Small Giants: you should read this book

I have just finished reading the book "Small Giants" by Bo Burlingham and every entrepreneur-to-be should read it!

The author explains how some companies choose to be great instead of big. By focusing on their passion and vision, CEOs manage to create companies with Mojo that have a huge power of attraction to customers, suppliers and employees.

The way to go for your start-up?

What do you want to do after the MBA?

This is the typical question you are asked to answer when writing your essays.

6 months after the start of the HEC MBA, I am still not sure what to do:

• Should I try to set up my own business?
• Should I do the easy way and find a job?
• Should I go back to my previous job in January 2011?

I have some ideas for setting my business up but I need to find people that work with me on that.

More to come soon...

1 month of MBA @ HEC

I could not believe that doing an MBA was so time-consuming! The workload is really big and the pace quite intense.
Anyway, I'll take some time to share with you my first month @ HEC and try to give you update on a more regular basis.

First week: Orientation week

A lot of introduction speeches during this week about the cursus, business concepts, Communication in Action, Stereotypes @ work, Personal effectiveness by Mark Fritz (inspiring!) and parties!!
My room on the Campus is great, have installed a wifi router, bought a microwave,... ready to rock!

Second week: NEGOSIM
NEGOSIM is a business simulation tool where you manage a company in group of 5. You are competing with other companies from different countries. Different countries have different labor costs and quality of work. The interesting part is that to play you really have to negotiate with other companies to set up a joint venture in a low cost country or buy raw material at a discount.
As I have no accounting background beforehand, I was struggling a bit at first with the different financial statements. But it got better and everyone got very excited to get the best "market to book" value!
We have been playing this game the whole week and it has been really interesting for me as a newbie to identify what is important in the financial statements, how to implement different strategies and how to negotiate with others and a good dose of leadership training to channel the team work.

Third week:
Now the show begins with real classes. Marketing, Financial Accounting, Financial Markets, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources Management, Statistics.
A lot to read and many cases to deal with.
My study group is great and after a slow start, we are now quite well organized but one question remains: are we all supposed to work on cases or can we just dispatch the workload within the study group?

Fourth week:
Getting up to speed with cases and different classes.(and parties!)
+ different conferences with Yann Arthus Bertrand (remember HOME?) and Alain Juppé (former France Prime Minister, currently mayor of Bordeaux)

Fifth week:
Now are the exciting things coming up! Every year, HEC organizes the MBAT (MBA Tournament), which is a sport tournament between the best european business schools. This year is the 20th anniversary and there's a lot of pressure to make this one unforgettable.
This year, 2 teams have competed to organize the event: "GAME ON" and "DREAM TEAM". This week has been so exhausting by preparing videos, newsletters and advertisings combined with the usual workload.

At the end, "GAME ON" won by 1 vote difference! Crazy!
Here are the promotional videos of both teams:
Enjoy!

• HEC Dream Team
• HEC Game On!

I'll keep you posted!

How (not) to handle the waitlisted status!

After running my 2 interviews for the INSEAD MBA starting in Sept 09, I finally received the answer on the 19th of December 08 from the INSEAD Adcom: you're waitlisted!! Damned, what an horrible situation!!!

First it is a very mixed feeling because some kind of hope still exists but at the end of the day it is so small that you just want to forget it and move it. Easier said than done!

My Christmas holidays have been horrible because I was stuck in some kind of limbo and unable to think forward :(

INSEAD is such a great school and being that close is very difficult to bear. At the time, even though I didn't have any response from HEC, UCLA and Berkeley, I knew I was 100% sure getting one of those.

Second, you just wonder what made them make this decision, apparently too many french people with a better profile than me (they are very strict with their <10% french :(), bad interview? You just don't know...

So what can you do? After browsing some business week and MBA forums, several options appeared:

• you wait until the end, pay the deposits to your other admits and if accepted, you just go
• you wait until the end, reject your other admits and cross your fingers!
• you try to speed up the decision process before having to pay any deposit to other schools

Well, well, well...

Not easy to decide but actually HEC made me decide because you have to pay a 6000€ deposit to secure your seat while it was something around 1000$ for Berkeley.

If I had been rich, I would have chosen the first option but as it is still not the case I had to choose between second ans third one. (well it is not really about being rich or not but 6000€ sounds so big!!)

The second one was a bit like suicidal mission so I sticked to the third option.

Before having to pay the deposits, I contacted INSEAD to know whether there was some way to speed up the process. Actually, their answer was quite clear: No!
They only suggested to inform them about any "major" update of your file in the meantime.

Well, what can you do if you don't have any update to add? Answer: Just don't do any!

