The ESADE MBA Student Blog · ESADE Business School · Barcelona

End of year one reflections…

angelo — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:40:59 +0000

Infinite group projects, lots of individual studying, countless student club organized events, non-stop partying, a lot of success stories witnessed, one of the most beautiful cities….and year one is over….Wow…time has flown by so fast. I arrived in Barcelona a little less than a year ago, and it still feels like yesterday. Today I look back to where I was last September and feel very satisfied and excited. I begun the MBA, not being sure about what kind of career I wanted to pursue afterwards. However I was positive for several reasons, that I wanted this career to bloom in the Health Care sector. Everything looked like a huge and menacing mountain to me. As I was coming from an entrepreneurial background, I had no experience or whatsoever in job hunting, job applications, recruitment processes and the very dreaded recruitment interviews. I didn’t know where to begin from. After a lot of hard work, I managed to secure my internship in one of the world’s most important global players in the pharmaceuticals sector, and will have the great opportunity to learn and to develop myself professionally.

The process to get there has been a quite painful one and I wouldn’t have achieved it weren’t it for ESADE. I look back and feel grateful to all the people that helped me and kept pushing and encouraging me. From professors to career advisors to (of course) my classmates! Many times I get the question “Are you happy with your choice of ESADE?”, the answer is “ABSOLUTELY”. ESADE may not the world’s best or #1 ranked Business School , but that’s not what one should be asking. ESADE has definitely been THE BEST choice for me. The people I had the chance to meet and work with are amazing. I’ve never seen so much solidarity and willingness to help. I would walk around the school after class and would see my fellow classmates helping each other with anything from exams preparation to mock interviews. I did not just have a group of very competent career advisors to follow me and teach me how to improve and “calibrate” myself, but also a group of 180 amazing professionals always available to help with anything I might need.

After having spent a year at ESADE, I can tell with absolute certainty that it is the world’s most collaborative MBA. Great friendships have been crafted that I am sure will last a lifetime. ESADE is not just a professional investment. It has enriched me not just professionally but also personally. There is so much intrinsic value that it’s well worth the commitment. In September, year two begins. I’m looking forward to the new elective courses, and to meet and get to know the incoming class.

Would I do this all over again? I don’t think I need to answer…

Quest for Talent!

angelo — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:58:52 +0000

The ESADE Entrepreneurship Club is launching the coming Friday 21st of May, the first annual Quest for Talent event. The event consists of three parts, a business idea elevator pitch competition, a series of panelists and the core part which is a career fair of growth companies!! Among the invitees, MBAs from Europe’s top business schools and european growth companies.

In the elevator pitch competition, competitors will have 2 minutes to communicate their business idea. The three best ideas will share prizes which total in 4000 euros!

The panelists will discuss issues that concern growth firms, especially in the high tech sectors.

Last but not least, the career fair is meant to create new job opportunities for MBAs and bring growth companies in contact with top talent!

The entrepreneurship club board has worked very hard with a lot of passion for this event, aiming to help fellow classmates and boost ESADE’s reputation. There has been a lot of interest in this initiative, which allowed us to attract sponsors such as La Caixa and one of Barcelona’s most important business incubators, “Barcelona Activa”. For more information feel free to check entrepreneurship.esadembasa.com.

Speakers at ESADE

paul — Fri, 07 May 2010 06:46:53 +0000

Besides the two classes we had yesterday, we somehow also managed to squeeze in three good speakers on campus.

In our entrepreneurship class, Christopher Pommerening, Partner at Barcelona Venture Capital Fund and serial entrepreneur talked about his experiences and gave us great feedback on the business ideas we pitched to our class.

Just before that the ESADE Media Club brought in the Senior Manager for Strategy&Planning for Yahoo! Europe. In a one and a half hour session he covered a lot of ground talking about the online media industry, valuation of online businesses and the strategic challenges Yahoo! is facing.

In the evening, marketing club, brought in the head of Marketing & Sales of the Italian sports goods manufacturer Tecnica. In a another one and a half hour we learned about Tecnica’s multi-brand approach and positioning strategy in the exciting sports sector. All in all a pretty cool day and many thanks to all my colleagues at the clubs working hard to get these speakers on campus!

Georgetown Strategy Worldcup

paul — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:21:20 +0000

One of the most exciting things when you do an MBA are the opportunities outside of the classrooms. You can engage in sports or business clubs, go to different guest speakers, fairs etc. One of these things are case competitions that many MBA schools are hosting throughout a year.

Three friends and I made a spontaneous decision to participate in the Georgetown Strategy Worldcup when we had lunch together out on the ESADE terrace one day. A week later we received the case prompt for the first round. It was about Germany’s planned subvention for the Opel/Magna deal and how Daimler should react to these plans. The case reflected the emphasis of the competition – combining strategic decisions with public policy issues. Some days after submitting our presentation we received the good news that we were selected as one of 5 teams (out of 29 initially) that was invited to Washington DC to participate in the final round.

With this invitation we also received our new case prompt. We were to analyze the situation of GMO authorization (genetically modified organisms) in the EU with regards to changes that have recently been proposed by the European Commission. We started working on it right away and were quite startled by the complexity of the topic and by the huge amount of information out there.

We finally left Barcelona for Washington on Wednesday with the submission deadline just 18 hours away. It would be the quickest flight all of us ever had. 9 hours went by very quickly as we were frantically producing slides on the plane. We submitted just in time and had about a day to prepare our presentation. We finally presented on Friday, April 9th. We had 15 minutes, a real challenge to cover all we had prepared …

Luckily we were the third team to present, so we had the chance to see two other teams presenting after us. All of us were very impressed by the presentations of the other teams from Duke, NYU, University of Maryland and Georgetown. So it came as a little surprise to us, when at 4pm our team was announced the winner of the Georgetown Strategy Worldcup!

