Bulls Eat Vegetarians

MBA school–was it worth it?

Jan Lystad — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 01:17:20 +0000

For me? Heck yeah. I wanted to get out of a career I didn’t enjoy and find a way to make more money sitting behind a desk, hopefully with better hours and a higher trajectory. I did just that, going into Risk at a megabank.

But I spent almost nothing on my MBA; netted out with my internship earnings, it essentially just cost me 21 months of lost salary. I stayed in the same town, and had a “sugarmomma” of a very supportive spouse. I didn’t expect to achieve superstar status with the MBA, but rather to achieve a simple career change. I also understood early on that the most important things to learn from MBA school were networking and soft people skills–something many MBA first years miss entirely. MBA school grooms you and can build confidence, and functions as a signalling mechanism to future employers.

So if you’re looking for modest change and the costs aren’t too high, MBA school can be a win. But if you think it will turn you from a classic computer geek into a Wall Street superstar–well, that is something you’ll have to do all on your own.

Should the Glass-Steagall act be Reinstated?

Jan Lystad — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:24:38 +0000

The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 functionally separated investment banks from commercial banks (among other things). In 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed this aspect of Glass-Steagall, and many economists suggest this was a significant contributor to the modern conflagration of banking and investment risk. Is it possible to unwind the mixing of banking and investing undertaken in the past ten years, and reinstate this feature? Would it really make a difference? Kenneth Anderson over at The Volokh Conspiracy gives a solid rundown of the challenges to going back in time and changing the structure of banking today:

http://volokh.com/2009/10/23/dividing-financial-institutions-into-utilities-and-casinos/

You are your Brand

Jan Lystad — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:32:39 +0000

I’m more of an analyst/techie than a marketer, but if I’ve learned one thing in MBA school, it is that you are your own brand. From the moment you begin to seek a job in this modern, high-tech world, you are judged on a myriad of behaviors, images, and comments over which you may have no control. Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn are the obvious sites which may pop up in a googling of your name, and job seekers should take note and closely manage what shows up there. But there are a wide variety of other things by which you will be judged–from comment posts on the Wall Street Journal or Huffington Post, to how you look, to your credit worthiness. (Oh, yes, HR departments can and do perform credit checks, and if you’re looking for a finance job, yours had best be spotless!)

Do not despair if you have some tarnished credentials, though. You can regain control of your own brand image, by starting to carefully craft your online presence. Scour your Facebook and twitter pages for offensive images, and start pulling your credit every six months from the three major credit bureaus (you can do this for free at www.annualcreditreport.com).

And remember, recruiters aren’t looking for mindless automatons who don’t have a personality, so don’t feel the need to erase yours! Just be sure you are putting your best foot forward, both on and offline.

About Bulls Eat Vegetarians

Jan Lystad — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:17:30 +0000

I’m an MBA student in my second year, currently job hunting in one of the worst recessions in modern memory. Boo-hoo, right? Well, I’m not going to cry for myself, and neither should the rest of my fellow job hunters. Its a tough world out there, and being nice isn’t going to make the world turn over and hire you. Hence the title, from one of my favorite quotes: “Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting a bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.” -by Dennis Wholey.

So lets get off our couches and make ourselves more skilled! We are only victims of our own choices. I’ll be blogging about various subjects in economics, finance, operations, MBA life, dogs, and the quest to become a highly skilled member of the workforce.