Summer Internship? No, thank you...

Well Well Well! Long time no see! Sorry for the lack of updates, but ive basically been in 5 cities in the past month and well...more details on all of that later.

So its summer, and most MBA students are slaving away at a summer internship. For those of you who dont know, almost every MBA student kills themseles from Christmas to June looking for an MBA summer internship (which is very hard to get in this economy). Remember my previous posts about me stressing over finding an internship? Its tough out there to say the least, and its very frustrating. Worse still, is when you cant actually FIND an internship, which then raises feelings of rejection, doubt, and just an overall "Bleh" feeling. Hey guys, i know, ive been there.
However, what I am going to tell you right now is completely contradictory to what every MBA program tells you, but im just going to go ahead and say it. Ready?

Summer internships are overrated. 

I know, blasphemous, right? Every MBA school counselor will tell you the exact opposite. "Take whatever you can get! It looks good on your resume!"

Sorry career counselors, but i call bullshit. What good is an MBA internship if its not something your passionate about? I know so many people who got internships because "I need to pay rent!" (fair enough) or, worse, "I have nothing else to do so i might as well get an internship at Bobs Widget Factory". I think this line of thinking is completely flawed. Why would you just take an internship in a company that you weren't interested in working at after you graduate, or in something that you are only doing for the money? I thought the purpose of going to school was to open more doors for yourself, not wedge yourself into a proverbial corner, career wise.

Now don't get me wrong, if you found an internship at a company in a field that you are really excited about going into, then more power to you! Thats awesome! But about 50% of the people i know took jobs just because it was there, which is, quite frankly, sad. Or worse yet, they're doing unpaid internships! (see my previous rants about unpaid internships).

What am I talking about? What am i smoking? "Your being an idiot, a job is a job" you say. Okay, fine, but let me tell you what I, the internship-less bumb, have planned for summer versus what my fellow MBA graduates are doing. So far, I have traveled all over California (from San Diego to San Francisco), through the east coast, am doing research for a professor so that I can possibly graduate with honors, and since I had no real plans for summer, I signed up for a program through my university to study the Greek Debt crisis abroad in Germany for a whole month while getting school credit. let me reiterate that last sentence in case you weren't paying attention.

I get to go to a completely different country (on the cheap, i might add, since its an exchange program) to study finance for the summer.

Yeah, i might be broke (im still using financial aid money from this last semester), but hey, at least im not at some summer internship that's miserable or isn't paying me. Im pretty happy with my summer plans.

And isnt it said that happiness leads to money, not the other way around? Ok, well maybe i just made that up, but i stand by it. Plus, ill have plenty of other summers in my life to spend working, might as well enjoy my graduate school experience while I can :). Until next time...

Sales Positions, Unpaid Internships, and 10% unemployment...Oh My!

So I mentioned before that I had an interview this week with a company, which i was pretty excited about. Oh how naive I was.

First let me preface this story by saying that out of nowhere last week i got offered two job interviews within about an hour. When it rains it pours, I guess (fitting since it was pouring on the east coast for about 3 days straight). The first job, which I was basically almost 95% sure that I was going to get, was to be a Bond Analyst for a smaller finance firm. It sounded really cool, but the problem was its meant I had to work about 40+ hours a week, and on top of that be a full time student. Feel free to let that sink in. Ill wait....

Yeah, basically me = no life. I would probably wake up at 7am, commute, get to work, work until 5 (at least) and have class until 9pm, and get home at 10. 5 days a week. Not to mention I would probably have to put in some overtime, and find out how to do homework in the meantime. Oh, and theres the pesky student organization that I am VP of. So, Yeah, that wasnt going to work out. Oh Well.

So then I had this interview for this week. Do you want to know what the interview was for? It was a sales position. Thats right, a sales position. You know, send emails, you pick up phones...which is fine i guess, for a short term type thing, but lets be honest, i didnt want to do that for the rest of my life. "Well, I wouldnt mind a sales position to get a better understanding of the company, as long as it allowed me to, in the long term of course, move into some other field in the company, like maybe finance, which would make better use of my degree. I would love to find a company I could grow with."

Several akward seconds passed by. The guy looked at me like I had run over his puppy.

"Well, the sales people were looking for we would most likely want them to remain in sales."

Thats not what I really was looking for, so the meeting ended, sort of akwardly, and i left the interview, rather confused. Which led me to ask myself, and hopefully some recruiters who frequent this site, the following question...

Why in the &%!% are you trying to hire MBAs for Sales positions?!?!

Are...You...Kidding me? Do you think im getting an MBA so that i can get paid 12$ an hour to pick up a goddamn phone? Really? Really? Its a basic concept people, its called Return on Investment (ROI). Why would i plunk 60,000$+ down on a degree so that I could essentially do what anyone with a high school diploma could do.


Now dont get me wrong, sales people are crucial in any economy (my dad was an excellent salesman), but heres the thing about sales people (especially entry level sales position)...they dont need specialized training! and they certainly dont need an MBA! You are either a sales person or you arent, its not like once you get an MBA, voila!, you can now sell stuff! Any good sales person isnt a good sales person because they took a class in selling, its just something that you happen to be really good at! You ever see the matrix? you know the part where Neo asks the prophet lady if hes "the One?" and she tells him being "the one" is just something you feel and know, you cant be told you are one. THE SAME PRINCIPAL APPLIES WITH SALES PEOPLE!

So that interview sucked, but at least it was a good practice interview. But what kills me is that on top of that, i keep getting sent emails from my career counselor about unpaid internships. Unpaid internship...that just kills me. I wonder if companies do this kind of crap just to see if they can run some kids into the ground for free just for sheer entertainment. I can understand if its a company that im really interested in, but its just hilarious reading these companies begging asking students to join their unpaid internships to get units, free keychains, or whatever other crap they have lying around the office. I expect this type of thing if your fresh out of undergraduate and have a summer to kill, but seriously, some of the people in my MBA program are in their 40's, do you really expect them to spend a summer killing themselves for 2 units of credit? Or get an exciting opportunity to see the exciting world of...being the CFO's assistant assistants assistant?

10% unemployment or not, throw me a frikkin bone here people.

Until next time...