Blog 64 - Its All Over.... I am now an MBA!!!

This is a crazy feeling to have. After two of the most difficult and transforming years of my life, my MBA program is complete. Sometimes I still don’t believe it... logging into my Pepperdine WaveNet email address expecting to be looking out for next semester’s class selections!

Graduation Weekend

Pepperdine’s graduation was on April 17th and was held in the gym on lower campus. I was really excited that not only did my family come down for the event, but also my girlfriend Sheila from Spain. The end of the year festivities were numerous... including a Boat Party for the students, a graduation dinner and the actual ceremony itself. During my graduation weekend I enjoyed spending time with my family and a trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain to help celebrate!

Plans for Summer

In between my graduation from Pepperdine and the start of my program at Cornell, I will be spending the summer working for Pelco once again. Pelco was the company I did my first summer internship at last summer. I was very happy to return to work with Pelco. I have been assigned a wide variety of interesting HR projects to work on during the summer including a Global Mobility/Rotational Program and a Customized Employee Development Plan for several of the company’s top performers. I will also get the chance once again to be mentored by David Whitehorn, the VP of HR for the company.

Other than work, my two big goals for the summer are to spend time learning Spanish and to workout as much as possible. So far I have been pretty good about both of them. Although, my workout program was recently tested when my mother brought home a full platter of doughnuts, muffins, candy and just about every unhealthy food imaginable! Even with the full time workload and abundance of unhealthy food, I’m still going strong and very sore to prove it!!

Starting at Cornell

My program at Cornell officially starts on August 18th with the MILR orientation. I am incredibly excited for the start of my second masters program. I have reserved my apartment in Ithaca and am currently in the market searching for extreme cold weather clothing! During my visit out to Ithaca, I was able to meet many of the students that I will be going to school with this fall. I am looking forward to all of the new relationships and networking that will be right around the corner.

Reflection Upon MBA...

At this point in my life... I can say that my decision to earn my MBA was the best decision that I have ever made in my life. When I look back at my other options that were before me coming out of undergrad... I can safely say that none of them would have resulted in a scholarship to the Ivy League, the experience of studying at Oxford, my hugely international network of friends, industry connections, global job offers, a girlfriend in Madrid, academic expertise in various functional areas of business or the vast majority of what I experienced over the last two years.

A huge piece of my “MBA Takeaway” is the amazing people that I met, interacted with, worked with and became friends with. While the numbers of people I met are sometimes staggering... people like Frankie Warren, Mark Cathy and Jenna Burkey have changed my life forever. The people listed above, as well as many others, will remain lifelong friends of mine. I feel incredibly fortunate to have met the many people I did during my MBA program.

Is It For You?

The decision to pursue an MBA is a huge, life-altering decision. The workload is crazy. The tuition is insane. The sleepless nights are many. The stress is high. For me however... in the end... the rewards of the program far offset the cost.

To those of you who have been following my blog for some time now... I thank you for your continued support through the two years. Who knows... maybe Cornell needs a blogger? Haha... we’ll see!

Officially Signing Off,

Brian Jenkins, MBA

Blog 63 - Final Countdown

First off... I would like to apologize for my lack of writing the last week and a half or so. My time during the MBA program is very quickly coming to an end. The end of the session, just like all of the other sessions, is a very busy time for MBA students. The dates for projects, papers and presentations all approach at the same time. Last minute group meetings, all day Sunday work sessions and final cramming are all very common during this time. The workload is heavy... but the conclusion is right around the corner. At the time I’m writing this, I have 3 more days left until I will be done with classes. When I look at what needs to be done between now and then, the “to-do list” looks incredibly long.

Thankfully though, I have my good friend and amazing teammate Jenna in all of my classes this session. If you don’t know Jenna, please refer to my blog post #49 to get updated. As I type this I am waiting for her in the parking lot of school preparing for an all-day work session for the classes Change Management, Human Resources and Business Strategy. We are pretty much planning on an all day and possibly all night work session.

