Friday, December 18, 2015

Lessons Learned in the MSBA

Wondering what the annual New York Trip was like through the eyes of a student? MSBA student Victoria Lee lets us in on her experience.

Market Your Strengths

The New York trip was one of the most rewarding, tiring, and fun-filled weeks I have ever experienced. Being able to bond with my classmates and leaders in the program, confirmed that I made the right decision in continuing my studies at Catholic. Every speech and every visit to the companies shared the same sentiment. While there were several terms and concepts from class, like the marketing mix, process, the importance of social media, the biggest theme I got from all the companies was marketing yourself. Building your own brand and being marketable to different fields, was the largest marketing aspect of the trip. Every company mentioned the importance of being genuine, being inquisitive, and being a team player, are all elements vital to the different marketing industries and marketing yourself. Building on your strengths and marketing these strengths are extremely important. For example, I learned that companies like DDB and Interbrand are keen on teamwork and collaboration. Throughout my undergraduate career, Sociology was crucial on seminar type classes, as well as in the MSBA courses, teamwork is everything. These elements are crucial to working at companies like this and I definitely want to be able to advertise these strengths when I apply to jobs in the very near future.
To further the point of marketing on your strengths, it made me reflect a lot on the skills I learned from my undergraduate career, and the abundant skills we are learning from the MSBA program. The core of sociology is understanding human interaction, being able to adapt to different cultural differences, understanding people’s thought process. These skills would help me in being able to work in a team as well as if I want to have a career in marketing, I can build on these skills. The skills I learned from my undergraduate career are being amplified and magnetized in the MSBA program. In our marketing and management courses, we learn in a seminar style and have discussions that allow us to voice our opinion, while being open to other people’s opinion. We are also able to collaborate on different case studies and class project, which I learned on the trip, is vital to marketing. Teamwork is also extremely prevalent in our accounting and quantitative courses, these courses are not my strongest courses, but getting help from my classmates has been great. I learned at the different advertising companies, that even if you have an area that is not your strong suit, you can get input from your co-workers and teammates. The skills I learned from my undergraduate and graduate career, are skills I want to market when I start applying to jobs.
Marketing yourself and marketing your skills, are all lessons I learned from the New York trip and in class. The importance of being genuine and inquisitive are both prevalent in class and when we were listening to the different speaker’s speeches. Marketing was present during the entire trip.
Read More »

Thursday, December 10, 2015

How My Liberal Arts Degree is Helping Me in Graduate School: Blog Series part IV

We're back! Welcome to the latest installment of our blog series, How My Liberal Arts Degree is Helping Me in Graduate School. If you happened to miss the first few posts, you can catch up here:


Music to Management: Finding a Career from an "Impractical" Major
English, a Major of Adaptability
Studying History: Storytelling in the Office 

In this post, we welcome MSBA student Clare Fallon who received her Bachelor's degree in History with a minor in Secondary Education. In her post, she talks about how she will use the skills learned during her undergraduate career in her time with the MSBA program as a graduate student in business. Take it away, Clare!

From Classroom Manager to Business Manager

It’s 8:40 am and I am standing outside of my classroom waiting for my students to hustle up the hallway and get settled into their seats for a day filled with math, english, social studies and fun! Well, at least I tried to make learning fun. Although I am not in the teaching profession, my major and experience has taught me so much that I believe can carry over into the business world. The most important aspect that would seamlessly fit into my new found business lifestyle would be my classroom management skills. In any given class period, I would have about 25 students in my classroom. I had to make sure that my students were involved, engaged, not wasting their time, keeping up with the expectations of the classroom, and comfortable to ask questions to be able to complete their work. This article by edutopia discusses tips for fostering a positive classroom management style. While reading it, it occurred to me that these tips can be applied to business management style as well. To me, a teacher is the ultimate business manager. As a manager, you have to make sure your co-workers are engaged, not wasting their (or your) time, keeping up with the expectations of their job as well as company culture, and comfortable enough to ask you questions. Hopefully one day at 8:40 am, with help from my classroom management skills, I’ll be standing outside my office waiting for my co-workers to hustle up the elevator and get settled into their desks for a day filled with hard work, determination, and of course…fun!
Read More »

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

The Formula For Success

In the post below, MSBA student Eve Zhu uses knowledge she learned in her Quantitative Analysis class to come up with a "function for success". (If you've missed our previous student guest posts, read them here, here and here).

 Take it away, Eve!


What Does Success Look Like to Me?

What does success look like to me? I read an interesting article about success a period of time ago. The author, Geoffrey James, stated his definition of success. While a lot of people think that success should be defined as the left chart, he think a much more sensible definition of success is as the middle chart.
However, for many more people, I think success is the right chart. So the following question is what makes people rich and happy?  After thinking about this question, I found the following success metrics from Harvard Business Review.
For fun and curiosity, I tried to use regression to explain the relationship between the four categories and success. I used sixty-two business leaders’ answers online and my four roommate’s answers as the sample to run a regression model. People think these business leaders are successful, so 1 represents success and 0 represents not success. ABCD represent four categories and each item in each category represents one point.
After several tests, I got a function: Success = -0.052 + 0.156*A + 0.070*B + 0.023*C + 0.074*D and R^2=0.797. The career objective, which can represent rich, is still the most important index of success. It is really true in today’s society. In my opinion, the other three categories can represent the “happy” section in the middle chart above. Success involves both riches and happiness.
This is what success looks like to me.
Read More »