The MBA Student Voice

Student Spotlight: Katherine Ozmeral

This post is a part of the Student Spotlight series where we highlight a current Anderson student and learn about their experience at Anderson. We will also get hear about their favorite Anderson memories and get their advice for current and prospective MBA students.

Today we are featuring Kathrine Ozmeral '17.

 

Tell us a little bit about your background.

I majored in Finance & Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Following school I started working at an insurance company where I sampled different areas finance: including investments, accounting, business strategy, and internal audit. Looking to transition into the retail industry in a marketing or merchandising capacity I decided to start preparing my MBA applications. While doing so, I moved to Thailand where I taught English & volunteered for the year leading up to my start at Anderson. Now that I'm here, I'm hoping to combine my passion for retail with my "social good" attitude.

 

What has been your favorite thing about Anderson so far?

The people. I was really sensitive to culture when looking for an MBA program - my undergraduate business school was very congenial; however, my first job had a very competitive culture which didn't fit my personality.  At Anderson, I've noticed that "Share Success" isn't just a saying, but a notion that every student lives and breathes. When interviewing for internships, I didn't have a shortage of alumni, second years, and even fellow first years sharing helpful tips and performing mock interviews with me. You spend a lot of time with your fellow classmates, so it's important that you enjoy their company!

 

Alumni Spotlight: JJ Haglund

This post is a part of the Alumni Spotlight series where we highlight an Anderson alum and learn what they have been up to since their time at Anderson. We will also get hear about their favorite Anderson memories and get their advice for current and prospective MBA students.

Today we are featuring JJ Haglund, Anderson Class of 2015.

What brought you to Anderson?

What first grabbed my attention about Anderson was the list of top employers and who recruited there. Before I even realized what career I wanted to pursue I was just impressed that so many grads went to Disney, Nike, Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and the like. Then the more I learned about the school and the culture, the more I wanted to be there. The collaborative environment and sense of community really resonated with me. 

 

What have you been up to since graduation?

Since graduation, I started working for Adobe as a PMM for the Marketing Cloud. I moved back to Utah, where Adobe's Digital Marketing headquarters is located (corporate HQ is in San Jose). I've still been able to maintain ties with my Anderfriends though - my job sends me to the Bay Area about once a month. We also took trips to Hawaii and Yellowstone this summer as a family.

 

What I wish I would have known when applying to b-school

Recently I have been asked by several prospective students variations of this question—if you could go back, what do you wish you would have know when applying to b-school? It is a great question. As I have thought about it, there have been several things that have come to mind, but the one I want to focus on is the importance of location.

When I was originally applying to business school, location was a very important factor. I wanted to be in a place that promoted a tight-knit student culture, and I wanted to go to school in a region I was interested in living in post-MBA. However, the one aspect of location I didn't consider, and for me as a career switcher is extremely important, is whether or not the local business community will provide me with opportunities to gain the skills and experiences I need to help me successfully switch careers.

Although I didn't realize it when applying, being in Los Angeles would be a key part of my success in being able to get to where I am now in the career switch process. Before business school, my work experience was primarily in operations. I spent the last 2+ years before Anderson at Goldman Sachs. When I came back to school, not only did I want to change functions to marketing, I wanted to change industries as well. Changing just functions or only industries is very common in b-school, but attempting to make the double switch is a bit more difficult.

So, what is the local business community like and how exactly has being in LA helped me? The startup scene in LA is booming and there are a ton of opportunities for students to gain valuable experience beyond just the typical MBA summer internship. There are also a lot of bigger well known name brands that hire part-time interns during the school year like Disney, NBC, etc. This summer I began building my marketing experience as a Brand and Content Marketing intern at Castlight Health. I wanted to continue that momentum and keep building on my marketing experience, and have recently started another internship in Brand Management at Little Tikes. I am confident that these experiences and skills I will continue to build beyond my summer internship will help me successfully make my desired career transition.

So what would I say to those out there looking to apply to business school? If you are considering switching careers, think carefully about how will the program and location of the school put you in the best position to make that switch.

Follow @UCLAMBA on Instagram to get a student perspective on life at Anderson. Also, follow me and UCLA Anderson on Twitter: @jhuntington14 and @UCLAMBA.

