Introducing the 2013-2014 DSAC Co-Chairs

Ever wonder how your Harper Center tour guide got his or her job? These guides, along with the other volunteers you see during campus visits or Admit Weekend, are members of the Dean’s Student Admission Committee (DSAC). DSAC is one of the largest student organizations on campus, given the enthusiasm that Booth students have for the school, and is led by eight Co-Chairs. We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves, Freddy Elorza and Matt Richman, as the new 2013-2014 DSAC Communications Co-Chairs. We manage The Booth Experience blog, Facebook, and YouTube content, as well as the newly launched Twitter feed.

Matt

I’m originally from the Philadelphia suburbs in New Jersey, and worked in the defense sector in Northern Virginia before Booth. I studied history as an undergrad, and got an MA in Soviet history from Penn. I really enjoy writing, so I got involved with The Booth Experience blog right away during my first year. I’m concentrating in finance and accounting here, and as much as I love my quant problem sets, I missed getting to express myself in prose rather than accounting ledger entries. I wanted to be a DSAC Co-Chair to help other students write about their unique Booth experiences, and to play a role in shaping the messages that prospective students get about Booth.

In addition to DSAC, I’m a member of the Public Speaking Group and the Investment Banking Group (I’ll be doing a summer internship this year at a bank in New York). I love Mixed Martial Arts and have trained regularly in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the last five years. A few other Boothies and I get together to train and we are trying to form a student club for next year.

In my free time in Chicago, my wife and I enjoy spending time by the lake, checking out the city’s museums near our apartment in the South Loop, and trying new restaurants in far-flung Chicago neighborhoods.

Freddy

I’m originally from Bogota, Colombia, but my family moved to Miami, FL when I was three years old. I grew up in Miami (GO HEAT!!!) and went to undergrad at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to study aerospace engineering. After graduation I had the great opportunity to teach high school. I really enjoyed teaching juniors and seniors, but after a few years I decided I was ready for a different setting. That led me to consulting as a career path and business school as the next logical step. Chicago Booth fits my personality really well. I can be a bit of a math geek but get to stretch myself to do things I haven’t done before, like help to write in this blog.

During my first year at Booth I was an active member of the Management Consulting Group, Net Impact, DSAC, and Booth Soccer Club. I will be one of the DSAC Communications Co-Chairs for the next year. I’m most excited about our new Twitter page—follow us @TheBoothExp!

In my free time I enjoy traveling and nature hikes. During spring break I spent nine days touring the National Parks in the Southwest. I went to Zion, Bryce, Arches, and Grand Canyon National Parks. It was an amazing trip, and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Freddy and Matt thank the outgoing Communications Co-Chairs, Dana Fortini and Beth McNamee, for the excellent job they have done with the group and for increasing the visibility of student-led communications outlets at Booth. We look forward to continuing their work, as well as adding some new initiatives. Follow The Booth Experience on our new Twitter feed, and be on the lookout for short videos illuminating the daily lives of Booth students, and multimedia blog posts focusing on unique student experiences at Booth.

Finally, please meet the other 2013-2014 DSAC Co-Chairs!

Tracey Jackson, Admit Weekend
Megan Portanova, Admit Weekend
Josh Hirschland, Campus Visit
Amanda Needham, Campus Visit
Tolu Oyekan, International Recruitment
Cristina Pereira, International Recruitment



We look forward to sharing The Booth Experience with prospective students!
Matt Richman Matthew Richman UPenn TCNJ booth

Booth On-Campus Interview Week: The Superbowl of Recruiting

The Winter Quarter is such a busy time for first-year students because most are interviewing through the on-campus program for internships. This week, Matthew Richman gives a first-hand perspective of what the investment banking interview process is like.

Dana

***
We huddled together, nervously clutching our leather portfolios, adjusting ties and name tags, and spending one last minute going over the finer points of corporate valuation. Suddenly, with a pronounced “click,” a nearby door opened and a head poked out.

“Matthew? We’re ready for you.”

I bid farewell to my classmates and entered the interview room.

Over the past few weeks, this scene has repeated itself over and over again on the second floor of the Harper Center. Beginning in mid-January, hundreds of companies—recruiting for roles from consulting to banking, marketing to investment management—have traveled to Hyde Park to conduct interviews with Booth students. One of Booth’s strengths is the relationships that Career Services maintains with some of the most sought-after firms around the world, as well as smaller boutique firms and startups—and the affinity that alumni at these firms have for Booth job-seekers.

Moreover, the on-campus recruiting process means that Booth students can interview with a variety of firms, all in one place. I saw the benefits of this arrangement in my own recruiting for investment banking. The banks were the first firms to come to campus in January, and spent a week conducting first round (and often final round) interviews in the Harper Center’s dedicated interview suite.

Interviews were stressful. After a long four-month recruiting and networking process, it would come down to 30 minutes. Would the interviewer be the one person we didn’t meet at the firm? Would he or she be having a bad day? Would one misstep or interview flub flush months of hard work down the drain?

After the first rounds concluded each day at 4:30pm, many firms conducted final round interviews the same evening. We were often told to wait for a phone call inviting us to the next round. We milled about the Winter Garden, obsessively checking our phones. All of the sudden, the calls would begin. Being one of the less fortunate candidates was tough, but on the flipside, getting that call for the final round was exhilarating; even more so was the late-night follow up call, often on the way home, from potential future colleagues with good news about a summer offer.

