Analyzing Your Resume Artistically

I had my first appointment today with Eric Chaiken, the career counselor for the Evening MBA program, who gave me numerous pointers for improving my resume and reaching out to potential employers. I promised not to give away all of his secrets, but this one was so fascinating and innovative that I have to share it.

Eric took me to Wordle, where he had me cut and paste my resume into a open box. Strange request, I thought, because the site seems more about creating abstract art. After submitting the information, the site produced an interesting representation of my professional and academic career. The most frequently used words are larger, giving a great visual on what I have elected to emphasize. I was amazed at what a great barometer I was seeing!

The Wake Forest student blog would like to see the practical artists we have in the business schools. Play around with it and have fun. Then email your Worldle creations to paul.davis@mba.wfu.edu and show that MBAs and MAs can produce some amazing visual works!

Is it break yet?

Things sure are busy in Winston-Salem! It's been almost a month since my last post, and for that I apologize. We were told by the second year students that this time of year is the busiest. They weren't kidding! It seems each week we've got a final, a project, or some mix of both. We've finished two courses so far, Managerial Economics and Management Communications. This weekend we write our case final for Quantitative Methods, then take that final exam Monday. On Tuesday, our accounting projects are due. Next Monday and Tuesday, our accounting and finance exams. Then we have a break for Thanksgiving, then as soon as we get back, our main project for Organizational Behavior is due, followed quickly by a marketing final. Phew!

On top of that, we still have regular classes, complete with pop quizzes and lengthy readings. My advice to any prospective student: invest in a comfortable chair and some good lighting. Your eyes and back will thank you! The quiz count this week is three so far, with another one to come tomorrow. I wouldn't say this was an abnormal week, but definitely a trying one. With all these projects and exams and classes coming to a head, things feel at a bursting point. I keep telling myself, December isn't far away!

In other news, things continue to progress on other fronts. Various groups continue to meet and discuss issues and trips. The Wine Club had a rousing meeting where we tasted various new world reds. The Marketing Summit team continues to plan and strategize for this year's event. Project Nicaragua has selected its group for the January trip. The international trips have been announced and people are excited to figure out where they want to go next May. Football season is about to end, but the Demon Deacon basketball team is set to begin!

It's definitely a period of change right now. The weather is changing. The leaves have packed up and headed closer to terra firma. Some classes are ending, others are beginning. We are nearly one quarter of the way through our MBA, and it feels like just yesterday we started this crazy adventure!

A Thought for the Day

I really love my school. An integrated program works wonders. Also, being a student as an adult has been much more interesting than undergrad, simply because of the quality of shared experiences. I’m learning that not only can I not do it all on my own, but other people's experiences and perspectives are oftentimes a huge asset to problem-solving. I am growing every day and I LOVE MY LIFE!

~ Ahkesha Murray

A Whole New (Business) World

The past few weeks have been very busy for students in the Schools of Business! We’ve had numerous speakers and companies on campus that have provided our community with some really exciting perspectives of today’s business climate.

As an MA candidate, I am biased towards the outside world, in that I have yet to leave the comfortable cocoon of university life. Until recently, I wasn’t really focusing on the business community. 

The variety of speakers, spanning from industry panels, to corporate representatives, to presentations on leadership, to influential individuals within a specific field, has opened my eyes to the wider business community. They have forced me to step outside my comfort zone to consider the environment of the world I am attempting to enter in a few short months. I’m beginning to think outside of the box.

Andrew Robertson , CEO of BBDO Worldwide, was on campus recently and discussed BBDO’s work structure and value system. He also consented to a small roundtable discussion of which I was able to be a part. Very exciting! While his speech focused on BBDO, the roundtable was based upon questions we asked: about him, his career, his perspective, etc. He is such a strong personality, and it was an incredible opportunity to have him in such a small setting and to pick his brain about the current marketing community. 

We discussed how he decided upon Marketing (a story including an Engineering major and making friends at a local pub) as well as his opinions on the current Marketing world – such as his dislike of “buzz words” and his passion for the creativity involved in ads.

I also had the opportunity to attend a company session with PepsiCo where they unveiled a new internship program with Wake Forest’s business schools. To have such a well-known company working with our programs is a really neat chance to learn about and develop within the business community outside of the university.

Also, within the MA program the teams work with outside sponsors on various consulting projects and our first deadline is looming this week. My team will present for ISP, a local sales agency responsible for collegiate multimedia rights management. ISP also has strong ties to Wake in that its founder, Ben Sutton, worked with the university’s Athletic Department for years and is a well known Demon Deacon! The Action Learning Project, as its called, is a series of four smaller consulting projects ranging from talent management to data analysis to a larger project at the end of the year. We’re learning to deal with the pressure of a project deadline as well as multiple project deadlines within our classes. It’s been quite a couple of few weeks!

On another note, I’ve been enjoying the cultural opportunities at Wake, having had the chance to see Sonnets for an Old Century this weekend – a wonderful play by José Rivera (right) , put on by Wake Forest University’s Theatre Department.