Getting started with Anderson

Hello everybody! In about 20 days I will be travelling 4,176 miles to LA and I am a bit overwhelmed as there is still a lot to do! Besides figuring out living arrangements, making ultimate changes to my budget and scheduling eating every single item on this list, courtesy of Anderson 2017 Camila Moura, I have been focusing on career preparation. As recruiting events and company presentations start as soon as 2 weeks after the quarter begins, Anderson’s Parker Career Management Center (PCMC) has put together a list of summer deliverables on career preparation and tools to complete each one. So far I have been able to work on the first 2 sets of career deliverables and I wanted to share with you a sneak peak of how these two have been helpful to me.

1. Knowing the career path you want to pursue: The first deliverable dealt with understanding how our skills, interests and motivations fit in our future functions or industries. By answering several questions about those three aspects, we were given a report that highlighted possible career paths and how our abilities match to other professionals in those careers. Reflecting on this information has helped me to have my strengths mapped out and to have a better notion of what skills I will need to acquire or improve while at Anderson.

2. Improving your resume content: The second deliverable focuses on improving our resume. PCMC has given us access to videos that address how to optimize each part of our resume by structuring each job bullet in a more result-oriented way. In those videos, I have found great examples from 2^nd year students’ resumes that have helped me highlight specific accomplishments in a more impactful way.

Apart from the PCMC Career deliverables, international students have had the chance to have a one-on-one skype conversation with Qiling He, International Program Manager and Advisor. Through our chat, she wanted to learn more about me, my career path and according to that information, she shared with me career preparation tips, as well as contact information from 2^nd year students who had very similar career aspirations and experience as me.

I feel especially thankful for all the resources we have been given, and it also feels quite great to get started on the MBA experience!

I leave you with a picture of an Anderson meet in Lima Peru!

Favorite Recruiting Moments of Fall 2014

I survived my first quarter!! No, I didn’t just survive; I flourished! But it wasn’t easy. Over the last three months, I was stretched and challenged in ways that change a person. I had 36 hours of things to do each day, and I had to bring my A-game to everything. First quarter classes are extremely rigorous and Google was recruiting on campus Day 1, so for 12 weeks I did a calculated dance between academics, recruiting, and social activities. It was intense and I’m a better version of myself because of it.

Sometimes I would be on the phone to my parents and would have to stop myself and say, “It might sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. I love this. Every email I send, every informational interview I do, and every hour I put into studying is all about me and my future. It’s not about my boss or the organization I work for. It’s about me. It’s a uniquely selfish time and I love every minute of it.”

All of the hard work paid off, and at the end of the quarter, I accepted an offer for a summer internship (stay tuned for more about that in a future post). However it’s not about the destination, but the path you take to get there, and I really enjoyed the recruiting process. I recruited for human capital consulting and internal human capital management roles at tech companies. It is a field that is gaining interest at Anderson as more companies think strategically about how they manage their employees. Companies make presentations daily and nightly on campus, but here are my top four favorite recruiting events of fall quarter:

1. MCA Firm Kickoff – At Anderson, a lot of the recruiting takes place through on-campus professional clubs. The opportunities for consulting are run through the Management Consulting Association (MCA). At the MCA Firm Kickoff, over 15 top firms sent representatives to meet Anderson students. Each practice was stationed at a cocktail table, and for three hours, students could walk around and network with each one. It was a formal yet casual affair, and the perfect venue to make a good first impression with a variety of firms. The event was also on the night before the Statistics midterm, so it served as a good lesson in balancing academics and recruiting.
2. National Academy of Human Resources Foundation – The NAHR hosts an annual dinner and meeting with its fellows in New York City each November. One of the NAHR Foundation initiatives is to include select MBA students in the event, with the goal of attracting “top first year Master’s students to the HR profession.” I was chosen to represent Anderson at this year’s NAHR dinner, where I had the chance to chat with CHROs from a range of Fortune 100 companies. It was inspiring to hear from executives who have shaped the HR function over the last few decades.
3. Deloitte Human Capital Case Workshop – Deloitte has one of the leading human capital consulting practices and a growing office in LA. So I jumped at the chance to learn from some of the best at a case workshop they did on campus. Five practitioners, who were all also Anderson alumni, generously spent four hours on a Friday walking us through the Deloitte approach to casing. They provided us with valuable feedback after we worked through a practice case in groups. The day wrapped with a happy hour at a bar in West LA, which was a great way to get to know the Deloitte HC Anderson team a little better.
4. Days on the Job Tech Trek – Fellow Student Voice Blogger, Piyush Jain, published an earlier article that talks about this week in more detail, but to quickly summarize: for one week in November deemed “DOJ Week,” classes were canceled and Anderson students flew all around the country, visiting companies they are interested in. The High Tech Business Association (HTBA) organized the Tech Trek, which allowed me to jet up to Seattle, then down to San Francisco and visit Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, Visa, LinkedIn, eBay, Intel, and Autodesk. It was an incredible opportunity to network with Anderson alumni working at each of these companies and experience the corporate culture first hand. I was able to ask recruiters about strategic HR summer internship opportunities and hear about their human capital issues. For example, we toured Visa Inc.’s recently-opened innovation outpost in the heart of San Francisco. As Visa prepares to do a lot of tech hiring, the new office is a statement of how Visa is branding itself to compete for top talent against other companies.

