CS @ HBS

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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

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In the meanwhile, check out these photos from Spring Break in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, with 50 people from my HBS section.

Here’s a sample:

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The problem with Hell Week isn’t that it is hell (it wasn’t, except for the weather), but that it is not a week. I’m still in the midst of interviews - so I will update once the process is all over. Like I said, for some industries - like consulting or investment banking - the interviews process does last only a week and ends with offers (or not…), but for other industries, technology included, the process is a bit longer. Oh well.

And in the meanwhile, to compensate myself for the East Coast weather, I spent a weekend in California, with prime sun and prime company:

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One of the small things I like at HBS is that the school gives us all course-related books for free. I don’t think it’s the same at other schools, and it could have easily mounted to thousands of dollars per year just for books. Not a big deal maybe compared to the ridiculously high amount of money we pay as tuition, but still a nice touch.

As a book lover, I thought it could be nice to start a list of the books we’ve been given for courses and otherwise. Some of them are more technical reference books, but some are interesting general management / business books.

If you feel like reading the books read at HBS, there’s an Amazon link for each one. The list is divided according to courses and I’ll try to keep it updated as we get new books.

And speaking of Amazon and books, the new Kindle device is one cool thing to read books with…

General
The Case Study Handbook: How to Read, Discuss and Write Persuasively about Cases / William Ellet: this book was given to all HBS Pre-MBA students and proved to be useful especially when preparing for a case-based exam. It’s also an interesting read for everyone interested in the “mechanics” of HBS case method - what is a case? how do you approach a case? It also contains a few sample cases.

Microsoft® Office Excel® 2007: Data Analysis and Business Modeling / Wayne L. Winston: I wasn’t an Excel expert before starting HBS - yes, I knew how to use it and build formulas and charts, but I’ve never used Pivot Tables or did any sophisticated business analysis or financial models. This book - unlike many other Excel books I looked at - is really good because it doesn’t just explains Excel in a documentation or reference format, but rather gives practical, real-life, business examples and then shows how to solve them in Excel. So instead of just theoretically explaining Pivot Tables, it poses the question “Suppose you have data about salespeople, sales regions and sold products, and you want to know what’s the total sales of each salesperson in each region and of each product” - you get the idea. For me practical examples are the only way to learn and therefore I highly recommend this book. A similar version exists for Excel 2003 /2000 - here.

Barbarians at the Gate - The Fall of RJR Nabisco / Borrough, Helyar: a 500-pages classic we’re reading for one Finance 2 class sometime in March, and is actually quite a good read. It’s about the rise and fall of RJR Nabisco, a tobacco and food conglomerate in the ’80s, and I think an alternative title for it could have been “creative uses for corporate cash” - the CEO and his top executives were so creative in spending company’s money it’s just unbelievable - corporate jets, luxury apartments, cars, you name it.

Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become New Paths / Timothy Butler: I just love Dr. Butler, head of HBS Career Services Office at HBS. Ever since I first heard him speak at HBS Admit Weekend last year, I was impressed by his psychological / philosophical approach to life and career in a place where people are frequently driven by a cold rationale of money and power. The book is a career advice guide for people who feel stuck in their current career (=90% of MBA students), and has some practical exercises for finding a new career path. Some of the exercises are on the verge of bizarre, including guided imagination and semi-hypnosis… I’m probably the last person on earth to be drawn to such things, and yet when Dr. Butler gave us a workshop based on the book at HBS I found myself being mysteriously hypnotized and miraculously finding my goals in life. No, really!

Entrepreneurship
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law / Bagley, Dauchy: I only got this book a few days ago for our Entrepreneurial Manager course - which hasn’t started yet so I can’t really comment on the book. In light of the recent events in Israel getting this book is a bit ironic, but oh well. Apparently some people need to read books and some don’t. :)

Shaping The Waves: A History Of Entrepreneurship At Harvard Business School / Cruikshank: notable entrepreneurs in the last 50 years who are HBS MBAs.

Finance
Analysis for Financial Management / Higgins: a short, concise and sometimes funny (yes!) introduction to corporate finance. HBS recommended (actually more than just “recommended”) reading parts of it before starting school, and it was definitely helpful before and during the first weeks of the first term.

Corporate Finance / Berk, DeMarzo: More than you ever wanted to know about finance in this comprehensive reference book: DCF, arbitrage, CAPM, options, bonds and other goodies. With more than 1000 pages, it can also be used as a doorstop.

Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms / Downes, Goodman: a very good dictionary to use when one of the investment bankers in your section says “market cap” / “EBIAT” / “Poison Pill”.

Excel Applications for Corporate Finance / Adair: quite useful even for people who know Excel but didn’t use all of its financial functionality before (NPV, bonds etc.). HBS required us to read parts of this book before starting school.

