Not just internships anymore

Even though most of the LGOs are still on internship and so off-campus for fall semester, we have begun to feel an increased workload in the days following labor day.  Assignments for leadership and preparation for our mid-stream review have started coming due AND the job hunt has begun.

While we have partner company recruiting at the end of October, the Sloan Career Development Office (CDO) has begun posting jobs from other companies participating regular MBA on-campus recruiting.  We've also had workshops from the CDO on writing cover letters, to review our resumes and there are more sessions, like mock-interviews on the horizon.  Given all this thinking about jobs, many of us have started looking at companies that are not coming to MIT in addition to partner companies and on-campus recruiters to fill out our portfolio of options for full-time.  I have no idea how many jobs I will end up applying to, but my goal is to have multiple offers!

MID-STREAM
This is a time at roughly the middle of our internships (for us it's next week), when all the LGOs come back to campus (Take me back to Tech!) and spend a few days filling each other and our advisers and company supervisors on what we've been up to.  For fun, the video below is the MIT Logarhythms singing Take Me Back to Tech with alumni from 1949-1999 for their 50th anniversary celebration.  I'll have to post, at a minimum, the lyrics to the alma mater before graduation if I can't find a recording.

Internships on different topics like supply chain management, process improvement and project management (that would be me) are grouped together within the presentation sessions so that the audience can stay in a similar frame of mind.  It works pretty well.  Along with our presentations, there will be sessions with the Career Development Office, Alumni and partner companies as we begin the dance toward recruitment.

LGO RECRUITING
Even though I knew we had our own separate recruiting sessions with partner companies, I realized recently, that I didn't know how that system worked.  To give a preview to the '14s, jobs will be posted on the intranet site the week after mid-stream or so and you sign up for which ones you'd like to interview for.  Cover letters are optional (but, as always, recommended) for these sessions.  I've heard that there will be a cap on the # of people a company will interview for a position, but that's more of a scheduling thing and that usually if there is more demand than slots, the LGO staff and the company will try and work something out.

LGO recruiting is in addition to the on-campus recruiting through the CDO and the two can overlap.  So, hopefully, when October 29 - Nov 2 rolls around, we'll be busy with all kinds of interviews.  We've been given advice to maybe stick around the following week for other interviews and second rounds, so I'm probably going to do that.

Since recruiting is over Halloween this year, I will be on campus for the annual Pumpkin Drop.  It's about like what the title implies - around midnight, students drop a bunch of pumpkins off of the tallest building on campus and round-orange-squash-carnage ensues.  I've got my fingers crossed for good weather and lots of pumpkins.

In the meantime, work is now proceeding on parallel paths - internship stuff and job applications.  Wish me luck on both!