Just before the summer internship

Today is the last day of my summer vacation. Starting from tomorrow, I will be working 16 hours per week. I am less concerned about the specific skill that is required to do the job but worry more about how I will manage to make zero mistakes when I only have less than 5 hours of sleep per day. It may sound funny but for some reasons I find it hard to articulate to people why I had chosen investment banking for my summer. Perhaps it's the challenge? the money? the desire to go to PE post-MBA? my curiosity? or a little bit of everything?


Then a document saved me. While I was going through some old folders on my laptop, I found this career leader report that was analyzed for us before we came to Haas. It was very interesting to re-read it since it gave me a logical answer to my previous question: I chose it because it's pretty consistent with my interest. My #1 interest is " Influence Through Language and Ideas" so the report suggests that " sales is a natural fit for you. Deal-oriented financial-services positions may also appeal strongly to you if you also have an interest and some skill in Quantitative Analysis" Who knows, I might end up enjoying the hectic IB job


For whatever reason you decided to try something new, don't assume what your experience will like beforehand. Embrace it with an open mind and I am sure you will be fine in the end

The land of smile, massage and Tuk-Tuk

My summer trip to Thailand marked many of my “firsts” traveling experiences: It’s the first time traveling with just guys and no girls; first time no accommodation booked prior to the trip; first time not having a plan where to go on a daily basis; first time traveling with people I barely know before the trip and first time time traveling with non-Asian.

Initially I wasn’t too worried about it and was convinced that whatever comes to me, I will be able to adopt and deal with it. However, as each day passes by, I began to feel a little uncomfortable about the lack of planning and common topic between the 3 of us. ( The only common topic was Haas and we sure didn't want to talk about it on vacation) I decided to just take it easy and tried not let those thoughts bother me. One of my mentor once told me " If you feel frustrated, remember to lower your standard. " Except the fact that I insisted we fly to Chiang Mai instead of taking an overnight train, I pretty much just went with the flow.

Thailand is a place full of color. From its temple to its food, even the taxi cabs are in many colors: Green, pink, yellow, blue.. We did the touristy stuff such as visited the Grand Palace in Bangkok, rode the elephants in Chiang Mai and spent an afternoon at the Maya Bay in Phuket. We also experienced the out-of-ordinary things such as getting nearly attacked by a group of monkey, a set of tailored suit and several shirts in a tailor shop recommended by Nok and traditional Thai breakfast at Nok's house.

Although there were compromises and surprises, it turned out that we got along pretty well and I had a good time. In the land of smile, massage and tuk-tuk ( an unique type of taxi), I learned that

1. I hate lonely plant tour books ( I am already 29, backpacking? please..)

2. I prefer to get up and do things instead of just relaxing on the beach all day long for 3 days?

3. American culture is more on the rough side as described by my travel buddy

Here are some pictures on the best of Thailand

The land of massage and tuk-tuks

Imperfection makes the beauty

The way I think about my MBA experience is one that you need to focus more on your inner self rather than pursuing outer achievements. In the real world, it's so easy to get into the habit of evaluating what you've gained through a set of achievements (promotion, bigger bonus, higher title , recognized company brand etc) rather than through understanding how the experience has changed you into a better or stronger person. I suspect that if one doesn't fully understand what has made him/her achieved his/her goals, it would be hard for him/her to replicate the success. In my view MBA (particularly the Haas environment ) is a perfect environment for you to think about how all the extra-curriculum activities, study group discussions, group projects, speaker series and lectures have changed you. After all, MBA is a life changing experience. If you cannot articulate how the experience has changed you, you haven't open yourself up

Recently I was involved in the Challenge 4 Charity cheerleading competition. Before our final practice, we were taking things very easy and slowly. Initially I was a little frustrated at how uncommitted people were towards the practices and was beginning to regret that I signed up for the competition. But in the end we pulled everything together and I had a great time. We put our 100% effort during our performance and that was all it takes to be good enough.

I learned that although practice makes perfect, perfect doesn't make you happy. Imperfection is what makes everything funny, cute and beautiful

Watch our funny/cute cheer leading on you tube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhJv39zg6P0

"We are here

It's clear

We are too good to stop

Charging in at full speed

Reaching to the top. Go Bears!"