BGIE (Business, Government and the International Economy)
A Concise Guide to Macro Economics: What Managers, Executives, and Students Need to Know / David A. Moss: Macro Economics for dummies. No complicated graphs, equations or models. Short, too. Written by HBS Professor Moss.

Accounting
Introduction to Financial Accounting / Horngren, Sundem, Elliott, Philbrick: comprehensive reference book for everything that’s accounting - balance sheet, income statement, statement of cash flow etc. Useful but a bit lengthy at times.

Cost Accounting / Horngren, Datar, Foster: Cost Accounting is taught at the second part of the FRC (accounting) course at HBS. I have to admit I never liked the topic, but the book is good if you’re into this thing.

Negotiations
3-d Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals / Lax, Sebenius: Most people will negotiate multiple times in their lives, however most people will never learn negotiations in a formal way. This book does a very good job in explaining and expanding a lot of concepts that feel intuitive but are actually much more complex than they seem (like ZOPA - Zone Of Possible Agreement or BATNA - Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). It also presents ways of negotiating Win-Win agreements, by maximizing value creation for both sides and then claiming value (for yourself). Recommended!

Formal Name: “Dedicated Interview Period”

Real Name: *** Hell Week! *** (muhaha)

What it is: a week and a bit in which we don’t study but instead wear suits and march on to interview for summer internships.

Hell Week got its lovely name because of the fact that for many people this week is indeed a stressful, tense and sometimes depressing experience. I think this is true mainly for people interviewing for consulting jobs - they might have 4 interviews in one day, in different locations in Boston, every day of the week. These interviews aren’t easy - in addition to ‘behavioral questions’ (”tell me about a time when you displayed leadership / teamwork / amazing sense of humor”) the interview also consists of a “Case”. The Case is a short business situation that the interviewee needs to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively, and suggest a possible course of action. My fellow classmates doing consulting interviews have been preparing for them for the past couple of weeks, so for them it’s more like “hell month” rather than just a week.

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I’m starting to pay my debt to society and write about the things I did over winter break, before coming back to -5 degrees in Boston. So in reverse chronological order, just before returning here I spent a week in the Bay Area, as part of the HBS WesTrek, organized by the HBS TechMedia Club. The trek consisted of company visits to ~50 companies, including technology, CPG (consumer packaged goods), consulting and finance. About 70 HBS students participated, each deciding which meetings to attend, where to sleep and which car to rent. Unlike other treks, this one is very “free form” and each participant kind of does her own thing.
I naturally focused on technology companies. It was really fun to see in real life the companies I only read about, or use their products. It was also interesting to see the differences between large companies like Yahoo! (a multi-building campus with nice printed guest tags), the smaller ones like LinkedIn (free drinks in branded refrigerators) and the tiny crazy ones like Slide (dogs barking at the entrance to the office).

Here are a few funny anecdotes and photos from the meetings:

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So I’m back from my fun transatlantic tour of Israel, California and now Boston. I have a long backlog of posts I plan to write, but since tomorrow I’m starting my second term at HBS I thought it’d be a good idea to write about the courses I’ll be studying this term. Just a quick sentence about the most fascinating thing that I experienced during the 3-weeks break - it happened today, when I came back to Boston and discovered all snow has melted! Hooray!

Unfortunately, it seems like it’s going to be back this week… so long for walking around in flip-flops (kidding).

So, second term courses:

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Short update: after 5 days of back-to-back finals (with a weekend in the middle), I’m back home in Israel.

The weather’s amazing (similar to what we had in Boston… 3 months ago), I’m meeting friends and family, eating Israeli food and slowly recovering from my jetlag. At the HBS front, I’m busy writing cover letters for summer internships, due next week.

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Procrastination is a lovely word which doesn’t have an equivalent in Hebrew (and not because we Israelis don’t procrastinate, I can tell you that). So there’s no better word than Procrastination to describe me writing this instead of studying for my Accounting and Marketing finals this week.

Wednesday next week we’ll be done with finals and I’ll be going back to Israel for the winter break (not planning on celebrating Christmas though). I have mixed emotions about it, ranging from “can’t wait to go home!” to “the last two weeks here have been awesome!”.

Samples from last two weeks’ awesomeness:
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It’s really hectic here towards the end of the first term, so just a short update…

Next week we have our first two final exams, followed by three more on the following week. Then, I’m flying back home to Israel for almost three weeks of vacation where average temperature is above freezing point! That will be a refreshing change. Looking forward to seeing everyone.

* Prospective students in Israel - watch out for us at the Israeli MBA Forum and at an additional HBS event - details to be announced.

A few words about

Final Exams @ HBS

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