That's not what I did...I registered to attend an INSEAD in house event, and after that prepared a big mail stating all the major updates I had made since the application. But in retrospect, I am not sure there were worth mentioning.
During the in-house event I met the adcoms and they told me GMAT, essays... are OK and to emphasize what I could bring to the class...
Plus I mentioned the deposits I had to pay in order to kind of push them to tell me what to expect from INSEAD.

Answer was quite fast, 2 days after my update mail: "We are sorry....blabla" Snifff!

Here we are, so I won't go to INSEAD, too bad!! but hey, now I know that and can move forward! So this is great news! :D

In conclusion, I don't know if I can advise you anything on how to handle the waitlisted status but here are some suggestions about stuff I did that broke the deal:

• don't be too pushy saying you have other deposits to pay (especially for lesser-rank schools I think)
• don't be needy like "Pleeeease let me in, INSEAD is such a great school, blabla". It does not work with the girls so why would it work with INSEAD? :D (Keep in mind: "you are the prize"; Neil Strauss inside :D)
  
• If you have nothing to say, just don't say anything. Don't waste the Adcom time!

So here are the main ideas, sound obvious and during the process I kept telling myself, don't do anything stupid, but you run under such stress that your reactions might change (some will say that your true self is revealed under stressed, so now it's official, I'm stupid! :D) because you just want to stop the pain.

So my best advice if you are waitlisted: drink some green tea, go and work out, take holidays, cut the internet and don't go on all these crazy MBA forums :D, party, read novels, meet new people and don't do any thing stupid!

That's it!

HEC R2 Second Interview - January 2009

The second HEC interview took place with an alumnus working the Aerospace industry.

After my 10 minutes presentation (I took care to be only 10 minutes this time), we talked about the topic I presented. The alumnus was very interested by it and asked some very pertinent questions. (I might share my presentation with you but not sure yet)

After that we went through the usual MBA questions:

• Why MBA?
• Why HEC?
• Why now?
• Could you talk about one of your latest achievments?

After that, he asked me whether I was married/engaged and if I had taken this parameter into account:

• Does your wife agree you do an MBA?
• Did you have to convince her?
• How do you plan to finance your MBA?

Then we discussed about the HEC program, teachers and student life. One thing I liked about this interview was that my interviewer was really excited about his time at HEC and mentionned several teachers he had and how they made an impact on him.

As I previously mentionned I was interested in the Entrepreneurship track of HEC, he acknowledged he followed the same one. Even though he is not pursuing a career in entrepreneurship (such as setting up his own business), he thought these electives were the most inspiring ones of his MBA time and the most thought-provoking.

Then he asked me several other questions:

• what are your hobbies?
• to which other schools have you applied?

Finally we briefly discussed about his career path and what kind of jobs he had following the HEC MBA.

HEC R2 First interview - December 2008

My first interview for the HEC MBA was with an alumnus working in the banking sector.
After having received the 2 names of my interviewers, I agreed with them on a date and location.

Interviews for the HEC MBA are quite demanding compared to other schools interviews because:

• you have 2 interviews (like INSEAD)
• you have to present whatever you want in 10 minutes (the trick being to know what "whatever" could be :D)
  

So the first interview took place in the alumnus office in Central Paris (very nice location and great building). The interview was half in french, half in english.

After some quick mutual presentations, I first ran through my presentation. At the end, she asked some questions about my topics, said it was well-presented and clear but lasted 20 minutes instead of 10!

After that we ran through the typical MBA questions:

• Why MBA?
• Why HEC?
• Why now?

After that she asked some more personal questions. At first, I was not at ease because of the very nature of the questions. Indeed, I mentioned in my file some actions I had taken to help one of my family members. She greatly appreciated that trait and asked me to develop on that:

• Why did you do it?
• How come this situation happened?
• What is your relation with this family member?

Questions were not hard per se (I was just honest and told my story) but telling your family stories in front of a stranger is somewhat uncomfortable...
My advice: if you mention this kind of topics in your file, don't assume the interviewer won't ask you questions about it even if it is personal. Be prepared to overcome the awkwardness of the question.

Another question was also a bit awkward:

• Are you a collaborative or competitive person?
• How is the work structured at your company?

I found it a bit awkward because I am more in the middle regarding the topic of competition.

After that we went through a general discussion about HEC, professors, student life...

My impression at the end was generally good but I could really tell the difference between HEC and other schools interviews (I will also talk about it in my HEC second interview report). Indeed I really felt that the interviewer wanted to know who I was as a person, whether I was somewhat balanced between my professional and personal life.