Innovation and business

If you have the chance to browse through the recent business books there are many out there that talk about innovation. Innovation indeed has become a popular word in today's business world. However, a very famous retired marketing professor, David Aaker , recently gave a speech on innovation. He said "Innovation without branding reduces its potential business impact." His whole idea was that once you brand your innovation/technology, it won't matter if the competitor comes with a copy because you own it. In other words, branding allows the company to own the innovation. For example, Apple cannot claim they own the MP3 technology but they can certainly say that they own iPod (imagine what would happen if Apple did not brand this user-friendly MP3 player!) So here is the bottom line is: Competitor can copy the technology in a relatively short period of time but not the brand. Aaker's speech has led me to explore further the relationship between innovation and impact on business. The question I have in my mind is: How does innovation impact the way company does its business? As my marketing professor, Rashi Glazer, have once said: Innovative technology might have provided new solutions to the customer but it has not changed the fundamental business question: What is the core benefit that your innovative technology is providing to the customer? What problem are you trying to help the customer solve with your new technology?

Once again, I am convinced that technology is not the answer to the business question, the passion to improve human being's life is.

Peru

Despite all the drama happened during our Peru trip ( connecting flight was cancelled, luggage was lost between LA and Lima. Wendy's serious fever, problems with the returning flight..) the Peru trip was amazing. The country itself is a mess but I am sure no tourist will mind. We visited three major cities in total: Lima, Cusco and Puno, each has its own uniqueness:

Lama: We did not have much time exploring Lima but my impression is that it's a typical country capital where the most wealthy people live. It's a city where you need the locals to show you around or else you'll get ripped off.

Cusco: The city is just beautiful and lively. It is said that during recent years, driven by Peruvian and foreign citizens, Cusco has began to host many fusion and neo-andean food places where traditional andean taste is found fusioned with modern techniques and ingredients, delivering a very innovative, exciting and trendy cuisine. One night we visited a trendy bar Los Perros where I swear I had the best sandwich and potato dish in my life. Another aspect that made visiting Cusco particularity exciting was that it sits at a daunting altitude of 3,400 meter. I remember the first day I was there I had to constantly remind myself not to walk too fast because it was so hard to catch my breath. During our 3 nights there, we stayed at a cozy hotel Cusco plaza , which is only 3 minutes away from the Plaza de Armas (the city central). Because the hotel location was so close to the most popular restaurants, every night after dinner we'd walk back to the hotel while enjoying the charming and dynamic nightlife of the city.

Puno: I have to admit I was a bit disappointed about the city, especially after we have experienced the beauty of Cusco (Not to mention our tour guide could barely speak English) Tourists visit Puno to see lake titicaca (pronounced ti-ti-ha-ha). As I had expected before the trip, it was nice to see things other than Inca ruins for a change. I particularly enjoyed the tranquil islands and the lake. The tour guide insisted that the lake resembles the shape of a puma even though it was obvious that it dif not. He said " Here in Peru, you have to use your imagination." I am an impatient person who usually pays very little attention to tour guides. His words, however, caught my attention. In the real world, people tend to only search for the truth. But I believe that those who are truly successful are the ones who imagines. They take challenges well because they can imagine themselves succeeding the daunting tasks. More importantly, they use imagination to create the self they want.

Last but not the least, there are so many moments that made the Peru trip memorable: The surprisingly good Purvian cafe au lait, playing "raise your hand if you have.." beer game, singing silly songs on the road trip to Pisac, fighting to eat before the food is all gone, indulge myself in the gorgeous Andes landscape and petting the adorable llamas.

Whenever the going gets tough, I imagine I have never left Peru.

Peru

Peru, Berkeley Solution Group and Asia Business Conference

Ever since I accepted my summer internship offer, I have become even less reluctant to study for my classes. I am a strong believer that the best way to learn in an MBA program is to get yourself involved. This is why I've been spending most of my time with extra-curriculum activities in the first half of the spring semester:

Plan a Peru trip for 13 people for the upcoming spring break, Lead consulting projects for the Berkeley Solution Group and market the Asia Business Conference. When I signed up to take these responsibilities, I did not know how much effort I need to put in nor did I know what challenges or frustrations I will encounter. However, I was confident that I will overcome them as they come to me. Plan a Peru trip: This started as just a couple of us who wanted to take advantage of Peru's no Visa requirement for Taiwanese passport holders. But as the words got out, more and more people wanted to join and we actually had to put a limit on the number people for the trip. All I can say is that planning for 4 people was VERY different from planning for 13 people. In the beginning I sent out weekly updates to get people's feedbacks on the itinerary, but the response rate was very low as people were busy with recruiting. It turned out my biggest challenge was to decide what decisions I should make on my own vs. letting people voice their opinion. While it's good to let everyone have a say, a leader has to take a stance and make wise decisions when people have no/different views. (And they almost always will have different, even conflicting, views!) I am glad that in the end we settled something that looks extremely exciting and within our budget