After such a rewarding first quarter, I can’t wait to see what the rest of the school year has in store for me. Here’s to an incredible 2015!

The group of Master's students who were selected to participate in the 2014 National Academy of Human Resources Annual Dinner and Discussion Meeting in New York City.

Anderson students who visited Adobe during the San Francisco "Days on the Job" Tech Trek.

Los Angeles Startup & Non-Profit Scene

This past Friday I volunteered at Entrepreneur Impact Day (EID). The event was organized outside of UCLA but I was able to participate through Entrepreneurs Association (EA) on campus. It was a first in LA where startups and non-profits got together to solve some of the most challenging problems the non-profits are facing. I was assigned as program manager on the Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation or LA River Corp. for short. Their main focus is to turn 51 miles of the LA River into a public space with parks, trails, bridges, etc. and make it a landmark for the city. Currently their challenge is awareness and fundraising. Employees from two startups, MuckerLab and PicPlayPost were on hand to help them with both these challenges. By the end of the full day event, the team came up with a pitch deck for the initial fundraising and strategies to improve project awareness in the general public.

After just three weeks of school I was able to attend this event through my network at Anderson School of Management. Since my long term goal is entrepreneurship, hopefully in the social impact space, it was amazing to be able to participate in EID. I made some great contacts and am looking forward to more such events in the future. Thanks to the organizers of the event for putting together an amazing opportunity for all LA residents.

The event was hosted at the beautiful Bel-Air Bay Club

The Perks of Being in LA

Classes started last Thursday, and I am not sure about my classmates, but I feel like I am drinking out of a fire hose.  Stats, Econ, Accounting, Marketing, ACT Groups, Parker, clubs, Amazon Case Competition... WO.  Even though it has been a little stressful, it's been a great week!  Outside of class, on Monday, Google came and did their company presentation, it was pretty exciting.  To follow that up, Amazon was here on Tuesday.  

Later that night, after the Amazon presentation, just a couple miles away from campus, Google's Executive Chairman and former CEO, Eric Schmidt, and former Senior Vice President of Products at Google, Jonathan Rosenberg (currently serving as an advisor to Google CEO Larry Page), spoke to a small group of about 200 people.  A few of my fellow Anderson classmates and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend and listen to them speak.

It was a fantastic experience!  They gave the audience a pretty unique prespective of Google, and also some great general leadership insights as well.  One of the things that stood out to me most was when Eric Schmidt spoke about "thinking 10X."  To quote from Eric and Jonathan's book, How Google Works,

"Too many people are stuck in the old, limited mindset... 'Think 10X' – helps fix that.  It encompasses the art of the possible... and the impossible."

"The obvious benefit of thinking big is that it gives smart creatives much more freedom.  It removes constraints and spurs creativity.  Astro Teller, the head of Google[x], notes that if you want to create a car that gets 10 percent better mileage, you just have to tweak the current design, but if you want to get one that gets five hundred miles per gallon, you need to start over.  Just the thought process - How would I start over? - can spur ideas that were previously not considered."  

