Interview with an Austrian MIT MBA Student

This interview is the latest in an Accepted.com blog series featuring  interviews with current MBA students, offering readers a behind-the-scenes look at  top MBA programs. And now for a chat with  Christian Marek who is in his final year  at MIT Sloan. Accepted: Wed like to get to know you! Where are you from? Where and what did you study as an undergrad? Do you hold any other degrees? Christian: Originally Im from the scenic Vienna in Austria. There I completed  Bachelors  in Software Engineering and a Masters in Information Systems Management. Because I wanted to immerse  myself even further in the tech industry, I decided to pursue an MBA. Accepted:  Where are you in business school? What year? Christian:  Im currently a second-year MBA student at MIT Sloan and will be graduating June 2015. Accepted:  Why did you choose MIT Sloan? How is it the best program for you? Which other MBA programs had you considered? Christian:  When I chose my MBA program, the primary factors I considered were quality of the school, entrepreneurial ecosystem of the university, school affinity for technology (and data), class size, and location. This lead me to consider MIT Sloan, Berkeley Haas and UCLA Anderson. All programs were almost equally amazing. However, once I saw the MIT campus I knew this was the place to be for me. The geekiness and culture was impossible to match. Coming from an engineering background this is where I wanted to be. Accepted:  Can you share some advice to incoming first year students, to help make their adjustment to b-school easier? What do you wish you wouldve known when you were just starting out? Christian:  Adjusting to b-school is a great  experience  but its definitely challenging there are so many variables. Being an international student adds an additional challenge as it takes some time to get used to local communication style and culture. Here are a few things that make the adjustment easier: †¢ Keep reaching out after your acceptance: The MBA years are among the best in your life. Having a rough sense of what you want to get out of the MBA is really helpful. Obviously as an incoming student you do your research online. Additionally, I recommend reaching out to a variety of current MBAs at your school that are doing what you are looking to do. This should be even easier after acceptance. For example if youre interested in entrepreneurship try to talk to a club VP over the phone. They can tell you if the club a good choice for your, help develop your interest further and intro you the others who might have similar interests. †¢   Attend post-admission events: I find that the admission events (weekends, seminars, etc.) I attended really helped me in making my decision. You get to know your potential future classmates. Doing so, lets you figure out if youre kind of on the same wavelength and even find roommates. Furthermore the schools will showcase what the programs have too offer in even greater detail. †¢   MBA communication classes: These classes are amazingly helpful, especially for international students. As I said communication in the U.S. can seem very different. The communication classes at Sloan taught me a lot about American communication standards in business personal interactions. Accepted:  Are you involved in any clubs on campus? How central to student life is club involvement? Christian:  Im a co-president of the European Business Club at MIT Sloan and I really enjoy the experience. However,  I think club involvement is a personal choice. I know classmates who are members in up to eight clubs and I know classmates who are in zero clubs. Some classmates are VPs and presidents, others just arent. Personally, I think clubs can offer a lot of value in terms of making friends, finding classmates with common interests and taking on leadership opportunities. Just like everything in life it helps aligning your decision on the extent of your club involvement to what you want to accomplish. If you want to be an entrepreneur, joining the Entrepreneurship club makes sense. If you want to do something for the overall community, join a culture club. See if you like it and then you can typically still decide whether or not to go for a VP position. Accepted: Can you tell us about your internship at Google last summer? What role did Sloan play in helping you secure that position?   Christian:  My internship at Google last summer was amazing. The internship program is run by an amazing team at Google that makes the experience at Google unique. On a weekly basis leaders in the organization gave us their inside scoop on leadership and the tech industry. Google offers a variety of MBA internship roles. Over the summer you take responsibility for executing your very own project. Sloan helped in a variety of ways. First, the internal network at Sloan is extremely helpful to learn about a company. As I was in the internship recruiting process, I reached out to former Googlers and former Google MBA interns at Sloan. They were extremely  helpful in telling me about their experiences at Google. Second, the various clubs at Sloan help you with the internship process by doing resume reviews among other things. Coming from Europe, I found this particularly helpful because the U.S. job application process is very different. Third, the MIT Sloan Career Development office collaborates closely with Google to host coffee chats and recruiting events. In that way Sloan MBA students can connect directly to Googlers to learn more about the company and the internship. Accepted:  Looking back, what was the most challenging aspect of the MBA admissions process? How did you approach that challenge and overcome it? Christian:  For me personally the most challenging part getting connected to the schools. I was the first in my network to pursue an MBA. However,  from reading  online  I got the sense that insights from current students are extremely valuable to the application. Even though the notion of writing cold emails was completely foreign to me, I researched Europeans (particularly Austrians) that were attending my target schools. I was surprised how quickly they responded. Even though arranging these chats and conversations was a lot of work, I do believe building those connections contributed to my admission offers. Talking to current students is irreplaceable and it helps you get a feel for the school. Accepted: Do you have any other advice for our med school applicant readers, especially for international applicants? Christian: 1. Connect to your target school: Your future school is probably a couple thousand kilometers away. Still connecting to current students is the best way to learn about your school. 2. Make a well-rounded application package: Show who you are personally and  professionally. Ideally youll be able to tie this to together and paint your future to the  reader. Also, use data points to quantify the impact you had. I think for internationals (or at least Europeans) this is particularly unusual. Still, you need to get over it and do it. For one-on-one guidance on your b-school applications, please see our MBA Application Packages.   You can follow  Christian  on  Twitter  and  by checking out his blog  Producteria. Thank you Christian  for sharing your story with us – we wish you loads of luck! Related Resources: †¢Ã‚  Navigate the MBA Maze †¢ MIT Sloan 2015 Executive MBA Essay Tips Deadlines †¢ IV With an Overrepresented Minority MIT Sloan Admit!

