Summer Term: Weeks Seven to Ten
Job Hunting:
Got my first interview of the year and it was such a relief to finally kickoff the job hunt. I’m interested in Product Manager roles and was interviewed by a small company in Cambridge. I cleared the technical phone interview and was invited for an onsite interview. The trip to Cambridge takes close to four hours by bus and I was exhausted when I got there. The interviewers was conducted in a very friendly manner and I felt that it would be a good place to work. Unfortunately I was unable to clear the on-site interview. The behavioural portion of the interview was fine, but there were some technical aspects of the interview that I was a bit rusty on. Furthermore, I was also quite rusty on the case frameworks and has not prepared adequately for this part of the interview and hence was not strong in this area.
I will reiterate the advice that I have given in the past — Prepare for case interviews even if you have zero interest in consulting! If I had followed the case framework for the business case that they gave me, my answer would definitely have been stronger. Nevertheless, it was a good learning experience and the feedback that they gave me was very helpful and I now know on which areas I need to improve. Apart from this one interview, the SCP was so demanding that I was not able to devote much time to look for jobs. I will have to restart once I graduate.
Strategic Consulting Project:
Speaking of the SCP, this ended on a rather disappointing note. After telling us that we were doing well and that we were on the right track, Gartner said that the final report was not upto their expectations. This was after giving us a challenging and cryptic project mandate and then failing to help us at the final stage when we were stuck because most retail executives that we needed to interview were on holiday. They then refused to pay the meagre amount of 1000 pounds for six weeks for work because they were not ‘mesmerized’ by our final report. It’s puzzling why they chose to act in this way, but unfortunately there is little that my team can do apart from warning any MBA’s from working with them. Fortunately our SCP grade will not be affected as the evaluation is on the presentation to the school along with a 15,000 word report and is independent of the company’s opinion.
Overall, I still think that the SCP represents the best learning opportunity for MBA’s. Obviously if you are offered an internship at a company that could turn into a job, you should take it. But if you are deciding between the electives and the SCP, if you have a good team you should do the SCP. If there are elective that you really want to attend, you can do as I did and pick an SCP that is based in Oxford and audit the electives. I learned a lot about myself during the SCP. In particular they were areas that I now know that I need to improve on as a teammate and leader and hence I do not regret doing the SCP, although I really wish we had picked Quandoo (another SCP option) rather than Gartner.
Capstone:
Capstone is a weeklong affair that is one big party and it’s really just a chance to say goodbye to all the friends that you made over the last one year. Capstone week culminates in a (fake) graduation ceremony that was held at the Sheldonian Theater. The official graduation ceremony is usually held in April-May of 2015 and it’s organized by your college and not by the business school. Furthermore, most SBS grads will return to their home countries once they finish the course and hence the business school arranges a separate ceremony in the middle of September in order to enable everyone to attend and ‘graduate’ together. The theme of the commencement speech was on looking at problems as opportunities. The graduation ceremony was held in the afternoon and in the evening we were invited to a black tie dinner at the University club. It was a fitting end to an amazing year and though everyone is sad that it has come to an end, there was a lot of excitement/anticipation at the thought of what the future holds for all of us.
Update: It’s now been three weeks since graduation and I have moved to London to look for jobs. I will post an update on where things stand and on my reflections on the MBA in December.