This was just one of the many golden nuggets of wisdom Eric and Jonathan shared.  It was very inspring.  There aren't many other cities where you would have the opportunity to be less than 30 feet away from and get to hear such influential business leaders.  Definitely one of the many perks of being in LA.  You can check out the interview in its entirety here.

- James Huntington, MBA '16

Follow me on Twitter @jhuntington14 and UCLA Anderson @UCLAMBA

Networking

This week I wanted to share some thoughts and insight on networking. I believe to pursue a specific career path it is extremely important to know the right people and get the correct advice. I moved into LA last week and this Wednesday was the first Sundowners event I attended with my fellow classmates and current students. It was a great opportunity to talk with students currently in their summer internships and learn firsthand about their experiences working in different industries. Since I am hoping to pursue a career in entrepreneurship / tech startup, I was able to gain some valuable feedback from some students in that field. One student landed his internship at a startup by responding to an email from the Real Estate Student Association while another student met with the founders of the company that he works at, during a networking event at Anderson, and secured an interview that led to the internship. The Parker Career Management Center coupled with the student organizations will pretty much open up all opportunity to find the right gig for each student.

The pre-orientation deliverable to update my resume and get feedback has also helped me think about the conversations I would be having with potential employers when I present my skill sets. In addition, it has got me started thinking about my plan B. If my primary target industry doesn’t work out, which companies will I be looking at and how will I present myself to them? Thinking about my career choice earlier than later will save me from rushing through at the last minute and provide ample time to polish my resume and pitch, when I not overwhelmed with classes and assignments.

The End of Two Years, The Beginning of a Lifetime

A little over six weeks ago, I graduated. Almost two years ago to the day, I moved to Los Angeles. 

Wow. 

I felt prepared for business school before I had started - I'd been given advice by recent grads, read blog posts, done some prep work, but there is nothing that can truly prepare you for the transformative experience that takes place over two years. Even by the end of year one, when I thought "Ok, now I know what to expect in year two", I didn't appreciate how much could be packed into the remaining 50% of my time at Anderson. 

Now that I've had a chance to step away from school and decompress a little bit, I wanted to write one final post to share some lessons learned and thoughts, along with a good collection of photos from my Anderson journey. The thoughts are in no particular order of importance, but the pictures start from pre-Anderson and end at graduation.

Enjoy!

Pre-MBA / Starting MBA advice

(Statue of John Anderson at the entrance to school)

If you are considering applying to business school or have already applied, you've probably spent a lot of time thinking about what getting an MBA means in the context of your career. Yes, an MBA is a means by which you can career switch or advance further in your current field, but a full-time MBA is also a two year experience that has a significant personal life impact. 

California Dreaming!

My name is Zafeer Khan and I am one of the Class of 2016 bloggers looking forward to sharing my journey over the next two years. I was born and raised in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a small country in South Asia surrounded by India in the North and West, Myanmar in the East and the Bay of Bengal in the South. Bangladesh is a commonwealth nation so I ended up studying under the British system of education and had to take my Ordinary Level and Advanced Level exams out of high school (by the way, no relation to Ordinary Wizarding Level (O.W.L) exams, Harry Potter fans!).

I came to the US in 2004 to pursue my undergraduate studies at Georgia Institute of Technology. After graduating with a degree in Computer Science I decided I did not want to code for the rest of my life but stay in the tech industry and learn the business side of things, so I got into Technology Consulting. I worked in strategy consulting providing advice and assessment to top technology companies as well as worked in systems implementation helping both private and public sector clients upgrade their legacy business processes. I have been doing consulting for the past six years for both a small and large consulting firm, raking in tons of experience that eventually helped me secure a spot at a top business school - Anderson.

Anderson was my first choice due to its location in California and proximity to the tech startup industry. Plus, over 300 days of sunshine is not a bad deal either. My post-MBA plan (contrary to my application essay) is to get into the startup space. But that’s the beauty of business school and Anderson, you get to choose what really interests you. Check out some of the career switches through the Parker Career Management Center.

Over the next several weeks I will share more about my moving experience from Atlanta, GA to Los Angeles, CA, getting ready for school, participating in pre-orientation trips and much more.

By way of introduction here is a picture of me and my sister near Carmel, CA during our California road trip down Pacific Highway 1.

Here is a picture of me whitewater rafting in TN last weekend. I am the guy posing instead of paddling.