To add to the workload, I had my “Discover the MILR Program” event at Cornell this past week. I am incredibly excited about my new program. I was able to meet members of the faculty, get introduced to many current students and get a glimpse of what my life will look like next fall. I spoke with some of the 2nd year MILR students and they said one of the most difficult aspects of the program was deciding what Fortune 100 companies to interview with, as so many of them recruit there on campus. Some of the students said they conducted 20+ interviews with top companies! The access to top-tier recruiting is unmatched compared to any other HR masters program. I found out that if I decided to stay a second year in the program that I might be able to obtain at TA position that would involve me teaching a basic undergraduate class in HR! I am now more excited than ever for both the program and my future.

My upcoming calendar of events list week is very packed. Three classes worth of papers, presentations and finals. My girlfriend Sheila is flying in from Madrid this wednesday to attend all of the graduation festivities this week. In true Malibu style, our graduation party will be held on a 4-story mega yacht off the coast of southern California this Thursday night. We have a graduation dinner this Friday and our actual graduation ceremony will be held next Saturday. My family will be driving down from Fresno to attend the event.

Have no fear, I will post a final blog post about my experiences during this program... but I won’t have the time until its over! Off to work!

Blog 62 - SHRM HR Games Competition

This past weekend, I travelled with my undergraduate faculty to attend the HR Games competition. The competition was was hosted by the University of Nevada, Reno.

The competition consists of a series of head-to-head matches where the teams are tested on various Human Resources terminology. Topics covered include HR Strategy, Compensation, Employee Training, Globalization, Labor Unions, Landmark Legal Cases, Management, Motivation Theory, Technology, Staffing, Recruiting and Leadership. The game structure is similar to the format used in Jeopardy.

Many schools compete against each other in the regional HR Games competition. In Fresno State’s region, they compete against Boise State, University of Hawaii, Washington State, Cal Poly, CSU Bakersfield, and CSU Stanislaus. Each university sends two teams of three students a piece. Fresno State won the competition with flying colors.

Events like these are an important part of MBA networking. Attending this event allowed me to mentor Fresno State’s undergraduate team members, keep connections with my undergraduate faculty and meet other HR professionals. Getting the chance to hang out with undergraduate students gives me a chance to talk with them about their futures and answer their questions about graduate school. Keeping connections with my undergraduate faculty allows me to continue to be mentored by my former professors. Meeting HR professionals allows me to ask questions to people currently working in the industry that I want to work in.

My advice to MBA students is to make an effort to maintain their connections to their undergraduate institutions and their faculty. Being an active alumni, maintaining relationships and staying involved are all important aspects of networking.

Blog 61 - Religious Affiliation and Social Enterprise Week

Pepperdine’s undergraduate program is a religious institution. Undergraduate students are required to attend 14 religious events throughout each semester. If students don’t attend the events, it will be negatively reflected in their grades.

This is not the case however in the MBA program. The business school is not directly linked to any religion and does not require its students to be associated with any religion. What does translate into the MBA program though, is a large focus on business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Almost every class has a section, lecture or case that is linked to corporate ethics. Many of our most popular student-run organizations are somehow related to ethical business practices.

At the forefront of the ethically focused clubs is Pepperdine’s Net Impact Club. Every year in the MBA program, Pepperdine’s Net Impact Club hosts an event called Social Enterprise Week (SEW). During SEW, each club hosts an event for the student body centered around a socially ethical business practice related to their functional area. The SEW website explains the event like this:

“The aim of Social Enterprise Week is to communicate the values of social and environmental responsibility as well as sound ethical practices in business through a week of events hosted by GSBM's clubs and student leaders.”

The event featured Dan Bross, the Senior Director of Corporate Citizenship at Microsoft. Below is his a brief background and outline of his presentation:

The Consulting Club sponsored a lunch event with a guest speaker. Our club brought in Brendan Edgerton, a LEED Consultant and Project Manager at Green Dinosaur Consulting. A LEED consultant is a person who helps clients build energy efficient buildings and facilities. Brendan has worked on several high-profile projects including the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills and the Regency Tower. His presentation was a great way for our club members and Pepperdine students to see the progression of the green consulting industry.