So life is balancing out, and I’m learning to focus on life outside of the university as I’m planning on joining it in a few short months. … Oh, my.

~ Jen Ratliff

Director’s Corner – A Focus on Job Placement

As you go through your program, you are likely spending a considerable amount of time and energy looking and preparing for a job or an internship. Doing those searches, in addition to managing your coursework, can be a daunting task, especially under the current economic conditions. The aim of this message is to highlight some of the initiatives that we are pursuing to ease the burden of your search and increase the likelihood of your success.

First, as you may know, we have made (and continue to make) considerable investments in our graduate Career Management Center (CMC). We have dedicated career counselors for our MBA and MA programs and will hire a dedicated MSA counselor soon (to support the accounting faculty who manage the recruiting process).

We are also expanding our corporate relations team to increase our on-campus recruiting activity and, more importantly, pursue innovative placement strategies that will allow us to match job opportunities with students in a targeted fashion (outside the traditional on-campus recruiting process). Finally, to enhance the reach and effectiveness of our corporate outreach, as of this year we are working with the University’s placement office to share resources and to provide a single-point of contact to recruiters. These changes are already having a positive impact on our ability to bring recruiters to our campus.

In addition to the above enhancements, we are investing resources in two other areas: career/professional development curricula and our executive partners program. Our CMC and E&Y center teams have formulated comprehensive professional development programs to prepare you for your job/internship search. Our MSA students are receiving professional training from our E&Y center. Our MA and first-year MBA students are going through a new CMC curriculum this year. Our 2nd year MBA students experienced several of its components last year and are receiving the new elements during one-on-one meetings with their counselors.

We are currently working on delivering similar programs to the MSAs and to the working professional MBA students who need it. The positive feedback that we are receiving from our corporate partners on the impact of the new preparation programs is strong. If you are not in the 1st year MBA and MA programs and wish to experience the new CMC curriculum, please visit our CMC office and ask that you meet with one of our career counselors. I expect that you will find the new curriculum to be both challenging and rewarding.

Our executive partners program is a new initiative that aims to create the best student mentoring program in the nation. The program will pair-up each student with a seasoned executive in a mentoring relationship. Each participant (student and mentor) will be interviewed prior to joining the program to understand his/her needs. Mentors and students will be matched using a computerized system and the data collected during the interviews. Both the students and the mentors will be guided as they go through the mentoring relationship. We will begin rolling out the mentoring program to our MA students in January and to our other programs between August 2010 and August 2011. For more information on the program and its benefits, please click here, or contact Hansford Johnson.

I recognize that each one of you has different career needs and interests. I also understand that the relevance of the above initiatives will differ across programs. We are working intensely to ensure that you are receiving effective career preparation and coaching, and have access to opportunities that will make your job placement successful. The early results so far indicate that we are making good progress. Our MSA program is concluding a very successful internship and full-time placement season. Our full-time MBA placement this summer was strong compared to the market (three months after graduation, we placed a higher proportion of students than many top schools, including Duke, UNC/Chapel Hill, UCLA, Wharton, and SMU). While this is a challenging time and jobs are hard to find, we are working on achieving high placement results for all of our first and second year full-time MBA and MA students along with unemployed students in our MSA and working-professional programs.

For those of you who are still looking for employment/internship opportunities, we will continue to focus on your placement until you are successful. Until that happens, our work is not done.

~ Charles Iacovou

Director’s Corner – First-Year Focus

We’re already into November! I can’t believe how fast the semester is flying by! Many of you mentioned to me that you feel like you’re in a whirlwind of activity, barely putting out one fire (read: deliverable) before a new fire starts.

The cynical part of me says “welcome to graduate school.” The realistic part of me says, “I understand. I feel that way too! There are not enough hours in the day.”

When I reflect on my graduate school experience, I remember feeling the way you do. I could barely grasp a concept or contemplate a new method before the professors were moving on to the next subject. Several of you have told me that you don’t feel as though the knowledge is sinking in. You fear you are not learning anything because you are being exposed to so much.

My advice: “keep the faith.” You don’t realize how much you’re learning because you haven’t had the chance to go out and apply it. Each summer, when the classrooms are empty and the halls are not lined with students waiting for Jon Pinder, I get emails from students working in their internships. I know my colleagues receive these emails too, where students are telling us how they’ve had a chance to apply what they’ve learned in our classes. Those emails are very fulfilling to my colleagues and me because we realize that we have taught you something useful and this validates our efforts. But it also sends a message to you that all the hard work from your first year is paying off. These tools in your tool box are actually being used and they are actually useful! You impressed your boss and it felt good!

At this time of the school year, things are very hectic and stressful. There will be other crazy periods as well. At these times, it is important to remember to keep the faith. I realize that it’s very easy to say and very hard to do, but I’m asking you to trust me on this and I’ll look forward to receiving your email over the summer!

~ Sherry Moss

Andrew Robertson Talks Leadership at Wake

Andrew Robertson, the president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, was a featured presenter Oct. 29 as part of the Wake Forest University Schools of Business Leadership Speaker Series.

Anyone who missed this creative talent should catch the video. Click here to see the entire presentation.