February 2013 – Page 2 – Penn & Beyond

Alumni Perspective: There’s More Out There Than Just Finance

by Lee Yanco W’10

As OCR goes on and Juniors scramble to secure internships for the summer, it may be hard to imagine any job outside of finance and consulting. Most internships offered through OCR are focused on investment banking, sales-trading, and consulting gigs – due to both the nature of these industries’ hiring cycles and the good reputation of Penn students. As a result, it may seem like your future lies on Wall Street.

Stop.

Stop, ask yourself, and answer the question, the most important question you can ask yourself when looking for a job: What do you want to do? The emphasis is on the word YOU, because this job search is about YOU and YOU alone, and only YOU can decide what you want to do and what YOU want to get good at.

While I’m sure there are some of you who truly are passionate about finance, my gut tells me more of you are interested in other areas. You should never do something just because it’s the default choice – you will end up hating your job and daydreaming about doing the things you really want to do. And after a year of working in tech, I promise you it is totally possible to spend your working years having fun in a job you love instead of making a salary doing something you hate. There is nothing worse than spending 5 days a week getting better at something you don’t want to get better at, it’s an existential time waste.

At AppNexus, we specifically look for interviewees who want to be here and want to be in tech, for the simple reason that those who like their job and want to do their job will do the best at it and be the best people to work with. Those who have a passion for technology will succeed, those who fake it are quickly weeded out.

However, finance and consulting have one advantage over these other opportunities with regards to OCR – they offer formal training programs for new employees that quickly acclimate fresh graduates to their industries, teaching them the industry-specific skills they need to succeed. Other industries either have not caught up to finance and consulting in campus appeal, or otherwise don’t have a structured educational program in place to train complete newbies to the industry. Because of this, it may seem daunting to stay from the “standard” path.

So, how do you go about showing non-finance companies you are passionate and worth considering despite your lack of skills?

Simply put, there isn’t any way to do it but to do it. You can sit around and tell interviewers you enjoy tech or fashion or healthcare, or you can do something and then SHOW interviewers your passion for tech or fashion or travel. Enjoy tech? Teach yourself a little code and launch a website or two. Enjoy fashion? Create a samplebook or perhaps get your own clothes custom-made. Enjoy healthcare? Join your professor in a research project and get your name attached to a paper. There are many ways to take initiative and get something done, a little work on your end can reap huge dividends later.

When I graduated I took a consulting job through OCR and proceeded to dislike everything about my choice for the next year. I struggled through banal work, thinking that this is just how the working world is: show up, do something you don’t enjoy, rinse and repeat for 45 years and then you can finally enjoy yourself. When they mercifully fired me after a year (the best thing they ever did for me), I threw myself into what I actually cared about: technology. Even though I did not really know how to code, I taught myself the basics and project-managed a few ideas I had to fruition, launching two web services. Those eventually failed, but simply because I went out and actually DID something, all of a sudden I was getting interest right and left from technology companies. That got parlayed into my current job at AppNexus, where I’ve spent the past year doing something I love and succeeding in a field I want to succeed in. You can do the same, there’s nothing stopping you except you.

Good jobs aren’t looking for grunts like they do in finance and consulting. They’re looking for people who are passionate, they’re looking for people who want to love what they do. Finance and consulting jobs may claim to give you a broad-based skill set, but employers in your chosen field aren’t looking for investment banking skills, they’re looking for people who have demonstrated passion above all.

Find something you love and pursue it. The most important person in your life is you, and your time is far too precious to be spent doing something you don’t enjoy.

Get Noticed: The Importance of Networking

by Anubha Kapur, SEAS ‘13

Recruiting is undergoing a vast phase change and one of the primary reasons for this reinvention is the advent of social media and its profound impact on society and people. Social networking is no longer just about webpages; it is an ever growing experience enriched with the interactions between people. Here are some ways to use social media to prepare for the career fairs next week, and in your general search.

LinkedIn
“Networking to get noticed” is a new mantra for climbing up the recruiting ladder. One of the most essential platforms is LinkedIn, where your profile speaks volumes about your career goals, expertise areas etc. Keeping your profile updated, following organizations you like, expanding your connections with recruiters etc. are key focus areas. If your profile shows up in the search tools used by recruiters, you’ve gained an edge over thousands of other candidates. Referrals and testimonials give a very good impression about your work ethic and commitment, thus making you a first choice for many firms. Penn Career Services organizes regular LinkedIn profile workshops that are a must for students to attend.

