Business (Not) As Usual: Recap of the Fall 2020 Career Conference

This year’s Kellstadt Career Management Conference featured outstanding guest speakers, who all shared incredible insights on how to navigate the world of business that has certainly evolved in 2020. Each speaker offered unique perspectives that can be extremely helpful to DePaul students as they prepare for their careers. Here are the recaps of both days:

Day One: Discussion on Diversity and Inclusion

Each guest speaker shared their own unique ideas and experiences on furthering company diversity. It really starts with companies taking initiative. Steven Johnson, senior manager of inclusion and diversity at American Airlines, explained that the organization advances their commitment to diversity by creating outreach programs to underprivileged communities. Other speakers mentioned how companies are developing training requirements for their employees to educate themselves on diversity.

One of the key requirements of building a culture that includes awareness for diversity and inclusion is asking the right questions. For instance, how should you approach sensitive topics? These conversations can be tough, but the guest speakers emphasized that having these difficult conversations is imperative. Once people start dialogue about topics like oppression, racism, inclusion, etc., the more people become aware of how different ethnicities deal with these issues every day.

Some people may be too stubborn about questioning their pre-conceived notions, and many choose not to hear the issues that plague communities of color. Hence, this is causing division among us, and lends itself to creating conflict in society. As a result, businesses are beginning to take action when it comes to diversity, inclusion and equity, which is becoming an increasingly important part of the modern-day business model. This culture shift includes outreach programs, diversity-friendly policies and open-door policies that allow employees to speak up about diversity issues, creating a more unified workplace. The guest speakers did an outstanding job acknowledging that more needs to be done and communicating the requisite steps needed for a safe workplace culture.

Day Two: Relationship-Building & Improv Workshop

As business students, relationship-building is arguably the most important part of our job no matter what field we are in. It’s crucial to network and develop relationships throughout the workplace and beyond. And believe me – we all are going to meet a variety of colorful personalities in business, and the more connections we make, the better we will be able to find the right occupation. Jim Mourey is an associate professor of marketing at the Driehaus College of Business at DePaul and led the workshop on day two of the conference.

During the workshop, Jim discussed improvisation based on his experience from The Second City, a famous comedy club in Chicago. How much can improv techniques really help us in business? You’d be surprised. No matter the type of business we do, people will inevitably run into situations where improvisation is needed. We aren’t going to be prepared in everything we do. There’s a chance we may run into a high-level executive in a company and need to create dialogue off the top of our head in order to make a positive impression, or we may work on a project where we need to make a quick decision, or lead a sales call that is becoming stale.

The point is that the better we can think on our feet, the more we can impact the outcome in impromptu situations. We can then build relationships with anyone in business thanks to improv skills that will allow us to adapt to every unique situation we come across.

CMC Fall 2020 Main Takeaway:

All in all, both workshops proved to be indicative of the overarching themes of 2020. The first being diversity and the racial discourse within our country. The second theme being improving the way we do business, thanks to COVID-19. The workshops were examples of how society today is evolving and how we have an obligation to evolve with it.

Steven Raju is a current MBA candidate at Kellstadt Graduate School of Business. He graduated from Northern Illinois University (NIU) in 2020 with his Bachelor of Science in marketing and obtained a professional sales certificate. In addition, Steven served as vice president of NIU’s Phi Kappa Theta Fraternity and served as an alumni advisor to his undergrad brothers. He currently works as a part-time sales consultant as CarMax and is in the process of creating his own sports website and podcast.

Three Tips for Delivering an Effective Elevator Pitch About Yourself

By Jaclyn Lansbery

When it comes to career development, interview preparation is key. The Kellstadt Career Management Center (CMC) recently hosted a week-long competition to help current graduate business students develop an elevator pitch about themselves for job interviews. The “Pitch Me” Competition challenged students to submit a 60- to 90-second video of themselves answering the ultimate interview questions, “Tell me about yourself?” and “Why are you perfect for this role?”

Each participant who submitted a pitch received individual feedback from CMC career coaches while the top five pitches were reviewed by an employer partner at Baker Tilly, a public accounting and consulting firm headquartered in Chicago. A committee, consisting of Kellstadt career experts, then selected a winner who delivered the best pitch. MBA student Brad Blumenthal was chosen as the winner.

Although Blumenthal has decades of work and pitch experience, he says he wanted to participate in the “Pitch Me” competition to gain feedback from the CMC.