Lead consulting projects for the Berkeley Solution Group (BSG): Having been on the working team side (us) of consulting projects, I joined the BSG to get experiences on the partner side (them) . I took the lead on a market sizing/assessing market opportunity project for a small online distributor even though I had a gut feeling that the client will be demanding. It turned out that not only was he challenging us a lot, he was also quite controlling and condescending. Managing people of this type takes much energy/patience and time--No wonder partners gets compensated so much. Despite the frustration of dealing with him, I learned something valuable from him as well : As a partner ( a.k.a. a sales person), never start sentence with a no when speaking to the client. We can say no to our colleagues, parents, boyfriends, classmates but never to a client. I have a feeling that this project is not going to be an easy ride but it will definitely help me expose to a broader spectrum of business people

VP of the marketing for the Asia Business Conference: The Berkeley Asia Business Conference is an annual, full-day event organized and initiated by Haas MBA students. This event aims to bring together business professionals, entrepreneurs and students to discuss and exchange ideas on current Asia business topics. The theme for this year was " Global ambition, local transformation." In the beginning I was pretty confused about how I should market the event without knowing who our panelists/keynote speakers will be and what they will be talking about (ambiguity hinders me from taking actions) Furthermore, I did not know what was the best way to reach our target audience (which we broadly defined as any who is interested in learning about the latest trends in Asia) and what was the best way to reach them. In the end we did a lot of "grassroots" marketing: posting on facebook, MBAA alert, campus wide career service, newspaper ads on Daily Californian, Alumni calendar, professional networks, personal emails to the evening and weekend MBA, SF Craigslist, and flyers around the campus. Postcards in people's mailbox...you name it. Surprisingly, we were able to get 175 registrations ( a 75% increase from last year!) thanks to everyone's effort in spreading the words.. (Internet and email rocks) Throughout the process I felt there were many improvement areas but the key learning was be organized> be inspiring/excited > be flexible Not the other way around.

Cold call

Cold call is a very commonly tool used by "enthusiastic" professors who want to make sure that students are paying attention in class. This semester, our macro professor is one of those enthusiastic professors. No matter how good you think you are in macroeconomics, at some point you will be cold called with absolutely no clue what to say. I am always amazed at how creative my classmates can get when this happens to them. Here are some of my very favorites:

Professor Ross "So why can we assume a fixed interest rate in the Mundell-Fleming model?"
Spaced out Student "Because the interest rate is fixed?"

Professor Ross "How does the Fed decrease the money supply?"
Confused student "By taking money out of the money supply."

Professor Ross " Does anyone know why Zimbabwe is experiencing a hyper-inflation?"
Clever student who is trying to buy time " Well..it's my pleasure to be here and thank you for giving me the opportunity to answer this question.."

The lesson I learned is that when you have absolutely no idea what to say under a rather stressful environment, why not try a little humor?

Why Haas?

I got asked this questions many times. It's a fair question since 2 years is indeed a lot of commitment both in terms of time and money. Here is my honest answer:

What made the choice easier for me was that McKinsey sponsored my study with the right/obligation to work for them for 2 years after I graduate. As such, I did not to worry too much about financing my MBA. My motivation for obtaining an MBA was driven more by the desire to explore things. I wanted a diverse yet rather laid-back environment as oppose to programs that focus primarily on a particular area such as finance or marketing. In short, I viewed my business school more of an opportunity to find out more about myself rather than making a career switch like many of my classmates.

So far I am very satisfied with my choice as Haas is indeed a very diverse school. More people want to go to management consulting or corporate strategy for the big tech companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon , EBay, Microsoft etc but non-profit, corporate social responsibility and entrepreneurship attracts almost as much attention. I really enjoy being surrounded in this environment because I got to explore different things before I decided I want to focus on finance/investment banking. And that's exactly what I did during fall A: I went to company presentations/career treks, joined a variety of clubs, participated different types of case competitions and talked to many 2nd years about their summer experience. In the process of searching what I wanted, I came to understand more about myself. I found myself more result-oriented, structured, practical, risk-adverse, driven and hardworking than some of my classmates. Therefore I decided perhaps I could try investment banking as my summer as it requires the characteristics I mentioned above. After a month of interviewing, I was fortunate to receive a summer offer from a prestigeous invement bank even though Haas is not preceived as a strong finance school as some other programs.