Facebook
With the introduction of Facebook Graph Search, you can easily connect with people of similar interests and field of work, thus expanding horizons. Regular updates by on Career Services’ Facebook page about upcoming information sessions, OCR workshops and career fairs is a good way to initiate and streamline search.

Connecting with Penn alumni working in the industry is another very powerful tool. A friend forwarded his resume seeking an internship to a recent Penn graduate working in a leading bank, and one week later, due to this referral, he got an interview. Who knows, your next recruiter, may be a senior you’ve known at some stage in your Penn journey. J

Twitter
I came across a feature on Twitter quite recently, where you can bookmark your tweets as favorites and embed them on your blog or Facebook page. If someone has a nice testimonial for you, why not tell the world and make them take notice?

Career Fair Prep
Career fairs are the best way to engage with people and learn about prospective opportunities in-person, and social media can help you prepare. When there are so many people in attendance at these events, it might be difficult to have a detailed conversation with the recruiters. Use social media to help with research on organizations and develop talking points. With the Spring Career Fair and Start up Fair next week, here are a few tips to remember while approaching recruiters:

Carry ample number of resumes that you can quickly reach for while speaking to the recruiters.
Introduce yourself and ask about available opportunities within the company.
Emphasize your potential and skills, and what it may add to the organization.
Request a business card for future reference or communication.
Follow @PennCareerServ on Twitter for live updates and information regarding the fair.

The wait to find out if your hard work and research paid off may frustrate you. Remember, with networking, patience and perseverance the wait can truly be worth it!

About: Anubha Kapur is a 2^nd year Master’s student in Systems Engineering. Apart from technology, her interests span creative writing, social blogging and travelling. She can be followed on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Day in the Life: Sports and Technology Startup, GameChanger

On Thursday, Februar 21st we held our first, full-fledged Startup Fair. Throughout that week, we focused on careers in the startup industry and entrepreneurial paths. To help kick things off, we welcomed Ursula Lopez-Palm to @PennCareerDay on Tuesday, February 19th. She tweeted about her day with a Sports and Technology startup in the New York area, GameChanger. To learn more about Ursula, read her bio below and view her tweets from @PennCareerDay on our Storify page!

Athletes and geeks unite at this Penn alum’s work place. Ursula Lopez-Palm works in Operations at a Sports and Technology start up called GameChanger. Located in New York, GameChanger’s mobile app and website make scorekeeping, pro-quality stats, live play-by-play, and instant recap stories available to amateur baseball, softball, and basketball teams. Last year, over 150,000 teams used their software to score 1.1 million games.

Ursula graduated from the college where she received a BS in International Relations. Early on she pursued career paths more related to the International Relations track, including a summer in Cape Coast, Ghana with Penn’s International Business Volunteers (PIBV) group as a managerial consultant for a prominent NGO in the area. Eventually, however, her love of sports took over.

Ursula played soccer at the Varsity level for all four years at Penn where she was Honorable Mention All-Ivy, Ivy League Player of the Week, and Ivy League Champion in 2010. Also an intern at PennTV, Ursula was a guest commentator for Penn Baseball games, the Penn Relays (where she was lucky enough to interview Bill Cosby), and a video feed editor. GameChanger’s smart employees, team-like atmosphere and sports-heavy content proved to be the perfect match for this soccer player.

Start (Up) Your Career!

You have amazing energy and ideas. The students I meet with every day as a career counselor here at Penn are all interested in startups—setting something in motion. The project I have the privilege to see them starting is the enterprise of themselves and their own careers.

For those interested in managing their own careers and willing to take some risk, working for a startup can be an exciting plunge into a growing enterprise. The tasks may vary greatly, and one’s efforts may greatly influence the future of the organization. Startups can be found in every type of industry (tech, nonprofit, the arts, business, consumer goods, healthcare, and on and on), and they hire people for many roles (leadership, programming, marketing, business development, sales, design, HR, and more).

I asked some fabulous speakers (who have volunteered to speak at Penn) about their careers with startups. In order to offer you their advice, I asked them each: “If you could reach back in time, what advice would you give yourself as a college student regarding startup/career opportunities?”

