After The MBA

Unconventional MBA Jobs – FBI Agent

What’s a poor unemployed recent MBA grad supposed to do in this terrible job market? They need to think outside the box and look for jobs outside of the usual banking, consulting or brand management path!

Earlier this year, I started looking at careers off the MBA beaten path and one cool job that I found (and applied to) was working as a Special Agent for the FBI!

 

 

There are four main steps to the application process:

• Phase I Written Testing (like an easy LSAT + personality test)
• Phase II Testing (interview and more written tests)
• Physical Fitness Test
• Final Screening (Polygraph, Drug test, Background Check)

Going in for the Phase I test was pretty similar to that scene from “Men In Black” where Will Smith goes in for the interview and everyone else is from the military or law enforcement and looking real serious and wearing suits. Anyway, I ended up passing the Phase I test (Yay! I’m smart enough to be a Special Agent! Nothing like some ego boosting.) and I think I’m technically still in their application pool because it takes 6-12 months to complete the whole application process.

**It is important to note that if you have smoked pot in the last 3 years, you are automatically disqualified **(yes, that one puff you took at that house party during orientation week will come back to haunt you). And they WILL catch you if you lie about smoking pot because you’ll be subjected to a hardcore polygraph test and they’ll probably water board you too (they are the FBI after all).

Here is a summary of the Pros & Cons of working as a Special Agent:

PROS

- “Special Agent” is a pretty cool job title. You are like a real life James Bond. How can the ladies not be turned on?  

- Job stability. The War on Terror never ends!

- You get to carry a gun at all times. How badass is that?

CONS

- There is a reason why you are supposed to carry a gun. (Bad guys might try to kill you)

- Your salary starts at $70K (not exactly MBA money) but it increases to $90K (not bad) after 3 years.

- You will probably be assigned to Podunk, North Dakota for a few years after finishing the FBI academy.

For more information, please visit the FBI Special Agent website:

http://www.fbijobs.gov/112.asp

Party At Facebook!

Last week I had the privilege of getting an invite to attend a Facebook Game Developers Event.

I recently learned that Facebook has its own flavor of vitaminwater called “Connect”. You know you've made it big when you have your own vitaminwater flavor. I was under the impression that you could only find this flavor at the Facebook offices so I was excited to snag a bottle. Then I saw them on sale at Safeway a few days later and felt kind of let down. “Connect” didn’t taste very good either. Next time I'm at Facebook, I'm going for the coconut water instead.

 This is what $7.8 billion in the flesh looks like. (Yes that is Zuck giving an intro speech)

 

After seeing how awesome Facebook’s beverage fridge was stocked, I was really excited to see what type of food they would be serving us. All I can say is that I was expecting something different.

Jalapeño Poppers and Quesadillas                Beef and Pulled Pork Sliders

                             

   Facebook Swag!

My First Month At Work

I recently celebrated my one-month anniversary at my new job and I’ve learned many key lessons thus far:

1.)  Work life in a tech company >>> Work life in a bank. This is the first time I have ever worked outside of financial services and the first time that I have worked in tech. Tech companies are totally chill and laid back. You can pretty much wear whatever you want to work and they also give you tons of free snacks like chips, cookies, and soda. Most Internet companies don’t have those dreaded cubicles either so it’s cool to just have an open work space.

Check out my awesome desk!  

 

 2.)  There is an inverse relationship between working and working out. I’ve gained like 7lbs since I started my new job. This is the direct result of not going to the gym anymore and eating all those free snacks (see above).

 

 3.)  Palo Alto is really expensive. I have never had so many $20+ lunches before. Back in the day when I was working in NYC, a $20 lunch was a pretty nice lunch. In Palo Alto, $20 is only slightly above average. Yes, I could bring my lunch and save money but I think it is better to get out of the office and grab lunch with your coworkers.

I recently celebrated my one-month anniversary at my new job and I’ve learned many key lessons thus far:

1.)    Work life in a tech company > Work life in a bank. This is the first time I have ever worked outside of financial services and the first time that I have worked in tech. Tech companies are totally chill and laid back. You can pretty much wear whatever you want to work and they also give you tons of free snacks like chips, cookies, and soda. Most Internet companies don’t have those dreaded cubicles either so it’s cool to just have an open work space.

Check out my awesome desk!

 

 

2.)    There is an inverse relationship between working and working out. I’ve gained like 7lbs since I started my new job. This is the direct result of not going to the gym anymore and eating all those free snacks (see above).

 

3.)    Palo Alto is really expensive. I have never had so many $20+ lunches before. Back in the day when I was working in NYC, a $20 lunch was a pretty nice lunch. In Palo Alto, $20 is only slightly above average. Yes, I could bring my lunch and save money but I think it is better to get out of the office and grab lunch with your coworkers.

The Search Is Over

14 months after graduation from business school, my job search has come to a close! In all honesty, I probably only job-searched hardcore for about 8-9 months but I was still surprised and humbled by how difficult it was to find a good job out here in the Bay Area despite having an MBA from a top business school. Although I only sent out about 125 cover letters, at least 50% of my submissions had at least one internal referral, and sometimes as many as four or five.

I have no doubt that I could have found a job much sooner had I gone back to NYC, where my finance background was in higher demand compared to the Bay Area. Plus, it was incredibly difficult trying to switch from financial services to working in industry, especially in this economy (California’s Unemployment Rate is 12.3%). However, San Francisco is where I really wanted to live so I tried to follow my heart.

