Posted 5:47 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
Looking Ahead: The MAP Experience
One of the unique features of the University of Michigan Business School's MBA program is its MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Project) program. In the second half of the Winter term, roughly from March 1 through the end of April, all first year MBA students work on MAP projects, which are best described by the school's website:

"MAP is a fully-engaging, full-time experience with significant educational and developmental objectives, and not simply an extracurricular consulting project. It is built around solving real-time, real-world business problems. The assignments are constructed to develop skills like integrating knowledge of various business functions, working effectively in teams, networking and leveraging others' capabilities, knowledge, and leadership. It all adds up to turning knowledge into action, and action in quality results.

Each MAP assignment is done in cross-functional teams and involves working with a cross-disciplinary team of faculty, who review students' work and provide guidance at crucial points during the project. Teams also work closely with a consultant on team effectiveness and project management, as well as host-company executives. At the conclusion of MAP, student teams present findings and recommendations for action to both faculty and their sponsoring companies."

Over those seven weeks, MBA1s don't have any courses, and devote all their time to work on these consulting engagements.

I'll be writing a lot more about this unique experience as it approaches, but it's on my mind now since students must bid on the projects they want by Tuesday. There are several categories of MAPs: CMAPs (Corporate MAPs), IMAPs (International MAPs), and EMAPs (Entreprenurial MAPs). They span industries, locations, and companies. Some more notable sponsors are Ford, Citigroup, Habitate for Humanity, Whirlpool, and the US Embassy in Slovakia; some of the more interesting [IMAP] locations are Costa Rica, China, India, the Ukraine, South America, and Ireland.

Posted 11:03 AM by Zachary (e-mail)
THE Week
Well, it's all over but the laughing and the crying and the drinking.

Last week was the first week of on-campus interviews, and as such represented the peak of Wall Street recruiting at Michigan. All the big investment banks were out in force--Lehman, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, JP Morgan, UBS, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, to name a few. Each day a couple banks did first round interviews, and those lucky enough to get a thumbs up after that were invited that afternoon to final round interviews the very next day (and left to hope that those final round interviews didn't conflict with another pair of banks' first round interviews). By Wednesday and Thursday a few classmates already had a couple of offers in hand.

Michigan is not yet a big recruiting school for sales/trading functions; the big three on-campus firms were Morgan Stanley on Wednesday, and Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers on Thursday. I was fortunate to be invited to final round interviews on Firday for both Deutsche and Lehman, and got good news, in the form of a summer job offer, that afternoon. So, for me, the week ended with a wave of jubilation and relief that the hundreds of dollars, multiple trips to New York, dozens of practice interviews, etc. paid off, and a sense of satisfaction that I achieved my [long-standing] goal.

For those students who didn't receive offers from last week, there is still the off-campus avenue to job hunting. For example, many of the banks which don't come to campus are very welcoming of Michigan MBAs. I know of students who've been invited to interviews in New York with Merrill Lynch, CSFB, and Bear Stearns, to name a few.

Posted 11:02 AM by Zachary (e-mail)
Tozzi Finance Center
One of the greatest resources available to UMBS students is the Tozzi Finance Center, the school's brand new (opened in 2003) trading floor.



Stacked with the same hardware (Bloomberg terminals, flat screens, etc.) and software (Bloomberg, Factsheet, eVal, trading simulators, etc.) that you'll find on the Street, it's a great tool for both education and job hunting. On any weekday, you'll find several S&T-focused MBA1s in there following the markets, doing company research, and taking classes (FIN 640, the "Financial Trading" class, is run there). The Tozzi Center has logins to the client research sites for Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, UBS, and Merrill Lynch, meaning students can download the morning call research report for a bank, minutes before heading into an interview with them.

Personally, I haven't yet taken a class in Tozzi, but spend several hours a week in there following the markets and doing research. In addition, starting this term Bloomberg has begun providing Product Certification courses on Fridays, giving me a head start on learning an important skill for any summer finance job. Truly, the Tozzi Center has been indispensible in my preparation for Wall Street interviews.

Posted 3:24 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
Bidding for On-Campus Interviews
The business school Office of Career Development (OCD) does a good job organizing the huge scrum that is on-campus interviewing. The first week of on-campus interviews (for MBA1 summer positions) is the week of the 19th, and the process of matching interested students to interested companies takes place in iMpact, the UMBS website.

The first week of interviews is dominated by investment banks, consulting firms, and big fortune-500 recruiters. For those of us interested in sales and trading, the three big names during that first week are Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley.

This is the timeline for getting into those interviews, and the same pattern holds true for each subsequent week of interviews:

Fall Term
As I've mentioned before, students spend a good portion of the first term making contacts at target banks, networking, making trips to New York, and informational interviewing. The twin goals of these efforts are 1) to get a good feel for the job, the different banks, and where you feel most comfortable; and 2) to build a relationship with the banks so that when it comes time for them to choose their interviewees, your name is chosen (see below).

3rd Wednesday before Interview Week
Each company that comes to Michigan for on-campus interviews has both a closed list and open list of interview slots. The close list contains the candidates that the company is most interested in interviewing (i.e. who they choose). Students [who aren't on the closed list] can bid points in an auction to obtain a spot on the open list of interview slots. Most of the banks have 12 interview slots, 9 of which are closed, 3 of which are open. Obviously, the more closed lists a student can get on the better, since 1) they're generally an indication of company interest, 2) the student doesn't have to use bid points on them, and 3) there are relatively few open slots that a lot of students might be bidding for.

The official resume drop deadline for on-campus interviews takes place the third Wednesday before the interview week. For the Jan 19th interviews, that was December 31st. To drop a resume, students only need to go to the job description (in iMpact), enter a cover letter, specify which resume to use, and press submit.

