A group of our graduate students traveled to Atlanta for the National Black MBA Association conference. Students were able to network with representatives of top companies as well as graduate students from around the country. After the weekend of events, speakers, and interviews the group came away better prepared for their future job searches and careers.

Tim Cooley, one of our MBA students, wrote the following article about his experience.

“If you are undecided about going to a job conference I hope by the end of this article I have encouraged you to go!

I went to NBMBAA, National Black MBA Association, Conference in Atlanta Georgia with the goal of finding a role for myself in a larger organization.  The world of entrepreneurship is quite appealing to me.  I enjoy creating, working with my hands and seeing something I have built, designed, and thought about coming to life.   I knew going to this conference was going to be difficult considering these companies were established and not necessarily looking for new or innovative ideas.  Regardless, I knew the job conference was something I needed to be a part of and was excited to head off to Atlanta.

After landing, I wanted to explore the city of Atlanta and took MARTA, Atlanta’s version of the UTA Trax system.  If you ever want to know what a city is like, start talking to people on public transportation.  Networking with random people has always been a struggle for me, so I decided I was going to make an effort in changing this personal limitation, hence talking with people on the MARTA.  The guy I met ended up running his own consulting company in network security.  I didn’t get the vibe he enjoyed his job, but it gave us something to talk about for 30 minutes.

The following morning Kelly set up a breakfast meeting with Todd Hayes, a business school alumni from the University of Utah.  He is AMAZING. Todd was so open to helping us prepare for the Job Conference.  He talked about areas he felt new students should focus their resumes on and specifically to not call yourself an “Innovative Leader.”  His advice was priceless.  Talking with my classmates we all felt pumped and empowered going into the conference. Then the conference started.

I decided to take the advice of going to a “burner company”.  This is a company one goes to in order to practice their pitch, so the next one is better.  Let’s just say I am glad I went that route.  I bombed the first introduction.  I was so nervous.  I am pretty confident in what I can do, I just don’t enjoy bragging to random strangers about how awesome I am.  I found this whole process to be completely awkward, standing in a line waiting to be judged by someone.

After I recovered from this blabber session I decided I was going to go to Samsung, which was one of my target companies.  I thought, now with practice, I was going to crush this next conversation, NOPE!  I bombed that one too.  It took a few tries to get more comfortable at this meat market style representation.  After some practice it became natural.  The people actually really wanted to know who you were and this made the conversations so much easier.  I decided to go back to Samsung and ended up making a connection in a department I would love to work in, the Product Innovation Team (PIT Crew).

The day was long, but gave me many opportunities to figure out what it was that I was looking for and learn to explain it to someone else.  I feel like I succeeded at this, especially when GE Capital gave me an invite to their dinner party.  I would love to say this was the best thing since sliced bread, but it was even more awkward than the conference, I don’t do well in these situations.  I ended up meeting a few people who gave me a ton of good advice.  The key note speaker was Ed Gordon, a key voice in media interviewing celebrities like Oprah.  He ended up speaking on topics that are near and dear to me, voting, action and ethical practices.  In fact, I tweeted him recently and he retweeted my comment and responded back to me.  After the dinner, Brandon Drake and I decided to walk back to our hotel.  We ended up walking about 30,000 steps or 13.1 miles on the day.  Think about it we talked to about 30 different companies and walked a half marathon, it was awesome.

After hitting up a local breakfast food chain, Silver Skillet, we went to the conference on day two.  Many of my classmates had interviews, which was great.  I didn’t have any interviews, but it was great sharing in the success of my classmates.  I decided to follow-up with a few of the people I met the day before, I highly recommend doing this when you decide to go.  After a few hours we were all done with the conference and decided to see what else Atlanta had to offer.  We went to Varsity, think about In-and-Out on Steroids and chili on everything!  We followed that up with the Atlanta Aquarium and a dolphin show.  The aquarium was clutch as it gave us all a needed break from thinking so hard about all these companies.  After watching the three 20 foot whale sharks and a few 10 foot wide manta rays, we stayed in the main aquarium for probably an hour, we spent the rest of the evening at Bret Boot’s father in laws place.  It was a great way to end an incredible trip.

I try to be involved in all areas of the David Eccles School of Business.  This event was no different. Here are my take ways from this event.

1)      Focus on something you are weak at.  If it is interviewing, then practice on these people.  They have no idea who you are and don’t know it is your weakness.  For me I focused on just talking to random people, my weakness.  I talked to everyone I could.  I talked with other students in line, random people walking by and the recruiters.  I tried to make them work for me so that I would have more face time with them.  It was more of a game and I played it well, although at times it was uncomfortable.

2)      Explore the city.  Find local places to eat! Walk around the city!  Treat the city as if it was your next home.  Try and find places you may enjoy going to or places that fit your life style.

3)      Your classmates are key.  I have been on many study trips and have had a great opportunity to get to know many of my classmates.  Some of the things that happen at these events will be talked about for years to come.

4)      Alumni networking is critical.  Our network of alumni are amazing.  Todd was so incredible to listen to.  His passion for getting the right people on his team was impressive to say the least.  As we progress through our careers it will be critical to be these connections to future Utah students.

I enjoyed the weekend.  I still find these types of conferences awkward, but I think I tackled my biggest weakness head on.  I would do this again and hope I have an opportunity to be part of an event like this before I graduate. Please contact me if you are interested in being part of one of these events and I will share my story, timlcooley@gmail.com.”