CS @ HBS

<warning: looooooong!>

I’ve disappeared for a while, maybe it was Hibernation (”Shnat Horef” :)). I think it was also because of the job search process, which was frankly quite stressful and depressing at times.

Job Search

The job search process took much longer than I thought, and had quite a few surprises – both pleasant and unpleasant. I definitely learned a lot of things: examples would be how to interview in the US, and also that HBS isn’t perfect (duh) – in this particular instance I learned that the fact that the school has 900 first-year students can well be a disadvantage: I definitely felt I needed some more “personal touch” and didn’t feel I was getting it from the Career Services office. The way it works here is that each student can choose a personal “career coach” and meet with him / her for consultation. However, there aren’t many coaches with experience in technology – which is the field I was looking into – and the coach I chose, while having a rich experience in technology, was not very accessible. Maybe I should have tried another coach at some point along the way, but anyhow I sometimes felt a bit alone in the process. I also think that the current macro-environment here in the US made it more difficult than usual for everyone – with financial institutions not being in their best shape ever, many “finance people” were also targeting tech companies in their job search, hence increasing competition.

At any rate, there is a very happy ending to this story and I’m fortunate and grateful for that – eventually I received (and accepted) an offer from the company that was my first choice, and I’m going to be in Seattle this summer, working for a large company that sells things online. :)

I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to do but the project in general, the people I’ll be working with and the place I’ll be living in all sound very promising. So I’m looking forward to that (also looking forward to _making_ money instead of just spending it :)). More to follow later on…

Spring Break

One of the things I do love about this place is that so many amazing things happen here, it’s going to take a while just to write about everything that’s been going on in the month or so since I last wrote… I’ll give it a shot anyway.

First, we had Spring Break, which brings me to a painful topic: the weather here. I have to say that the last couple of months helped me reach an important conclusion: after HBS, I’m not going to live in a place with a crappy weather again. It’s not worth it and really damages quality of life. Yes, some people lived here all their lives and are used to it, but coming from a place like Israel…

The problem now isn’t the cold – winter got me used to it and it’s not that bad anymore. The problem is that it’s already April, we have only a month and a half before we finish school, and the weather still sucks. It (very) rarely gets above 10 degrees, it’s frequently gray and rainy, and with the naked trees HBS and Cambridge look like one huge, depressing cemetery.

Anyway, enough complaining! The funny thing is that people here decided it’s “spring” now, so all the shops sell flip-flops and swimming suits. The good thing is that we got a week of “spring break”, and I went with 50 people from my HBS section to Mexico!

More Mexico photos here.

It’s pretty amazing, during Spring Break *everyone* traveled. In search for some sun people went to Brazil, Costa Rica, Egypt, Spain, Columbia, India, you name it.

As for me, being the efficient person that I am (read: writing posts instead of reading my cases), in one week of break I also managed to go to Israel! I went for the wedding of one of my best friends from high school, and managed to soak in the sun and see many of my friends in Tel Aviv. Was awesome!

Here’s a nice photo of Tel Aviv from this 3.5 days visit, you can see more photos here.

Other Things

As always, the week before the break was really busy and full of exciting events (it was the same before winter break).

Here’s a summary:

• I hosted a ladies’ Wine & Cheese Night in my apartment for the women and female partners of my section.
• Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors (GM) – largest automaker in the world, gave a really interesting talk at HBS (he’s HBS class of ‘77). He also spoke at my section about leadership and personal issues.
• Tod Stitzer, CEO of Cadbury Schweppes (largest candy company in the world), came to HBS to discuss a strategy case we had about Cadbury Schweppes.
• Some really nice sunsets.

• Went with my section to Avenue Q, a hilarious musical that parodies Sesame Street. My favorite song: “everyone’s a little bit racist”
• Had dinner with members of the JSA (HBS Jewish Student Association) and Prof. Josh Lerner, one of the Superstar professors here (participated in Davos World Economic forum etc.). Was really interesting, it’s amazing how nice and accessible these professors are.

Congrats #1
2008 is HBS’ Centennial Year – the school celebrates its 100th birthday. Today was the official birth date, and we had a “Birthday Party” for students, faculty and staff. In true HBS fashion, the event was pretty phenomenal: breakfast, lunch and dinner (all in 9 hours) and speakers like the Kraft family (owners of New England Patriots football team and HBS grads, naturally). The real big-deal though is going to take place in October, with a “business summit” for HBS alumni and an incredible list of guest speakers – you know, people like Bill Gates, the Finance Minister of India, Meg Whitman (CEO of eBay), Susan Decker (Yahoo! president), Orit Gadiesh (Chairman of Bain, and Israeli :)) and more and more and more. See more here.

See more photos from today here.

Congrats #2!

Congrats to all HBS Round 2 admits! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about school, and I’m looking forward to meeting you in the second admit weekend at the end of April. Last admit weekend I volunteered to host an admit, which proved to be a great experience, especially as I got this as a present:

Isn’t it amazing?

I also volunteered to show my apartment, which was also lots of fun. I even met one reader of the blog who recognized the apartment from the photos I posted on the blog…

This weekend I’m showing my apartment again, as well as participating in a couple of admits dinners. Should be fun!

…

OK, I feel I can say that this post has more than compensated for my absence… c’ya soon!