What's my story?

If you're applying to B-school, you've surely heard talk about honing "your story." When we applied to college, we didn't have to speak much about our future goals. Sure we talked a bit about who we were and the experiences we had in high school, but our professional goals weren't really at play. We weren't expected to have a concrete plan of what we wanted to do post graduation. Applying to b-school is a different beast. Business school is a professional school and you need to give admissions committees a clear idea of what you want to do after you obtain your MBA.

I'm reminded of an epsiode of Living Single. Sinclair (Kadijah's cousin and secretary) asks for more responsibility. When Kadijah asks her what exactly she wants to do, Sinclair whines and says she doesn't know. I'm kind of feeling like Sinclair -- but just kind of. After all, I embarked on this journey after taking some personal inventory. So I have a hazy vision of leaving my current industry and perhaps my current function. When I was brainstorming , I thought about which aspects of my job that I liked and enjoyed the most. In certain ways I work as an internal consultant. I'm not married to just one product team. I conduct market research and pre-launch market seeding campaigns to unearth information about the market for any given editor or to help an editor solve problems with their book list or individual books. It'd be cool, I thought, to do something similar outside of publishing. Then I thought, and thought, and said you know what, that using an external, fresh perspective and approach to solving a problems is what consultants do. I did an informational interview with one of my good friends from college (I believe I've posted about it here) and confirmed that my idea of what she really did was correct. I was fearful, however, of how well I'd be able to convince an admissions committee that I'd be successful in making a transition from publishing to consulting.

That fear led me to other avenues that seemed more predictable for someone with my background. What if I stayed in publishing and wrote about my goal to revolutionize the industry in my essays? This is quite a lofty and original goal. Thinking about your career goals in terms of how good your essays will be is kind of backwards, though, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to convince an admissions committee that I was passionate about that goal. While my end goal is to leave the industry, I won't pretend that there aren't any aspects about it that I like. I also won't pretend that if I stayed in publishing I couldn't find a niche for myself that would be fulfilling. That said I'm giving some more thought to using my MBA to come back to publishing, but there are other industries and functions that have caught my eye.

One day I was waiting for a friend to pick me up and I wandered into a GAP, and I found another career inspiration there. I love marketing. I really do. I started my publishing career in marketing, and I took my current job because it was a hybrid between marketing and editorial. When I did a stint at Starbucks fresh out of undergrad while looking for a full time job, I used to study the marketing materials that were sent to the store. Starbucks' marketing and branding is totally integrated from the core. There's no element in a Starbucks store that does not serve to communicate Starbucks' benefits to its customers. This is also what I saw at the GAP that day (though they have been suffering in sales as of late). A light bulb went off. Perhaps retail marketing is really where I need to be. I had had a few drinks at happy hour no more than ten minutes prior, so the $5 wine could have been at work.


Then out of no where a few weeks ago, without the aid of $5 wine, my editorial mind resurfaced. While I don't necessarily want to work with books anymore, I do like the idea of cultivating a list of books or products. And that is very similar to what a brand manager would do with a particular brand's products. I went to Wet Fish to research. According to wetfish, here are a Brand Manager's basic duties:

1. Monitoring the competitive landscape of the category in which your brand resides.
2. Developing strategies to exploit market opportunities.
3. Executing those strategies with the help of a cross-functional team.
4. Delivering the sales volume, market share, and profit projections for the business.

Currently, I participate in a process that is responsible for all four of the above.

Now I have four career paths in mind and four career paths I need to explore in more depth. I would like to develop a clear picture of my goals before B-school not only for the sake of my applications, but also for the sake of attaining these goals. I understand that most b-school students wind up veering in a different direction than the one they charted in their applications. I might also fall under that umbrella, but doing personal inventory so I know what I really like to do, what I'm good at doing, and what makes me happy will still be helpful to me no matter which career path I ultimately choose.

Needless to say, pensive cat has some thinking to do....

Day 1, Ball games, Consulting, True Blood

There was absolutely no parking next to the Subway and I wound up being late to class. Next Sunday, I'll know to just walk from home. I have no idea where everyone was going at 9 am on a Sunday morning, but that's neither here nor there.

Much like the train parking lot, class was packed. I wound up having to sit on the floor for the first half. By the second half, the visitors had dispersed and I was able to get a seat. We spent a little bit of time going over Data Sufficiency techniques, and the strategies we discussed have already helped me. Before I was attacking DS problems without a clear methodology for eliminating answers. Now I know that I NEED to figure out what the prompt is really asking for and do some manipulation of the equations given in the two statements. I can tell that this methodology is going to save me a lot of time.

I also have a better idea of how the test is scored and why I should feel like the test kicked my ass when it's all over and done with.

The sentence correction strategy seems a bit involved. It does help to know that the GMAT does not consider the passive voice grammatically incorrect and that it will test you on the concept of "like" vs "such as." Those two GMAT idiosyncracies will be important to know.

They gave us a crap load of materials and just thinking about the abundance of online materials has my head kind of dizzy. Luckily they provide us with study maps to guide our study. I had to lug all nine books to the ball stadium on the bus, but it was worth it. For some reason I wasn't in the mood for a cold beer today and I really didn't focus too much on the game. My boyfriend and I left early and I don't even know who won. Sitting in club level is always nice though and I enjoyed my Ball Park hot dog.

So this evening I chatted with an old friend about management consulting. She graduated for two years before I did and she was actually my supervisor at a kids program I worked at one summer. She's worked in consulting since she graduated and recently finished her MBA At Kellogg. I talked with her about my reasons for wanting to go into management consulting and wanted to make sure that my expectations of what it entails are realistic. After speaking with her, it is a good fit, and she encouraged me to stop being lazy and go for top 10 schools. I had my sights set on UCLA, but if I need to aim higher to get into consulting and to get the salary I want, then I will bite the bullet.

I have the house to myself tonight. My boyfriend has gone out to celebrate a friend's birthday, and though I do like to cuddle on Sunday nights, him being gone will allow me to watch True Blood and do an hour of data sufficiency in peace. I'm waiting for Sookie and Eric to get together. Now that will be a hot scene.

My plan for tomorrow is to do 15 minutes of jump rope at 6, get in some reading on the BART, continue my reading at Starbucks at lunch, do 30 min on the treadmill afterwork, and go see Inception. Let's hope I can wake up.