More to come!

Back in business

The past few months have been hectic and I unfortunately could not find time to make any addition to my blog.

When transitioning towards a MBA, one could expect to lay back a bit but that did not happen :( :
Life at work is still very busy + I have to do the handover with my colleagues

• I had to rehearse for a big gig in June
• I had to apply to MBA's sponsorships
• I have moved out
• I have made a 3 weeks trip in Thailand + several week ends throughout France

Anyway, things are a bit calmer right now and when I get Internet at my new place, I will post new tips and feedbacks regarding MBA applications.

Stay tuned!

INSEAD R1 Second Interview (November 2008)

My second interview for INSEAD took place at the end of 2008 in a hotel bar in a very nice location of Paris with an alumni. Here is how it went:

I arrived on time but my interviewer was nowhere to be seen and I had to wait for him for about 1 hour! You can imagine my stress level rising during this 1 hour of hell. But I have to say that I sort of knew in advance that it would have been half-assed.

Indeed the day before, I had called my interviewer to remind him the date and location of the interview and to check whether he was still OK to come. But I unfortunately could not reach him, only his secretary so I left a message to her. Then I sent him an email to reconfirm and ask for his mobile phone number. No answer. Arghhh. So I would have to meet him at an unconfirmed place, unconfirmed time, no mean to reach him, not even knowing how he looked like.

And as I said, what should have happened finally happened. I waited for 1 hour in the lobby, staring at everyone, trying to find out whether he was my interviewer, asking them whether they were called Mr X, going to the receptionist and the concierge asking them whether Mr X has called for me. Nothing... To be honest I even thought to leave because I was not sure my interviewer would come and if so, I have problem with people being late to an appointment for more than 1 hour.

Fortunately or not, he finally arrived in his whole glory and apologize for his late arrival.
Before going through the details of the interview, here are some basic steps to check for interviewees beforehand:

• As soon as you know who your interviewer is, contact him/her, arrange the date and location, ask for his/her mobile phone number or anything else where you can contact him/her anytime

• Check the location, travel arrangements and time to make sure not to be late

• Call him/her the day before to reconfirm the date/location of the interview

• Ask for a way to recognize him/her: picture, where he/she will be seated,…

• Be on time

So the interview finally started. The general tone was professional and a bit more tense than my first interview in the sense that the alumni seemed disdainful in some way. It was maybe a way to test my stress (stress interview?). My overall impression was that my answers were consistent and coherent with my project and file but I also had the feeling my interviewer did not really care about my answers. I did not manage to make this interview become an exchange as I think my first interview had been.

Here are the different topics we went through:

• Can you briefly describe your career to date and tell me why do you apply to an MBA?

• So, now there is an economic crisis and you apply for a MBA: is it for you a way to hide from the crisis?

• Can you explain the credit crunch crisis?

• What do you think of the actions taken by Sarkozy and the french government to solve this crisis?

• I see in your file that you are interested in Entrepreneurship post-MBA. With the current crisis, do you think it is a good choice to start a business right after MBA?

• Can you describe 2 achievements at work?

• What was your latest challenge at work?

• Could you tell me about a mistake you made and how you coped with it?

• I see that you have managed people in the context of projects. How do you handle people and do you make things done?

• What are you hobbies?

• Do you organize parties in Paris?

• What other schools did you apply to?

• Why would you choose INSEAD over the others?

• Questions?

After several questions on the INSEAD program, student life, his career, the interview ended and we said goodbye.

Then I wrote a thank you note but never got an answer back (I had one from my first interviewer).

As I said, this interview had been more stressful due to the late arrival of my interviewer and his general tone.

I guess I did not succeeded that well finally because I then got waitlisted :(.

I'll describe later the waitlisted status management (if that even exists!)

Cheers,

The Parisian MBA

First mention of my blog on the web! Niiice :)

After having used the clearadmit website to a large extent during my MBA application process, I have decided to post my interview reports on their website.
What is nice is that they mention my entries in a dedicated post:

http://blog.clearadmit.com/2009/04/wiki-wednesdays-insead-and-ucla-anderson-interview-reports/

Hope I can contribute more. I will try to post a report on my second interview very soon.

Cheers,

Parisian Guy

The Most Ridiculous Patents

I couldn't help but share the following link with you:
The Most Ridiculous Patents

This Business Week slideshow displays 30 "ridiculous" patented ideas. I have to confess that I already thought of the "Gas Factory" and "Cry No More" inventions.

Special mention for the "Dad Saddle" and "Banana Suitcase"...So funny :)

Enjoy!!

The Parisian MBA