Development Organization to Manage More Efficiently - 550 Words

Helping a Small Development Organization to Manage Volunteers More Efficiently (Essay Sample) Content: Helping a Small Development Organization Manage Volunteers More Efficiently(Name of Student)(Name of University)Helping a Small Development Organization Manage Volunteers More EfficientlyIntroductionSmall development organizations that are working for the social welfare of people are specifically responsible for the improvement of society. A number of organizations are working to achieve different social welfare objectives and functions. For this research, the writer has considered different small developing organizations that are working for the improvement of South African areas. Most important asset or property of the non-profit organization is the number and dedication of volunteer that are willing to work on different projects for the non-profit organization. Research shows that there are different smaller developing organizations facing the problem of volunteer retention and research objected to finding major reasons and solution for these problems.The research articles objective is to solve the problem of volunteer management in small organizations that can help in increasing the efficiency and performance of the organization. In this article, the writer has addressed major reasons and causes that create a problem in retention and satisfaction of volunteer that work for the non-profit organization. With the help of this research, the writer has presented different techniques and methods used to increase the volunteer management of small organization by facilitating the volunteer in their schedule of working. Main ideas that are present here are the multi-criteria volunteer scheduling model and reducing the cost of scheduling.Problem and ContextThe main area of the problem that has addressed in this article is the problems of volunteer management in small welfare organization. Most of the organizations that are working for development and social benefit of the South American countries are facing the issue of volunteer management. This pro blem is increasing because the organization is not giving a proper and manageable schedule to their volunteers. Thus, because of the miss- management in volunteer working, the organization is facing challenges to perform its social activities and execution of different welfare programs CITATION Mau11 \l 1033 (Mauro Falasca, 2011).On the sub level, it has found out that the problems of volunteer management and volunteer retention are increasing in developing organization, mainly because of the traditional or manual scheduling methods used by the organization. For most of the organizations studied or observed in the research, the use of traditional and manual scheduling methods for volunteers is predominant. These traditional scheduling methods create challenges for employees, and affect the long-term retention of volunteers.The second area of concern that the research revealed for the small developing organization is the increasing number of unfilled shifts and undesired projects in these organizations. The research study has focused on addressing the problems and issues of a welfare organization on a common level. Main facts and data collected for completing the research problem is the field of study of labor scheduling from different non-profit organizations. The problem of scheduling has address after analyzing the facts and data from a field study of different small developing organizations.Area of the problem that this article discusses is the common problem of different small developing organizations that are not working for profit earning. This problem mainly faced by the organization that is working on a small scale because they lack proper budget management and use of advance and digital technologies to perform their actions. It is one of the areas of concern that the study for the small nonprofit organization because these organizations usually work with traditional and manual techniques of doing functions. It is the important area of discussion beca use the small-scale non-profit organization can use this approach for improving their efficiency and volunteer management.Analysis and ApproachIn this article, the writer has focused on the primary analysis and directly works with different small non-profit organizations to evaluate their area of the problem in volunteer management. Based on research, main approach or way that has suggested, as the solution is to overcome the inefficiency and drawbacks of volunteer scheduling. Previous volunteer scheduling that followed by the organization not given time relaxation and many options to volunteer and thus the job was becoming challenging for the volunteer. The writer used the approach of multi-criteria scheduling model to increase the volunteer retention in the organization CITATION Mau11 \l 1033 (Mauro Falasca, 2011).The new scheduling approach is the focus of this article that so meant to present the solution of problems faced by small developing organizations. Small welfare organi zation that considered for this research have 20 to 25 active volunteer that are willing to work on different projects. Manual scheduling method that the organization uses to manage the time and working with these 20 to 25 active volunteer in the organization was outdated, and it was one of the major reason that increases the number of undesired projects and unfilled shifts in the organization CITATION Mau11 \l 1033 (Mauro Falasca, 2011).To test the efficiency of the new approaches, the writer uses the comparison techniques with old manual scheduling model of organization. Labor scheduling is one of the most important approach and technique that have considered for this research paper. Labor scheduling is one of the most important areas of volunteer management in welfare organizations because it can directly relate to the satisfaction and work with volunteers in these organizations. In this article, the writer has given a special preference to study the previous working schedule a nd conditions of different organizations so they can use practical approaches to find the solution of the problem.There are different objects and details that are set with the research approach of the article to find the solution to the problem. The performance of spreadsheet-based optimization model FCFS is the dominant approach and design used to overcome the problem and it has considered with different expected outcomes. These outcomes are set as the basic objects of this approach used in this article, 1 First, expected outcome of this approach is to reduce to control the number of increasing undesired project and unfilled shifts in one organization. Volunteer retention and increasing contribution of the volunteer in projects of the organization is the basic factor that can ensure the development and progress of the welfare organization CITATION Mau11 \l 1033 (Mauro Falasca, 2011). 2 Second expected outcome of the considered approach is the control of scheduling cost. It is cons idered one of the most important focuses of research because it is important for the small developing organization to reduce their expenses. In this article, a writer so objected to finding the solution approach that can be helpful to solve the area of problem and can cut the scheduling cost of the organization. In this way, the analysis and approach of the article that is the performance of spreadsheet-based optimization model FCFS can bring double folded benefit to the welfare organization. 3 On the last, the basic outcome that we expect from the solution of the performance of spreadsheet-based optimization model FCFS is the reduction in a shortage of labor in the organization. Basic philosophy that has focused on this research is to provide more option and time relaxation to volunteer so they can easily manage the welfare activities with their other engagement CITATION Mau11 \l 1033 (Mauro Falasca, 2011).They are the basic objectives of research that the writer focuses. Overall, research objected to increasing the efficiency of welfare organization by increasing their working and ...