INSEAD Career Fair
P4 once again
Read original at http://zanat0s.typepad.com Having been busy the last week with some personal stuff of mine I was surprised to learn that P4 is now on and underway. It has been 1 year but still it feels like yesterday. Thought right now I am in Okinawa, Japan for work. On top of that by reading other insead mba blogs I have seen that a lot of them have started using my brand technique. They change their titles to appear higher at google rankings( a category) this insead blog is doing well at. I do not care about rankings(ok truth said I do), but I am happy to see happy insead bloggers. One of them seems to be a carbon copy and his articles are extremely well detailed.
Now back to P4! How is P4 different than all the other 4 periods? Here are some characteristics that define P4!
l This is the first period where there are no compulsory lessons. Any student will have only electives. In P1,P2 and P3 core courses were the bread and butter of the academics.
l In p4 the administration witness the biggest student switch at the 2 campuses. That is true for both intakes. In P3 students may go to Singapore for one period and back to P4 for job searching and enjoying the last months at INSEAD. Singaporeans tend to stay in Singa for P3 and then move permantly to fonty for P4. The class structure changes amazingly in P4. Singapore get more or less people(depending on the intake) and fonty become livelier.
l P4 is probably the defining period. Why? Come on! All of you must be interested in a good career, otherwise you wouldn’t have applied to INSEAD. P4 is the officially recruiting season. All the big names come to school to recruit. Consulting companies(all of them), IB (mostly in September) and other big MNCs.
l Career fair is taking place. A good networking session with various regional and non companies
l Insead experience is towards its end. 60% is done. One won’t realize when there only weeks left at school. It goes faster before you realize it.
l More integration with the P2 or P1(depends on the intake).
l The Wharton exchange happens
So here is a description of how our P4 was(Insead MBA July 07). I stayed in Singapore with around another 110 students, most of which were original singies. The classes to select in P4 were really interesting but not all may happen due to low demand. One class I really wanted to do: Strategic Cost Management, was canceled(I was the only one interested in it). Wharton guy came in and were very interesting to work with, one may say too much finance focused. The class size had considerably decreased which was good and bad.
The classes I chose had to do with Marketing and general logistics. I am at hear a retail strategist so even if at INSEAD I wanted to do something new I ended up in my old industry At the beginning of march thought we started attending company presentations. First all of the consulting companies came and they were trying to impress us either with fancy presentations or personal contact. Of course MCK having a soft spot for insead took us to a nice dinner, which I had to cancel short in order to fly to Japan for some interviews.
All of my classmates were busy preparing the Consulting applications and resumes.
The atmosphere was quite charged. There were at least 2 job application deadlines per day. On one hand that was positive since people wouldn’t end up applying at all companies since they were forced to choose where to focus their efforts. Companies were presenting almost daily and one student(one who was interested in applying was hosting the company and its executives). I personally hosted AT Kearney and that got me the opportunity to have a meeting with the partner who runs the Tokyo office(he has been quoted a lot of times on the economist).
Professors, truth be said were more relaxed when it came to essays or class skipping. Some people would be flown out of Fonty or Singa for the final rounds which made team essays a thorny subject. I made 6 trips in these 2 months, mostly for job applications. The interview rooms at insead were always booked(sometimes by the same person 4 times in a day) and students would be seen changing non stop in a suit and their casual outfit.
Anxiety was creeping, disappointment was hanging over us, fear was closing by. If one got dinged the effect were infectious. On the other hand when a contract was signed popping bottles of champagne would accommodate the celebrations.
Students were building their future lives, while others were struggling to find out what they wanted to do. Job searching is not easy. One has to keep in mind that rejections are at play and only one proposal is enough. Some were complaining that fonty was better than singa to get a job(regardless of geography). Others were fretting about companies like AmeX who came to campus boasting they need MANY people and in the end they only gave 1 offer…. Of course there are many positive stories, like my good friend X. She was in such a demand that she was having interviews during the break in order to catch up.
By the end of P4 most people had gotten their dream job and they were ready to relish in the final 2 months to come. The next article will be a compendium of what to do at
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