It honestly was an amazing experience. Working in a team of friends with complementing strength is really rewarding. We met a lot of new people, also because the Georgetown MBA was also so nice to invite us to their annual MBA formal Friday night. We partied hard and on top of that DC spoiled us with clear skies and some perfect spring days! What a weekend …

ESADE is on a roll !

tatiana — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:35:16 +0000

There has been several competitions happening throughout these two terms and it’s been really interesting and motivating to find out that ESADE won in many of them. Winning the Georgetown Strategy World Cup competition in Washington D.C, followed by the Adidas case competition, and the Société Générale’s Citizen Act competition (their “Bank Better” concept received praise from the jury for originality and thoroughness) are just great success stories. Not only I am proud of the winning teams but also even better is ESADE’s increasing visibility. Congratulations to all the teams and hope we keep having such a proactive and exciting term!

Exams…

paul — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:49:47 +0000

I am writing this blog entry between the two exams we are having today. Operations I exam was on from 9am to 11am and in about an hour Finance II will test our brains. This whole week is dedicated to exams. We don’t have any MBA nor Spanish classes, which is good because we have time to concentrate on preparing for the exams.

What made preparing a lot easier is working together with my fellow students. Many have organized prep sessions in their study groups or formed other groups with complementing strengths. But most amazingly about 200 pages of summaries, Finance formula sheets etc etc found their way to my mailbox in the past few days. I can hear people discussing finance and operations issues on tables and on the hallway and have not met anybody that wouldn’t be willing to help someone else if he or she can. So thanks to everyone that shared knowledge, I really appreciate it!

Bilingual Track

suzanne — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:34:24 +0000

I am glad to have chosen to study in Section C, the bilingual section. Before arriving, I was a proficient but non-native speaker, and I imagined that I would speak more and more Spanish as time went by, as I felt more and more comfortable. During first term, I spoke in Spanish at every opportunity. And my Spanish improved. I’ve gone from being functional in Spanish to being more expressive in Spanish—at times, I feel more comfortable saying something in Spanish than in English!

At the same time, I’ve come to appreciate the chance to speak in English, to relate to friends and colleagues in my native language. My Spanish is there when I need it, so I can indulge in English and the rich nuances of meaning it affords me.

Term 2 Perspective!

angelo — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:40:13 +0000

After a hectic Term 1, one might have expected Term 2 to be slightly more relaxed. However there is still so much going on and so little time. From the very first days we had to prepare for the “Winter Career Week” when some very important multinationals would come meet us on campus. Big names such as Clinton Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Luxottica, Nestlè, L’Oreal, LVMH and others were there. Doors of great opportunities opened to many students. Many of us had follow-up recruiting interviews and the preparation for those was – and still is – very intense.

Schoolwise, the two new subjects I prefer are Finance II and Strategy. I believe that understanding the principles of finance and risk valuation is key to becoming successful managers regardless the sector. I am very impressed with professor Luisa Alemani. Today we had our Finance II mid-term exam and most of the class showed a good understanding of the principles taught so far. Strategy professor Luis Vives is equally engaging. In his class we analyze business cases, comment on business decisions while taking into consideration all the various forces surrounding corporations. I am working with an Irish, Canadian, German, Mexican / American and another student whose number of nationalities, I don’t remember exactly…three of them were American / Polish / Dutch. In this term, we are obviously more organized and structured in the way we approach our workload. We all have to fit in our schedule the individual job search, so our time management is much more efficient compared to the previous term and duties are better distributed.

Next week some of us ESADE students will be part of the GSMA Mobile World Congress, the biggest mobile expo in the world, which takes place in Barcelona on an annual basis. This has been achieved thanks to the effort of the ESADE Technology Club and its president, student Daniel Helmhold. I am very excited about this event. More GSMA and club related news on my next post.

Hasta pronto!

BARCELONA!

paul — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:41:28 +0000

Although it is raining today, I have to write something about the “Barcelona advantage” here. Apart from cultural and culinary highlights the weather definitely contributes to this advantage. An example:

Sunday, 7^th FEBRUARY, 11.30 a.m., breakfast on a friend’s terrace at about 20 centigrade!
Sunday, 7^th FEBRUARY, 2.30 p.m., starting to go through my readings on the beach …

About the readings or classes in general this term: while the first term leveled the playing field (basic finance, accounting, marketing, etc) this term goes more into depth. Sunday’s readings for example were for Global Context of Management. A class I really enjoy because topics are discussed that I think every MBA student should think about. Today’s GCM class is about income distribution, last week we discussed corruption and next week we’ll find out more about international law when we look at Pinochet’s extradition. I really enjoy discussing these topics with my classmates, which is working out well in this class being split up into three groups (20 each).

And that’s it for this post. There are midterms going on and interviews are happening or are just around the corner …

Winter Career Fair

yihsiu — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:04:40 +0000

Last week came the much awaited winter career week; a number of leading companies from various sectors participated. Here’s a gist of the companies that that I find particularly interested in:

- Louis Vuitton

- Nestle

- Clinton Foundation

- Disneyland Paris

- Tradebe

- Loewe

- L’oreal

- Werfen Group

- Johnson & Johnson

There were a couple of pleasant surprises as well, with participation by Asian companies like Infosys and Wipro from India and the SK Group from South Korea.

Corporate presentations, once again, were very informative and gave us an idea about the corporate culture, business structure, career opportunities and address students’ queries.

The networking café was a success; it gave students the opportunity to interact with representatives from a diverse set of companies. All in all, I think the Career Services’ outstanding efforts paid off, and the career week was an excellent experience.