2nd Wednesday before Interview Week
Companies will then review the submitted resumes, poll their employees, and come up with their closed list of students they want to interview. They must submit that list, through the iMpact web system, by the 2nd Wednesday prior to interviews--in this case, last Wednesday, the 7th.

As you can imagine, there's a fair amount of tension in the classroom around that time, because a bunch of students are finding out they were invited to interview and some are finding out they weren't. There's the buzz of discussions about who is on what list, and students begin to consider how to bid for the open lists.

2nd Saturday before Interview Week
Bidding for companies open interview list starts on the 2nd Saturday prior to the interviews (i.e. today). MBA1s start out with 500 bid points, and its a blind auction, so interview slots could go for 1 point or they could go for 500. Students are debating amongst themselves:
1) How important is this company to me?
2) What does it mean that they didn't put me on the closed list?
3) How much interest in this company is there amongst other students?
4) What other companies might I want to use my bid points on in the future?

Open list bidding continues from Saturday until Tuesday at noon.

Tuesday before Interview Week
Once open list bidding is closed off at noon, the OCD's computer systems determine which students "won" the interview slots and automatically schedules the interviews (for both closed and open list interviewees).

Interview Week
The interviews are held at UMBS in the OCD's interview suites, and usually last between 30 minutes and an hour. For Wall Street firms (at least), these interviews are only the first of two rounds. If students make a good enough impression during these interviews, they will be invited back for a final round of interviews either 1) the next day, at the hotel in which the company interviewers are staying, or 2) in New York, usually the following week.

In Summary
As is obvious from the description, this isn't a simple nor stress-free process. Every year, there are some students who don't get the jobs they were dreaming of, and there are some students who have several companies offering them jobs. All of this is taking place during the first three or four weeks of a seven week semester. The process involves a lot of waiting for e-mails, phone calls, web page updates. Obviously, study habits fail and nerves strain.

Personally, I like the edgy intensity that these weeks have, like you're in the middle of the fray and only your focus and determination can pull you through. I put a ton of work into the job search last term (and even last summer), and feel confident that if I don't get distracted by others' freneticism, all will turn out right.

Posted 9:29 PM by Zachary (e-mail)
Lucky Schedule
My section (remember, all first year MBAs here take all core classes with their section) lucked out with our schedule this term: our first class on Tuesdays and Thursdays isn't until 10:00am, and on Mondays and Wednesdays it's not until 11:30am. Sweet.

Posted 9:33 AM by Zachary (e-mail)
Winter A Schedule
MBA1s take only four core courses in Winter A (we took five in the Fall), leaving room for one elective. The core courses (see descriptions below) are:

Management Accounting
Human Behavior & Organizations
Applied Business Statistics
Operations Management

Right now, I'm signed up for two electives:
Capital Markets & Investment Strategy
Options & Futures in Corporate Decisionmaking

I'll go to the first class of each, and choose one of them to stick with. Considering how seldom I'll be in class the next few weeks (due to interviewing/New York trips), it's a tricky decision based on course workload, interest, and job applicability.

(Course descriptions)
OB 552 Human Behavior and Organization
This course provides students with the tools necessary to analyze the behavioral and organizational influences on systemic outputs (e.g., quality, profitability, employee well-being, speed). The course tends to focus on macro-organizational issues such as organization design, culture, power and politics, strategic leadership, reward systems, change and work systems. A number of individual level issues are also covered, including motivation, decision-making, socialization, and diversity. These topics are viewed as conceptual levers through which organizational change may be facilitated.

OMS 502 Applied Business Statistics
This course covers descriptive statistics and graphical description of data; probability; sampling distributions; confidence intervals and sample size determination for estimating population means and proportions; fundamentals of hypothesis testing; one and two sample tests for population means and proportions; correlation; simple and multiple regression; forecasting with regression; and statistical process control. Business applications are used to illustrate these concepts. The course requires computer-based projects.

OMS 552 Operations Management
All value in society is generated by transforming one set of things into other, different things. Without such transformations, there would be no wealth creation and no rationale for business. Operations management is the design and management of those transformation processes. In this course, we will provide a framework for systematically examining and understanding operations management issues. We will also expose you to a few of the most important tools and practices that are useful in managing manufacturing and service production systems. If we are successful, by the end of the course you will be able to describe and analyze a production process, to analyze its appropriateness given the corporate and functional-level strategies of the firm, to decide whether it is well-managed, and to identify its key challenges and opportunities.

ACC 552 Management Accounting
This course introduces the basic concepts of managerial accounting for internal decision-making. Major topics included are product costing, emphasizing costing approaches used in today's business environments, relevant costs for decision analysis, variance analysis, divisional performance evaluation, and transfer pricing.

FIN 580 Options and Futures in Corporate Decision Making
This course introduces the student to options and futures and illustrates their use in the context of corporate decisions-making. Companies increasingly issue securities with features that resemble options or futures. Options and futures also play an important role in risk management. Many corporate decisions have built-in strategic options which need to be evaluated.

FIN 608 Capital Markets and Investment Strategy
This course covers portfolio analysis, asset pricing models, and investment strategies. It used both the lecture and the case method if instruction to develop a practical understanding of some of the more important financial instruments and markets. Security valuation and management of investment strategies are major themes present throughout the course. A fundamental objective of the course is to enable students to gain a robust familiarity with approaches (such as security replication and arbitrage free pricing), that can be adapted to analysis of broad classes of financial assets and markets. Such skills are indispensable to investment analysis in an economic environment characterized by an unprecedented amount of financial innovation, both in the creation of new securities and in the development and evolution of financial institutions.

Posted 2:32 AM by Zachary (e-mail)
Happy New Year!
...and welcome to the Year of the Monkey.