To be prepared for these pressures, we had plenty of help from Career Services, and crucially, our fellow classmates. During winter break, students got together in groups to grill one another on case studies or accounting technical questions. I didn’t expect to spend my holiday break camped out at the Gleacher Center with classmates for hours each day, sweating the finer points of the financial statement impact of a $10 increase in depreciation expense—but it really paid off when it came time for interviews.

Second-year MBA students were critical in sharing insights from their interview experiences, and helped us with mock interviews informally or as part of Career Services’ Interview Training Program, where we got formal feedback and a video of our performance.

The bottom line is that Booth’s on-campus recruiting and interviewing provides students an incredible opportunity to be part of the one-stop interviewing shop for interesting companies. One can’t overstate the convenience and advantage that comes from being able to spend a week in the Harper Center being considered for many of the different positions for which we applied, with no more travel than the ten feet between interview rooms. After the first round was conducted on campus, some firms flew candidates to their offices for a final round. However, in my case, apart from visiting the firm in New York during Bank Week, the internship I ultimately secured didn’t require that I even leave Hyde Park, since the firm came to campus in October for recruiting and also conducted first and final rounds here.

Of course, in addition to on-campus recruiting, Booth students can apply for some of the thousands of job postings from companies that are interested in hiring Booth talent, but either lack the recruiting resources to come to campus or need to wait until later in the spring to assess their hiring needs.

When considering a business school, it is important to evaluate its on-campus recruiting capabilities to ensure that you’ll be best positioned for your ideal job. At Booth, there is something for everyone in terms of function and sector. While this stage of my career transition to investment banking has required a tremendous amount of hard work, Booth—with its amazing Career Services team, collegial students, and dedicated alumni—provided me all of the resources to successfully land an exciting internship with a firm that is a great fit for me.
Matt Richman Matthew Richman UPenn TCNJ booth

Booth Career Trek Opportunities: Investment “Bank Week”

The second perspective on Bank Week is from Matthew Richman, a first-year student and member of the DSAC Communications team. Although it sounds like Matt had a very busy week attending events, he still had some time to enjoy New York and to get to spend time with classmates!

Dana
***

Matt Richman is a first year MBA student at Chicago Booth concentrating in finance and accounting. Prior to Booth, Matt founded and managed the federal government and defense contracting division of a company which provides foreign language services. He came to Booth to make a transition to investment banking, and is recruiting for a Summer Associate position.

For MBA students interested in investment banking, Chicago Booth provides top-notch opportunities. Because of Booth’s reputation and the relationships that Career Services builds with employers, our MBA program is a recruiting target for all investment banks, large and small. Booth Career Services and student groups organize a variety of career treks after finals are over. Booth students pursuing investment banking spend “Bank Week” in New York attending formal events and cocktail receptions, conducting informational interviews with bankers, and networking.

My experience during Bank Week was the culmination of all the networking I had done during the recruiting process. Beginning in September, Career Services and the student-run Investment Banking Group (IBG) organized about 50 events with many different investment banks. These events gave us an opportunity to get acquainted with all of the firms looking to recruit Booth students, and to begin the networking process.

During Bank Week, I began most days at 8am with a walk uptown for a breakfast networking reception hosted by one of the banks. Wanting to focus on the networking part and not the breakfast, I usually ducked into a deli on the way to pre-game with a bagel and lox. The days’ subsequent receptions and office visits were set up back-to-back, so I strategized with classmates who had lived in NYC previously to figure out the best way to hustle to the next event without being late or looking too undignified running through Midtown Manhattan. Bank Week evenings featured cocktail events and dinners hosted by individual firms.

After the formal portion of the week was over, I rounded out the trek with a couple of last minute meetings that I’d managed to schedule and happily, but exhaustedly, flew back to Chicago in time for the holidays—and to begin preparing for interviews.

One thing that prospective students may hear about Booth is that apart from the LEAD course, we don’t have a strict cohort system for our first year’s studies. While formally true, Booth’s flexibility provides us the ability to form our own cohorts. During investment banking recruiting, I’ve developed close friendships and camaraderie with many of my classmates, whether sharing good news or frustrations. You might think that students pursuing finance jobs would be competitive with one another, but I’ve found that most Booth students are well-versed in game theory, and have reasoned that the optimal outcome for each of us comes from cooperating. We often share emails or business cards from people we’ve met, information about each bank and its process, and pass on all manner of rumor, speculation, and innuendo to help each other strategize through the process.

Here are a couple of great (non-finance related) experiences with my classmates from Bank Week:

• Spending an evening off the grid with a few of my classmates at a Korean BBQ, chowing down on an experience called “Meat Mania.”
  
• Arriving to a Starbucks in Midtown to prepare for meetings I’d organized with bankers in the neighborhood, to find it filled with fellow Boothies camped out for the same purpose.
  
• Relaxing at the end of the week at a Booth Fusion happy hour event, where I ran into friends from the Banking Trek, the Retail Trek, and Investment Management Trek happening concurrently, and some alumni based in NY.

The success of my time in New York confirmed that Booth was the best choice for me for business school. Bank Week was the perfect mix of structure and flexibility. Booth provides access to top firms in finance through formal programming, but gives us enough room to customize the recruiting process to our own needs and goals. On top of that, I’m building a great network of colleagues and friends for the future.
Matt Richman Matthew Richman UPenn TCNJ Booth