Blog 60 - The Next Step... Ivy League Here I Come!!

Just yesterday... I found out. I was accepted into Cornell’s Master in Industrial Labor Relations Program on scholarship! Cornell’s program is the top human resources program in the world. This solidifies the next major step in my post-MBA career. In August, I will be moving to Ithaca, NY to start my program. I am incredibly excited about this amazing opportunity!

More School? 2nd Masters? Why?

My Pepperdine MBA experience was amazing. It was truly a life-changing time in my life. In terms of foundational knowledge acquisition, experience building and personal development I couldn’t possibly have asked for anything more. Four major factors played into my decision for pursuing my second masters. Those factors were specialized learning, program ranking, access to recruiting and networking.

My Pepperdine MBA gave me the foundational knowledge that I need to build my business career. The MBA degree comprises of a vast selection of core business courses like accounting, marketing, finance, economics, IT systems, organizational behavior, and strategy. In my particular “niche” of human resources though, Pepperdine only offered one class in HR (which I’m in currently). I want to take graduate level courses about topics like talent management, compensation strategy, HR information systems, employee relations, internal communications, corporate safety and employee development. I can draw a comparison to a specialized surgeon. A surgeon first goes to medical school (my MBA program) to learn the foundational knowledge needed to become a doctor. The surgeon then goes on to specialize in his area of focus by attending more school (my MILR program) to learn the advanced critical skills needed to be successful. I want to be an expert in my field, and this program will substantially help me achieve that goal.

Let’s talk for a second about rankings. Now, I will be the first to admit that a program’s ranking is not the “end all, be all” of a program’s overall value. However, when a program is a highly ranked program like Cornell’s it opens up some opportunities that may not have existed otherwise. To put it in perspective, Pepperdine’s MBA program was ranked in the 50s out of 600+ MBA programs in the US. As an overall university, Cornell ranks between 5th and 15th in the US. The program I am attending is the number one HR masters program in the world. Cornell is the only Ivy League school to have a masters program in HR.

Now high ranking alone is nice, but the real value of the high ranking comes from what that ranking does for you. A key advantage of a number one ranked program is the extensive recruiting that is done at the university. I will have access to a vast number of Fortune 100 companies that come to Cornell to recruit students. I know that several companies that I am interested in working for recruit at Cornell.

Maybe the most important takeaway from this next masters program will be the network that I take away from the program. Let me mention something about a difference in generational career paths. In my parents generation, it was very common to sign on to a company and work for them throughout the rest of your career. My father is a perfect example of this. When he was 25 years old, he signed on with DuPont. He has worked for them for 35 years now. My career path will likely be very different. It has been estimated that students in my generation will have more than 10 jobs throughout our career. With this in mind, my network will be vitally important. The phase “it’s not what you know, but who you know” is more true than ever before. Let me explain...

When I enter Cornell’s MILR program this fall, I will enter with 150 of the top HR students in the world. That group of students will become my classmates, my group assignment team members, my social contacts and most importantly my friends. When our class graduates from the program, our 150 students will explode out of Ithaca, NY into top companies all over the world working in various HR functions. Being in human resources and coming out of the #1 program in the world makes this class of students very powerful in the business world. Having a network of 150+ top HR professionals in Fortune 500 companies would be an amazing asset to anyone’s network.

Conclusion

Getting into the Ivy League, on scholarship, is the compilation of more than 20 years of hard work in school. Countless nights studying, cramming, researching, typing, etc. Being able to tell people that I am going to Cornell is something that I am incredibly proud of. My Pepperdine MBA prepared me to take this next step in my life, and for that I will be eternally grateful. Go Big Red!!