My conclusion? Haas is an ideal place for people who are not sure what they wanted to do after business school as it provides a tremendous amount of options and opportunities. (Esp. if you want to stay in the Silicon Valley after MBA) However, it's up to you to explore where you will find fit and then do the very best you can to get it. A very wise ex-colleague of mine told me that no one else's definition of success matters. Haas is the ideal place for you to define your own success.

Summer internship

For the past month, I've been pretty occupied in securing a summer internship. I apologize for my late responses in the inquires that my blog readers has sent me through my emails. If I have not gotten back to you, please email me again

So what's new in the spring semester? Not much actually. First of all, the social activities have significantly reduced as most of us are busy dropping resumes, practicing consulting cases and going for interviews. Everyday there are people dressed in suit and tie. There is a mix of frustration, hope and relieved among the small community. The “Any good news so far?" can became a pretty sensitive topic... Second of all, pretty much everyone is "settled in" with their group of friends, not to mentioned some have found a steady partner at Haas (or outside of Haas..)

Out of all the summer internships, investment banking recruits the earliest. By now most of us have either secured an offer or need to quickly move to plan B. Next are the consulting firms. Since most people have interview invitations with more than 3 firms, each firm has 2-3 rounds; the process can be pretty painful and long. The feedback I've heard from some people is that McKinsey interview tends to be tougher than BCG or Bain's since the McK consultants take more control of the case and constantly challenge your answers/questions. Nevertheless, so far we have 4 McKinsey summer offers, 4 BCG offers. The last type, which is on-going, is the industry corporate recruits. I heard from my classmates that these interviews require a significant time of preparation since these companies tend to ask company-specific questions to gauge your interest in working for them (eg. Which company product does you like the best? If you could change one thing about our product xxx, what would it be? )

Having gone through so many investment banking interviews and speaking to my classmates, here is my perspective on three most important success key factors in landing a summer internship:

• Know and be able to convey clearly why you want to do the job your are interviewing for. The interviewer wants to know your motivation
• Show your enthusiasm for the job. How? 1. Know the job well. 2. Know what ability is required to perform the job well and 3. be able to convince your interviewer that you can bring value to the job from day one
• Focus on the interview process, not the actual result. I believe one reaches his/her maximum potential when they are driven by excitement ( of the process) , rather than fear (of the end result, i.e. failure)

The worst and best of the Haas first semester experience

The best Haas experiences from the words of my closer classmates:

• People, people, and people. People are the most valuable asset that differentiates Haas different from the other top schools. They are smart, incredibly intelligent yet very humble, down to earth, friendly, fun to be with and extremely helpful


• Dinner with my study group. We have a really diverse, yet supportive team. We get along really well, in fact, I feel pretty close to them already. Academically, we were very efficient, and I think for all of us, our grades were better as a whole than as individuals

• The extremely diversified environment: From digital media’s >play conference to the biggest finance conference in the west coast. From the Young Entrepreneur At Hass program (YEAH) where you get to listen to the kids from middle school telling you what they learned about teamwork, leadership, etc in their own words to representing Haas competing with Wharton, Chicago on a deal restructuring case competition. From participating the apple case competition to receiving my investment banking fellowship award. There is so much opportunity for one to freely explore


• The wild parties: : San Francisco Scavenger Hunt , the Hamptons party after the fall A finals celebration, the Halloween party, the walk-off and the Indian consumption function..

• Great core classes: Marketing, accounting and communications
  

To be fair, I’ve also asked them to share what they thought were the worst Haas experiences:

• Getting an email on a Saturday about a 3-hour make-up class on Tuesday. (After all, we are a pretty chilled group!)


• The food in Haas café (I’ve started to bring my own sandwich about half way into the fall semester. However, I have to say they do have pretty good fries)


• Sitting in the leadership class (This is probably the most controversial fall class. People have complained that we don’t learn much by listening to professors that aren’t even inspiring leaders themselves, content overlapping with the Organizational Behavior class and not getting enough support to analyze our 360 degree leadership feedback. To me, I think leadership is more a mindset rather than a capability issue. As such, there is a limit as to how much one can teach about leadership. Of course good leaders need to be capable, but I deeply believe the really great leaders are the ones that have the “servant”, “humanity” and “inspiring” mindset and not necessarily always the most capable)