The Carroll School of Management

Our March BC Business Days was last night and I was accosted by a few of you because I haven’t posted a blog in a while. “Brendan posts a blog every week” (not true). “Brendan talks about his internship.” Brendan does this - Brendan does that. I had a serious talk with Brendan last night at the bar - I might outsource some of my blogging to him. We learned that in Operations.  But if you want to check out his blogs, go here: http://blogs.chatuniversity.com/bccsom/index.php/brendan

The rankings came out this morning - US News gave BC the highest-ever ranking in the school’s history. We’ve reached the Top 35 and the next step will be the Top 25. After meeting a bunch of our new admits for 2010, I’m pretty confident that we’ll get to the top sooner than anyone thinks. Everyone seems much smarter than me. Which is a good thing.

You’ve read about this semester thanks to (cough) Brendan’s blog. He’s doing that “finance” thing - FSA (Financial Statement Analysis) has left a number of students with glazed eyes. I, on the other hand, decided to take a different route. My classes consist of:

Strategic HR Management - an excellent class with Professor Monique Valcour (she’s a Brown alum - also just like Brendan). Monique works through current cases related to organizational structure, leadership development and talent management. Last week we discussed Southwest Airline’s hiring practices - the next day they grounded 22 planes because someone forgot to check some wiring. Oh well. I will be declaring my Leadership and Management specialization this week (I switched from customized) and this class fits in well with my academic and career goals.

E-Commerce - Professor Mary Cronin leads us through an array of readings and guest lectures about the dot com world. Marketing analytics, UI development are current topics - last week we had a presentation by Greg Selkoe, the CEO and Founder of Karmaloop.com, a Boston-based street-wear online clothing company. We then wrote a case analysis about some of the issues Greg is facing as he grows the business. Professor Cronin is a leading authority in the field - and it shows - classes are great.

The Legal Environment of Business - Business law for MBA folks. Richard Powers offers up 20+ (maybe more) years of experience as a lawyer and is teaching us the basics of federal and state law and how it impacts us in our daily lives of business-dom. Each of us has to write a legal brief before the end of semester - I will be concentrating on the recent merger of Sirius and XM - partially because I just installed Sirius in my new car and I am addicted. Completely addicted.

Oh - and that internship thing. I told you guys (and gals) that I would be keeping you in the loop. After a number of very interesting offers - 1) A global software company in Massachusetts offered me a marketing position 2) A major hotel chain offered me a online business development position in New York and 3) A growing executive search firm in Boston offered me a generous internship to learn the international headhunting business.

I chose Door #3. I have been looking at the world of executive search for the last four months and am fascinated by it’s potential for my new career post-MBA. I will be working for J. Robert Scott, an up-and-coming search firm that is owned by Fidelity - I’m very excited about this opportunity - and I have BC to thank for it.