I’m not going to say that my California dreams weren’t risky. In fact, I was probably about 1 month away from running out of money and being forced to either move back home with my parents in New Jersey or to live in the streets of San Francisco (yes, like a homeless person). Either outcome was equally appealing to me (because SF is that awesome) although I had accepted the real possibility that I was headed back to the Garden State the following month. But I always said to myself, “No risk, no reward”. And in the end I was rewarded with a dream job (working in the gaming industry!) and nothing comes close to the Golden Coast.

Thank you to everyone who gave me their support during my arduous search! Sometimes life doesn’t go according to plan so you have to roll with the punches and find the best happy hour specials around (not necessarily in that order).  

And don’t worry, this blog will continue. It's called “After The MBA”, not “Jobless After The MBA”. The adventures don't stop just because I am working now!

Do NOT Sublet From This Person

                                                          

**UPDATE 11/2011** After nearly 2.5 years, I was finally returned my security deposit at the end of 2010 or in early 2011. In recent months, my former subletter has apologized and begged me to remove her name and picture.

I hope she has learned her lesson about the ordeal that she put me through and thus I have decided to comply with her request. Her name will be removed and she will now be known as the letter "P" in my post. I will also miss my Photoshopped masterpiece of her face on the Hamburglar's body.

This blog post is long overdue but I thought it was still important for me to share it with you. In the summer of 2008, I interned in Philadelphia and rented a sublet from P, a law student attending the University of Pennsylvania. To make a long story short, over the next 18 months, I called and emailed Ms. P several times to request the $475 remainder of my security deposit that was owed to me.

$475 isn’t a huge amount and not worth it to take someone to small claims court (especially someone living 5 hours away). Some people suggested that I drive to Philly and confront Ms. P in person at her apartment. I thought that idea was a little extreme and also not worth the 10-hour drive (roundtrip) from Ithaca,NY to Philly.

So the question is, “What would you do if your landlord/original renter did not return your security deposit and you no longer live in close proximity?” And the amount owed is also not significant enough to justify getting a lawyer or going to court.

Well, after months and months of following-up with Ms. P and getting the runaround, I felt that there wasn’t really anything that I could do to force her to pay me my money and she probably also realized this. So instead, I decided to send (via priority mail) a personally signed letter to Michael A. Fitts, the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School to let him know that one of his students would not return my security deposit and that I found it “appalling that a graduate student from an Ivy League institution would behave in such an unprofessional manner” (Yeah, I played the Ivy League card). Ms. P is a member of the 2010 class and had not graduated by that point in time so I figured I could at least call her out before she picked up her newly minted J.D.

Well, a week or two later, I got an email response from Gary A. Clinton, the Dean of Students, and he said that he met with Ms. P and that she had claimed to have sent me my money several times but that I had never deposited her checks and that she never had my current address on file (all of this was untrue of course). He then said that she would “handle the matter quickly, now that she has an updated address”. Well, it has been over 3 months and I still haven’t received a penny from Ms. P.

So the moral of the story is that Ms. P will go on to pursue a career in law.....I will most likely never be repaid my $475, which would come in handy now that I am unemployed.....And no one should ever rent or sublet an apartment from Ms. P again!

Brainteasers: My Interview Kryptonite

Sorry everyone, I know I’ve been MIA lately but I’ve been busy the past few weeks with interviews (a good thing!).

I recently had an interview with a well-known company in the Bay Area. I was doing well throughout the interview and nailing all the fit questions, behavioral questions and case questions. Then as I came down the home stretch, my interviewer said, “Before we finish the interview, let me ask you some brain teasers”. All I had to do was nail these brain teasers and I would have aced the interview. Other than that, there was no pressure at all.

Question #1:

If you drive up a mountain at 10 miles per hour, how fast do you have to drive back down in order to average 20 miles per hour over the entire trip?

The answer:

First I said 30 miles per hour because you drive up 10 miles for an hour, and drive down 30 miles in an hour = 40 miles / 2 hours = 20 miles per hour. I was pretty excited that I solved the brain teaser until the interviewer clarified that both legs must be equidistant.

Apparently the correct answer was that there is no solution. It is impossible to average 20 miles per hour over the entire trip! Apparently it was my mistake to assume that an interviewer would ask me a brain teaser with a solvable solution. Thus, I wasted all my allotted 30-60 seconds by taking the plug and chug approach. Who asks brain teasers with no solvable answers anyways?  

Question #2:

You have a 6-shot revolver and you load two bullets into the first two chambers, and then the remaining four chambers are empty. You spin the chamber and pull the trigger. The gun does not go off. You have to shoot the revolver again. You do NOT want the gun to fire. Do you pull the trigger right away or do you spin the chamber first?

The answer:

Well, I was still sweating over the fact that I did not solve question #1 so it was hard to be 100% focused on question #2. But I said that you pull the trigger right away because of my gut feeling (plus I figured I had a 1 out of 2 chance of guessing correctly). The interviewer then said, “Why? What are the probabilities for each scenario?” Unfortunately this was like finance class, and you have to show work with your answer in order to get credit. I came close to getting the right answer but ultimately I could not figure out the exact probability of pulling the trigger right away in a timely manner. No credit for me.

If you spin the chamber, you have a 2 out of 6 or 1/3 chance of firing a bullet but if you don’t spin the chamber, the probability is 1 out of 4 because the next possible chamber cannot be the chamber from the first round and it also can't be the 2^nd bullet or else the gun would have fired a bullet the first time around. Therefore, there are 4 possible total chambers and 1 bullet that could be fired if you pull the trigger right away, hence the 1 out of 4 probability.

Hopefully some of you will be asked to answer similar brain teasers in your interviews and you will be prepared to ace them! Just don’t answer too quickly or else you will look suspicious!