Blog 59 - The Beginning of The End

Well, this is it. Today marks the first day of my last quarter in the MBA program. It seems like just yesterday I was moving my stuff down to Malibu for the first time. It is very crazy to think that in just 47 days I will graduate with my MBA! The next 7 weeks should fly by. My final quarter will consist of only 3 classes, instead of the normal 4 or 5 classes. The program allows you to take a reduced workload in order to allow students extra time to conduct their job search and plan out their next steps. These are my classes:

Change Management

By Professor Kent Rhodes

This is the course description and overview:

The pace, the volume, and the complexity of change itself have increased significantly during the last decade, and the forecast is for no less in the years ahead. The topic of managing change and implementation often resided as a mere module in organizational behavior courses. For the professor, and presumably for the students who enroll in this course, there is a need to deepen our understanding of the challenges, the techniques, and the burdens associated with making major change in an organization. Indeed, today, many managers view their jobs almost entirely as managing change. The cases and materials in this course give students as much as possible the sense of “being in the shoes” of managers facing situations of change—in most cases as the change agent, but also as the change recipient.

Anyone involved in organizations experiences the need to think about change. Organizations are constantly changing. Sometimes the changes occur as the result of careful thought and action. Sometimes the changes occur with little forethought or oversight. The more informed we are about the nature of change and the various approaches to managing it, the more effect we can be as members of organizations.

This course provides an introduction to and overview of the many kinds of planned change efforts which are undertaken in contemporary organizations. More specifically, the course focuses on the application of Organization Development (OD) methods and the unique role of the organization change professional. Major topics addressed in this course include: 1) the role of the change agent, with emphasis on values and skill sets, 2) introduction to some tools for assessment and diagnoses of organizations, 2) an overview of various kinds of change intervention strategies, with emphasis on the action research model, and 3) the evaluation of change efforts. The approach to these topics is designed to help the student develop a “cognitive map” for planned change activities as a leader as well as for the student’s own understanding and preferred approaches to managing change.

The learning process used in this course will include all of the following activities 1) reading about the theories and concepts of organization change in the course texts, and in additional materials which will be assigned throughout the course; 2) classroom lecture and discussion; 3) in-class analysis of cases; 4) simulations exercises to stimulated self-reflection and critical thinking 5) written reflection papers and team projects.

Org Development & Human Resource Management

By Professor Lori Heffelfinger

This is the course description and overview:

This course examines the powerful set of concepts and techniques used in organizations for improving effectiveness in dynamic and changing environments. Study concentrates on linking learning experiences in organizational development and human resource management with assessed competencies judged by experts as essential for graduating business students. This course will deal with issues related to human resource practices such as legal environment, planning, staffing and recruitment, performance appraisal, compensation, succession planning, and workforce planning. This course also examines the concepts of organization practice and general strategies on organizational development; structural organizational interventions; power; politics; effective consultant behavior and techniques; and application in the entrepreneurial, public, and private sectors.

Strategic Management

By Professor Otis Baskin

(Continuation from session A)

This is the course description and overview:

This course is designed to be a “capstone” for the MBA to integrate the knowledge and skills gained during the program from the perspective of the chief executive officer. The purpose of business strategy is to provide frameworks and tools for conducting strategic problem identification, analysis and decision making for improving overall organizational performance. It is designed to prepare students to analyze the company as well as its environment. The course is integrative in that students will constantly be using skills and knowledge from various functional business areas such as accounting, economics, finance, marketing, production and operations, and quantitative methods. Therefore, students should expect to revisit knowledge gained in earlier in their studies with the intent of applying this information to gain a holistic view of the enterprise. This course will help students develop skills related to critical/multidimensional thinking, analytical reasoning, argument construction, debate, project management, running effective teams and written and oral communications. In addition to analysis and planning particular emphasis will be given to application and implementation of strategy.

Blog 58 - Your Ever Important Laptop

A requirement of just about every MBA program is that every student needs to have a laptop. Laptops are required for everything that we do and it would be impossible to complete our program without one. In following the previous post, our laptops are a key part to our communication ability for all school related things.