“The experience was great. Watching the recommended videos taught me a ton about how to pitch to a camera instead of a person,” he says. “In fact, my whole pitch was organized around the suggestions there. I’m really un-telegenic, so it was cringe-worthy to check the result, but creating the pitch was tremendously useful.”

Blumenthal, who has worked in a variety of technology roles, says he hopes to use the pitch experience to find a creative and entrepreneurial role working in R&D or an innovation organization. Blumenthal is currently pursuing an MBA with a custom concentration, primarily focusing on management and business strategy and decision-making.

Below, we outline three reasons why Blumenthal’s submission demonstrates an effective elevator pitch:

1. Overall virtual professionalism and etiquette
   Given the current environment in which job candidates are interviewing for positions, the judges assessed whether students could convey a professional presence from behind the computer screen. Blumenthal was “cognizant of his overall tone and presence in front of the camera screen,” says Erin Warns, a CMC career specialist who helped review the “Pitch Me” submissions. His pitch conveyed professionalism through how he dressed and by recording the pitch in front of a wall that displayed his diploma.
2. Telling a story
   When selling yourself as a candidate, it is important to effectively tell a story and provide the audience “evidence” of how you might add value to the organization. In his pitch, Blumenthal described his core values and how they drive his professional and personal growth. “The audience is instantly able to sense his genuine passion for learning and his strengths in technology which are very relevant toward his dream job,” Warns says.
3. Overall length
   The definition of an elevator pitch is a short description of an idea that clearly conveys a concept in a short amount of time without losing the audience’s attention. “We want our students to understand the appropriate length of an interview question or elevator pitch as well as to understand that each fact or sentence in the pitch should be intentional and relevant for the audience,” Warns says. Blumenthal’s recorded pitch lasted for one minute and 30 seconds.

Watch Blumenthal’s full elevator pitch below:

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Kellstadt Virtual Forum: Understanding the HR Job Market During a Pandemic

By Jennifer Johnson

What a world we are living in right now. Luckily, I am able to go to school online and continue with my MBA degree, at the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business. I have found that adjusting to online classes has been a lot easier than I thought it would be. On the other hand, something I was nervous about was not being able to attend career events that the Kellstadt Career Management Center would host on a regular basis.

Thankfully, I was wrong about that too! Kellstadt has put on virtual career events throughout this time and they have been just as effective.

Jennifer Johnson

One I was particularly excited about was a virtual panel held on April 29 called “Understanding the HR Job Market During a Global Pandemic.” Jaclyn Jenson, associate professor of management and faculty director of the Human Resources master’s program at Kellstadt, hosted this panel and invited four industry experts to speak. The panelists included:

• Al Crook, VP, Head of HR Business Partners, Zurich
• Katie Donohue, VP of Global Compensation, Medtronic
• Deanna Erday, Senior Manager, Marketing, Aon
• Nick Thomas, Director of the School of Hospitality Leadership & Associate Professor, DePaul University

Professor Jenson sent out a poll before each topic so the panelists could gauge how students were feeling about the current job market and virtual networking. We jumped into each topic one by one, and each panelist gave their expert opinion and advice.

Latest on Recruitment and Hiring

It is very common to look for an internship after your first year as an MBA student. I have spent hours looking for and applying to as many positions as I could find. When Professor Jenson asked how confident we were in finding a job, I clicked “Not confident at all.” Thankfully the panelists made me feel more confident as the forum progressed.

Their overall conclusion was that many companies are still extremely busy right now. It is important to do your research and find out the trends going on in different industries. The tourism and hospitality industry have been hit the hardest, so if this is an industry you are interested in, look to other countries and see how their industries have recovered once the countries opened back up. How has Singapore or Hong Kong rebounded in the recent months? Staying up to date with this will let you know what to expect and prepare you for the upcoming months.

Overall, don’t give up hope. Continue to learn about everything that is being affected by this virus and use that knowledge to possibly change industries or delay your applications.

Advice on the Job Market

As with the previous topic, panelists assured us that industries will bounce back. They may look a little differently post-COVID-19, but that is okay. Choose to do something right now that you have control over. Katie Donahue talked about knowing your personal brand, which I hear all the time from our career advisors. Start to prepare yourself for future interviews by knowing what value you bring, which can’t be taught. Companies can teach you certain skills on the job, but they cannot teach you positivity, an eagerness to learn, or any other intangible skills that are so valuable right now.

I am usually very positive, so this is something that I can bring to any company I am hired by. Especially during this time, companies need that positivity in their day-to-day when teams may feel hopeless in achieving their goals. So, find your personal brand and what value you can bring!

