This month’s edition of the MSc Student Blog comes from Omar Itani, MSc CEMS 2015. Omar is currently completing his first of two exchange terms at HEC in Paris, France before he attends HKUST in Hong Kong. Recently, he attended the annual #CEMS Career Forum in Vienna, Austria. Below is a brief overview of his experiences.
September, October, November. The three months of the year when students’ stress levels are a little more elevated than usual. It’s not a matter of exams this time around, it’s a matter of something bigger, something perhaps more crucial and much more worthy of a celebration once your goal is achieved. It’s that time of the year that students dread yet highly anticipate: recruiting season. The season of cover letters, company profile revisions, resumé critique workshops, informal networking, case interview preparations, mock interviews, and, last but not least, the season of personal reflection to really refine the answer to the question “what would you say is your biggest weakness?”
If you’re a CEMS student, then the months of September and October are most probably going to be complete write-offs in terms of recruitment. Once again, you’ve had to pack your suitcases and say goodbye to your family and friends — a life routine by now. You’ve just arrived in a completely foreign city to begin your CEMS exchange term, you’re busy mingling with other CEMS guests, you’ve got course readings to prepare for, an entire new city to discover, and, of course, recruitment to worry about. But worry not, my friends, because come early November, every November, the CEMS head office has an astounding career fair prepared for you.
“Welcome to the CEMS Career Forum 2014 taking place at WU in Vienna, Austria! Bringing together 41 corporate partners and over 1200 CEMS students and alumni from across the world during two days of 27 skill seminars and over 650 pre-scheduled interviews — the CEMS Career Forum is unique in every way and we hope you enjoy it!” – The Career Forum Organizing Team
Louis Vuitton Management House (LVMH), Henkel, McKinsey & Company, A.T. Kearney, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Shell, UniCredit, Vodafone, Procter & Gamble, Barilla, Whirlpool, and Siemens Management Consulting — just a few of the sheer number of corporate partners that were in attendance.
An aerial shot of the 2014 CEMS Career Forum (photo source: CEMS flickr)
So what makes this forum so unique? Three things: the diversity of the corporate partners and the skill seminar topics they offered, the opportunity for students to be interviewed at the forum, and the multiple points of interaction a student can have with an employer over the span of 48 hours. While LVMH’s skill seminar topic was on client-centric service in luxury retail, McKinsey & Company focused on global banking and Facebook shared marketing solutions for successful ad campaigns. Vodafone narrowed down on personal branding, Whirlpool conducted a seminar on leadership, and Henkel introduced students to negotiation techniques.
Mentioned above, one major advantage that the CEMS Career Forum offers students is the opportunity to interact with your potential employer on several different occasions within the span of 48 hours. Let’s look at the case of McKinsey & Company for example. A student pursuing a postgraduate career in consulting could have signed up for McKinsey’s Friday skill seminar on global banking, attended the company’s 45-minute presentation on Saturday, and networked with its representatives throughout the job fair. Moreover, while consulting companies did not pre-schedule interviews with students, several other companies were conducting job interviews on Saturday. So, overall, a student could have many different points of contact with the employer of their choice.
I was there for three reasons: to network with consulting companies, to reunite with old CEMS friends, and, of course, to indulge in a short exploration of Vienna. Overall, I had an excellent time. I ran into old friends who did their CEMS exchange at Ivey, I got to see Stephanie, Juliana, and Aleesha, with whom I spent 3 months in India, and I got to discover Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace and try the original Sacher-Torte at the historic Café Sacher. Saturday’s job fair was a great success as I met one of McKinsey’s representatives who currently works in Moscow only to find out that he actually graduated from the same high school as I did, Colonel By Secondary School in Ottawa, Canada. So it’s true what they say, it’s a small world we live in. CEMS, however, is a big world with bigger opportunities.