In-Classroom Use

We use our laptops to follow PowerPoints, take notes, and run spreadsheets. Some classes (stats, strategy, finance, IT, etc) even require us to purchase computer programs that we run in class on our laptops. While a few “old school” professors still maintain “no laptop” policies, they are in the minority. Laptops have revolutionized the classroom due to the ease of looking up relevant data. For example, if a professor mentions a company you haven’t heard of... just Google it to find out the company basics and its financial performance.

Group Project Use

Every group project we do (which is many) involves everyone sitting down in front of their laptops discussing issues and researching their respective parts. Sending emails containing word documents, spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides happen constantly. Some group meetings can require sending/receiving 15+ emails around the group.

Personal Use

I have found the more I use my laptop for work related things, the more I use it for personal reasons as well. Whether it is catching up on the NFL, Skype video chatting with my girlfriend in Madrid or watching the latest Netflix movie online... I am always on my computer. If I am not at the gym, asleep, showering, driving or with friends... it is a fair bet that my computer isn’t too far away.

A Mission Critical Piece

In the MBA program, there are lots of things you could do without if you really had to. You could (and sometimes do) go without sleep some days. You could go without eating a whole lot some days. You could (shouldn’t, but could) go without buying all of the required books. You could not attend any school related events (again, not recommended). You could try to get by living far from campus. This list is a list that could go on for awhile. One thing that will NEVER be on this list is getting by without a computer. As students (especially me) we are incredibly dependent on our laptops. With this in mind, the idea of having my laptop crash or get stolen/broken would be a major disruption to my everyday life. Here are some pieces of laptop advice:

Advice #1: GET A GOOD ONE!!

With your laptop being such a vital piece of your MBA life, how someone could think that saving a couple hundred dollars could possibly be worth the risk of poor laptop performance is beyond me. Our program (both faculty and students) don’t accept any form of technology excuses. If I didn’t check my email for more than 48 hours, that could be a bad thing. If I didn’t have a laptop to bring to class for an in-class exercise, the professor would not be overly sympathetic. Having a laptop alone is not enough. Having a high quality, reliable laptop is the real requirement.

Anyone who knows me, knew this paragraph would be in here. This is my single paragraph highlighting my support of Apple technology. Yes, I am a Mac person. Being that I am a Mac person, I am biased towards their technology. Before I started my MBA program, I knew that I needed a high quality laptop. Apple is the number one selling laptop for college students in America and Consumer Reports ranked Apple’s 15 and 17 inch Mac Book Pros as the best laptops on the market. I invested about $2,500 in my 15 inch Mac Book Pro before I started my program. I say “invested” because after almost two full years of constant, hard daily use it continues to function the same as the day I bought it. I know some Mac users who use their Mac laptops for 10+ years. It is fast, reliable, compatible and easy to use. I absolutely love everything about my Mac. Apple’s sales growth, expanding market share and incredibly vocal user group are a clear indicator of their superior technology.

Advice #2: Be At Least “Good” With Technology

The MBA experience is one that requires a student to be “good” with technology. This means keeping your technology operating, being a whiz at Word, creating impressive PowerPoints, easily navigating the Internet for research, using Web 2.0, creating powerful spreadsheets, using video chat, using various media forms (audio, video, etc), organizing tremendous amounts of files on your computer for quick access, etc. If you were able to do the entire list above comfortably and quickly, your computer skills would be considered average for an MBA program. The students with “Great” computer skills are doing many of the same things, but doing them much quicker utilizing keyboard shortcuts and small tricks only experienced users know.

Advice #3: Have a Plan B and Backup

Since we are so reliant on our technology, it is important that students plan for the possibility of our technology fail. The first part of this preparation is having money set aside that could be used to purchase a backup computer if needed. Hopefully this wouldn’t ever be needed, but if my computer was stolen/lost I would need a replacement ASAP. The second part involves backing up your files on a weekly basis. If my computer died, I would need/want all of the files on my computer.

Conclusion

In summary, your laptop is vital to everything MBA related. Pick a good computer, become a “good” computer user if you’re not and have a backup plan. This aspect of a MBA program will continue to become more important as technology is used to an even greater extent than it is now.