So (drumroll please), take some advice from what might be your future:

“While I’m pretty fresh out of school, and I think I did a generally good job at this, I’d encourage myself, and any college student, to take even more risks, push the edge, challenge assumptions, break rules, and explore. It’s general advice I’d give to a student, but it applies specifically to pursuing a career in technology as an entrepreneur, because what we essentially do is explore, find opportunities, and fill them.”
Joe Cohen (Wharton)—Lore (formerly Coursekit)

“Often, people have told me they think startups are ‘too risky.’ For someone in school or just graduating from college, however, I really don’t think there is any risk in working for a startup. The upside is enormous—you’ll learn more broadly and get much more responsibility than you might at a big company—and if things don’t work out, as long as you’re talented and work hard, you’ll always be able to find something new to do. The job offer from Google will be there in three years or in five years, but your needs and desire for work / life balance may change as you grow older, so you might as well work at a startup while you’re young, hungry, and driven.”
Andrew Kortina—Venmo

“If you want to join a startup, the best time is when you are graduating. This is for a few reasons
•     You have the least to lose.
•     You’ll learn in dog years. A good year at a good startup is equivalent to seven at a BigCo from a learning experience.
•     You won’t lose your edge as one inevitably does by working at larger, slow-moving organizations.
And worst case, if things don’t work out at the startup, you can always get a job at BigCo as they are always looking for smart people—especially Penn grads.”
Anand Sanwal—CB Insights

“Optimize for ‘learning’ over every other consideration! The first few years after college are essentially a real world continuation of your education. They are formative years that lay the foundation for the next 30 years of your career. Your learnings should be focused on two things: 1) building a reasonably broad set of complimentary capacities that you will leverage over the long haul; and 2) exploring different types of roles and environments to help you discover your true passion.”
Ben Siscovick (College)—IA Ventures

“Don’t think that you have to do finance or consulting just because that’s the ‘natural’ path for Penn students. There are tons of opportunities in tech and startups, tons of companies that can use smart graduates like you, and I promise you that if you don’t do the ‘standard’ finance path, your work and life will be much more fulfilling than the alternative.”
Lee Yanco—AppNexus

Thank you to these speakers and their fellow panelists at some of our recent and future panels:
“NYC Tech Talent Draft”—September 19, 2012
“Navigating the Startup Career”—January 29, 2013
“NYC Tech Talent Draft”—February 21, 2013
and to those companies planning to attend our upcoming Start-Up Career Fair on February 21!

OCR: Organize, Communicate, & Reap the Rewards

Maximilian Lamb, WH & SEAS ’14

When I dove headfirst into the On Campus Recruiting season during this second semester of my junior year at Penn, I expected it to be completely different from my experience in securing an internship at a startup company last year. And believe me, it was. Always running around in a suit, constantly looking around the room and thinking, “I have to compete with these people?” and endless applications on PennLink definitely differentiated this year from the last. However, at a fundamental level I have finally realized that getting a job at a major investment bank or consulting firm versus a small startup is not as different as it might seem.

Common Skills for OCR and Startup Interviews
First, both recruiting processes require substantially developed skills and knowledge. These skills are the primary focus of the dreaded technical questions that require quick number-crunching and analytical thinking in any investment banking or consulting interview, as well as in engineering or science related fields such as computer science and biotechnology. But these skills are just as vital at a small company. Both large corporations and startups value hires that possess analytical skills, a quantitative background, creativity, a strong work ethic, and the list goes on and on. Industry knowledge is also crucial for every company I have ever considered for a summer internship in the past two years. In a large investment bank or consulting firm, knowledge of a specific industry not only demonstrates interest in the job that you are applying to, but it is essential to identifying future areas that will have a major impact. On the startup side, it is crucial to be aware of how a startup fits into the larger market, but this still requires overall industry knowledge.

Clear Communication is Key
Second, it is essential to be able to communicate the skills and knowledge in question. In client facing roles at IB and consulting firms, communicating clearly and effectively with a client is essential to the success of the entire firm. If you can’t accomplish this type of communication in an interview, an interviewer has no reason to trust that you will be able to do it in front of a customer or with other employees. The same goes for a startup, where communication with customers as well as fellow team members is essential to forming a cohesive and efficient organization.

Always Prepare to Reap the Rewards
After considering the similarity of these two superficially different recruiting processes, On Campus Recruiting didn’t seem so scary after all. Granted, for large top tier investment banks and consulting companies, the competition can be more numerous, definitely more visible, and more often found in business formal, but this should not lead to increased anxiety for either process. At the end of the day, the best way to land that perfect job is to organize what you know, communicate your prowess and knowledge confidently, and reap the rewards of an OCR well done.