain forwarding service for
6 months from graduation, so you will be protected from losing your mail
due to the moves.
- Show the results to your peers – mine was
reviewed by at least 20 of my peers who gave me additional ideas and
suggestions about the format and the wording.
- Do not use the standard CV – tailor it to
every application. It is time consuming, but if you have a certain focus
(or set of priority sectors) you can end up with a bunch of templates
which you can use for making each of your applications individual.
- The same is valid to the motivation letters.
I believe, the motivation letter is more
important than the CV.
- Logistics:
- You can arrange phone interviews on
campus – try to grab the cubicle and tell your interviewer to dial you at
+33 1 60 72 4000 and ask to connect your to the extension (on the phone).
- Use an internet phone for calling people, otherwise you will spend a fortune on phone
calls (at least for those calling outside of Western Europe). I used lesminutes
(www.lesminutes.com), the phone
number you should put in there is 0160724000. When you dial from campus
the number 3111 (toll-free) it will ask you for the pin code (the one you
type in on the lesminutes web site) and then
you can dial your destination number. I reckon I saved 100 to 200 Euro by using lesminutes
instead of INSEAD phone lines (which is actually cheaper than France
Telecom).
- Do your homework and learn about the
company you are contacting. Beyond the corporate web sites a good source
of quick facts is www.hoovers.com
(or LexisNexis and the library online databases).
I also prepared the questions in writing so as to have a check list for
the phone conversations. Try to do it for every conversation you have.
- Do not raise your expectations too high,
particularly at the beginning. The companies you speak with may not have
any suitable place. You should ask your interviewer about with whom else
you could speak, but this should be one of the last questions you should
ask during a conversation. It may happen they will give you some kind and
useful advice, do not neglect it!
- Your expectations may also be excessive in
terms of a potential remuneration package. Companies which are taking part
in the OCR (on-campus recruitment) normally know the expectations of the
average MBA and also offer some additional benefits (e.g. sign-on bonus),
which is not true with most of the companies you may unearth
independently. There are however a lot of exceptions (among those I know
are Lafarge and Metro which compensated tuition fees for the accepted
candidates). Find more examples yourself!
- Do not rely on recruitment companies. I do
not know ANY cases of a successful job search through headhunters. MBA
graduates are not in the scope of executive search firms, the rest are
looking for a close match and I had an impression they are trying to avoid
“fresh” graduates.
I checked my contact
folder in Outlook and found out that I have contacted over 300 people, some alumni,
some people I was referred to by alumni or peer MBAs, and some were people who have
no connection to INSEAD but happened to be recorded in I-Care. Some examples of
the interviews which I had as a result were: with the Global Director CRM of
Vodafone, with the European HR director of HP Services, meeting with an Executive
VP of MTS (the biggest Russian mobile telecom company), an interview with the Eastern
European Sales Director of Dell, lunch at INSEAD with Eastern European Sales
Director of SAP, and a couple of conversations with the VP Business Development
of SAP.
I had only one offer
in Europe (an internship at T-Mobile in London) and two offers from Russia. I found the job I took after applying through
MBA-Exchange (surprise-surprise!), which only goes to show that you can never
predict where opportunities will appear. The market is picking up and you may
be luckier or have a more “sellable” background. Good luck and know that the
more effort you put into the job search, the better will be the result in the
end.
Alexey Patsko, INSEAD
MBA J03
email: [email protected]