This is also a time where we can develop our other skills so that when jobs do open up, we are the first to get hired. Develop your skills by taking an additional class, getting an online certification, volunteering, sharpening those communication skills, reading an interesting book or listening to relevant podcasts. There are so many options.

How to Network Online

Networking is very crucial when in graduate school and something that has been made available to us with different Kellstadt career events. However, now is the time to learn how to do it all online. The general rule of thumb that I got from these panelists was not to make new connections, but to re-connect with past connections. It is a very hectic time for people in the full-time arena, so they advised not to reach out to someone you have never met before on LinkedIn right now. Odds are you will get crickets.

Instead, think of colleagues, professors, old managers, old work friends, and see if they have been active on LinkedIn. If so, send them a short message asking if they could spare 15 minutes to chat in the following week or so. Fifteen minutes is a short amount of time to commit to, and if you know this person already, odds are they will say yes. Don’t simply ask for a job but ask them if they could keep you posted if anything comes up. And have an agenda. Know exactly what you want to ask them when you get them on the phone so that you don’t waste their time.

Well, there you have it! I am happy to say that my previous poll answer, “I am not confident at all in getting a job,” has changed to a more optimistic answer. I really did learn a lot from this forum and am so excited to be able to listen in on more of these as the year goes on. Kellstadt continues to impress me with their ease in adapting to this new normal.

Jennifer Johnson is a full-time MBA candidate in the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business. She has a custom concentration, focusing on marketing and management. She also works as a graduate assistant in the Recruiting and Admissions Office at Kellstadt.

Kellstadt’s Career Management Center: How We Prepare Students for Success

By Maddie Shaw

What makes the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business unique is that it has its own career center dedicated to providing both academic and career advising services and resources to graduate business students at DePaul. The advisors in Kellstadt’s Career Management Center (CMC) serve as singular points of contact for students throughout their time here, and are trained to provide three main types of advising services: individual coaching conversations, online resources and tools, and professional development events with alumni and employers. Read on to learn about how we prepare Kellstadt students for success through these three different approaches.

Individual Coaching Conversations

Kellstadt students enjoy one-on-one coaching sessions with advisors who help them navigate their academic and career choices. From how a student’s career goals can and should affect course selection, to the potential career impacts of different degrees or MBA concentrations, these conversations evolve throughout a student’s time in Kellstadt, based on their individual needs and where they are in the program.

For example, when a student first begins their program, our conversations tend to focus on course selection and planning, and job/internship search strategies. As our students move through their programs, the focus of our conversations then shift to more advanced topics, like interview preparation and salary negotiations. Our goal as advisors is to ensure that a student’s academic path matches their career goals, so our conversations tend to move back and forth between career goals and academics naturally.

Online Career Resources and Tools

We also offer a wide variety of online resources for students to reference when making career and academic decisions. Designed specifically for Kellstadt students, our career-focused platforms provide assistance with all stages of the job search, from career and industry exploration to preparing for final interviews.

These platforms can help with interest and skill identification (CareerLeader), exploration of potential occupational paths (O*Net), resume review (VMock), industry research (Vault), and interview preparation (Big Interview, Beyond B-School, Interview Stream). At the CMC, we carefully chose and curated these platforms to serve our students during each stage of their journey with us. We also point students to other helpful DePaul resources available online and on campus.

Professional Development Events with Alumni and Employers

Finally, we are constantly finding new and innovative ways to connect students with employers and our vast alumni network for job, internship and networking opportunities. We host regular events both on campus and on-site at companies across Chicago and work every day to foster new relationships with the Chicago business community.

Some examples of events we held last fall include Kellstadt alumni panels on campus, company site visits and Q&As with current employees, and on-campus company presentations and networking receptions. There are always plenty of events to choose\ from depending on your industry of interest.

Setting You Up for Success 

As Kellstadt career advisors, we strive to understand your academic and career goals and help you navigate important decisions, connect you with online tools that can put you ahead of the game, and provide you with expert advice about the job search process, including the specific differences in this process across industries and functional areas. As both career and academic advisors, we have the unique ability to see both sides of a coin that can often feel complex. Our job is to demystify the complexities and simplify the way you receive career and academic guidance during your time at Kellstadt.

Maddie Shaw is an assistant director career specialist in the Kellstadt Career Management Center at the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business. She advises a variety of MS and MBA students on academic and career-related matters. Maddie received her MS in higher education from Northwestern University and her BA from George Washington University.