Post By:
Shawn Hay
MBA, 2012
I was lucky enough this year to lock down my full-time job right before
winter break. This has been great in relieving the pressure going in to
my last semester and has allowed me to enjoy other aspects of the MBA life as
things begin to wind down. But, all of this could not have happened
without hard work and support from the career center and my negotiations class.
With a background in construction/engineering project
management at Disneyland, I came to school looking to switch in to management
consulting. Although that is not where I ended up focusing my career
search, through the process I was able to learn (as my econ professor Rebitzer
would say) “a tremendous amount” of job searching strategies. Using the
career center, the consulting community, job fairs, and seminars I learned the
art of translating a job description in to a focused cover letter, using
informational interviews to tailor my resume to bring out my important qualities
that would best suit me for the job, and mock interviews to experience the pain
of going through a horribly difficult interview (thanks Gary…). With the
Feld Career Center’s seminars on networking and the required informational
interviews (back in week 1 of my first year) I got proficient at my 30 second
pitch, asking the correct questions to find out what the company culture was
like, and if they had positions that would fit what I most wanted out of a
job. Further, with the help of professors, my classmates, and others from
the Career Center I learned the importance of molding my story to show my
future employer how my past experience has led me to this job and why I would
be the best fit. None of these skills were in my career “tool-kit” before
I started, and now I feel comfortable enough to do this any time! Of
course, the biggest help has been my peers who are supportive and excited
anytime I mentioned I had an interview coming up. My favorite part of my
preparation was sitting down with my friend Parker and having him interrogate
me as if he were the interviewer and explain why he should hire me. The
character he played would be a very mean boss and thankfully I never had an
interview quite that hard. All of the skills helped me get to the point
of getting an offer, which brings me to my next topic.
Negotiations is a popular class here at BU, mainly because
it is really fun and extremely applicable to the business world, and life in
general. The intro project is to get 10 “NOs” from people, as long as you
ask for something of substance. Most students end up with free premium
channels from Comcast, discounts on clothing, or a free drink at a restaurant.
It is a ton of fun and forces you in to getting comfortable asking for
things as long as you can give reasons for why you deserve it! Professor
Levin established a solid course load where every day we were involved in some
type of negotiation (competitive to collaborative to a mixture of both) and we
soon became very comfortable in dealing with complex negotiations and learned
frameworks to manage tough deals. This came in handy as offer letters
started coming in. Prior to this class I was very uncomfortable asking
for things (specifically countering offers) and I did not understand the importance
of backing your numbers up with concrete facts and thorough research.
Although I was extremely nervous to attempt a serious salary negotiation
without the safety net of the classroom, I undertook it with confidence and
structure from the class.
Shawn Hay is a General MBA concentrating in Leadership and Organizational Transformation. Prior to his MBA he worked at Disneyland as a project manager for the construction department. Shawn really enjoys the collaborative culture at BU.
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