Smells like shipbuilding

The new Mannheim Business School rooms in N2 still smell a bit after paint. This is a smell I am very familiar with, having spent months inspecting paint jobs in the building of the Messidor bulk carrier (picture)in Nantong, China. This smell actually reminds me of a very interesting phase of my life.
The other smells that evokes similar memories is the smell of steel grinding and welding. But I don't expect to find these smells in the business school

The new MBS Education Center Dalbergplatz

Here are some pictures of the inside of the premises at Mannheim Business School. These pictures were taken in the third floor, but the fourth floor is set up similarly. Some things still have to be finished, like the wifi, the printing room. But it is good to have air conditioning.

From 080526 New pr...

Trip to Speyer

Yesterday we went to Speyer, about 20 min by train from Mannheim, where our colleague Marc (who was with be in Canada and lived in the room next to mine) lives.

080524 Speyer

First we walked around the city and Marc showed us the nicest places. Then we spent some hours in a very nice and German restaurant before heading back to Mannheim, arriving after midnight.

Another beer reference

I myself don't drink beer, but it is always interesting to get such a message from the course coordination:

Due to the size the class will be divided into two groups on Tuesday and Wednesday. While group 1 will have the PC Exercise on Tuesday and the Beer Game on Wednesday, group 2 will have the Beer Game on Tuesday and the PC Exercise on Wednesday.

Mannheim Business School's new Education Center preview

Starting tomorrow, we will have classes in the new MBS premisses. I went there to check the address today and took these pictures. If the building seems to be distorted, it is, I stitched pictures together.

Note the Biergarten in the lower part of the building. Convenience?

The bad side of the job search

1. It is a lot of work. Each application I send out takes up to one hour to be ready. It consists of e-mail, cover letter, CV and additional documents. All bundled up in a pretty PDF document. I try to tailor the applications to each firm, as the fit varies from company to company. Templates work only in a limited sense.
2. The wait. You have to keep up with the applications you sent out, give follow up calls or send follow up e-mails. Keep track of what worked and what didn't. Find the balance between showing interest and being annoying.
3. Being turned down. You know you want to work for the company in the position you applied for, or in a similar position. You are sure you can adapt and learn quick to cover for the fields where you could improve to be a better fit for the company. But you cannot always get that across with a set of documents and you get rejected.

At least some companies are polite enough to send you an e-mail giving you their final decision in clear words, like the example below. Others just don't bother. Others, like McKinsey, go the the extra step and give you a personalized feedback, provided you ask for it.
But, in the end, you have to get used to receiving e-mails like the following:

Dear Mr. Bresslau,

Thank you for your letter of application of 14th May.

We are pleased that you are interested in working with us. Your excellent background would certainly benefit many employers.

Although your credentials are definitely impressive, they do not specifically meet our current needs.

We will however keep your CV for future reference.

Thank you once again for your interest and we wish you the best of luck in your employment search.

With best regards,

The good side of the job search

So far, job search has been going well. I am primarily interested in two areas:

• Venture Capital and growth Private Equity
• Strategic management consulting, technology and innovation oriented

I have had two interviews so far. One in each area, one in Frankfurt and another over the phone. So far, so good. I am invited for a follow up interview for one of them and am waiting for a decision by the second company. I am also scheduled for another interview with a third company in June.

This is all exciting an I am looking very positively into the future. I am sure that I will get multiple offers and that I hope to have the peace of mind to choose the company which is a better fit in a long term perspective for me.

Opportunity cost

This is what I call the real opportunity cost of living far away from my family:



Last time I saw Henrique, my nephew, he was a new born baby who had just undergone heart surgery. Now, after another surgery in January, he is really fine, as you all can surely see.
And here is another picture of Henrique which I put online several months ago.
Yes, I really hope I can make it to Brazil after the MBA.
BTW, I was listening to all this through skype, while my sister was filming. I felt strangely close. Technology helps a lot.

First hour of International Finance

Cool to see more friends from abroad here: Omo, Jake, Valmiki and Andson from Warwick are here.
Then we have some new people I still have to get to know better: Laure, Tom, Hiba.
And we have some old friends showing up again: NPV, WACC, IRR...
Let's see how it goes.

Time zones

Just figured out that the blog was still in Toronto.
But I changed the time zone to Berlin, publishing times are right now.
The question is: when am I going to change time zones again and which one will be the next?

Good moment for Brazil?

After spending the whole day dealing with simulation data about Brazil, here are two positive hard facts about my country's economy:

1. The stock exchange reached it's highest level ever. The Bovespa closed today at 72766 points.
2. The dollar is at its lowest level since soon after the Real has been floated, nine years ago, at R$ 1,642.

Let's hope this trickles down to better employment levels and standards of living.

Simulation over and it seems we won

The simulation wasn't as nerve wrecking as I expected it to be. I guess this was because of the very well balanced team I ended up in. And a very beautiful team, as I am sure you all will agree.

The good news is that our group made the most profits selling American tooth paste in Latin America and we won the competition, getting a bottle of Chilean wine as prize. And good marks too, I hope! We didn't have the most sales, but, in the end, the money that ends up in the stockholders' pockets is what counts, right?

Some tips for future participants:

• Be clear where you want to start, how and why.
• Develop a good idea which countries to enter in the next rounds to have a general strategic direction.
• Don't compete on price. Invest in advertisement and promotion, keep an eye on the margin.
• Take a closer look at wholesalers and deploy fewer sales people to traditional retail.
• Go for big markets. Early on.
• Keep number of markets and SKUs low, to make situation review and decision input stay in a manageable time frame. Keep comlexity low.
• Make notes for your final report during the simulation.
• No real need for laptops. One extra computer per team is more than enough.
• Use benchmarks. Compare with the competition.
• Don't build up too much capacity at first.
  

A conservative approach worked for us. But I am curious what would happened if we had gone to all markets at the same time. Or entered one market with all SKUs. Or tried only the web shopping channel.

Thanks, team "Operación latina"!

International Marketing course in Mannheim

This is going to be a short post. But suffice it to say that I have had another enjoyable week at MBS. It was not an easy week and I am writing although I should be sleeping to prepare for the International Marketing Strategy Simulation tomorrow, but the course has been really good, again. I am happy with my choices, so far.
It is a very high content course, building nicely on the material of Cross-Cultural Management and International Management. We used concepts from both courses often. But I am glad that the lectures' part of the course is over. We had 404 slides in 3 days, but still have to actually discount the time of the 6 case presentations (15 minutes, plus at least 10 minutes discussion each) from the overall discussion time.
Now remains the question of how to review so many slides. And I have to admit, every slide was there for a reason and they were well used, so the unusually high number is justified.
But let me go to sleep. It has been a long day and I have to wake up early tomorrow to do some reading before class.
And some good news: I am scheduling interviews with two other companies, my efforts from last week are paying off.

Another Mannheim scene

The weather has been great here in Mannheim for the past several weeks, and Mannheim has been a great place to be around and take a stroll to a park from time to time. This is the square at the Wasserturm, which I had seen only from the other side until today.

Looking back at a musical period

I've played in two bands so far, both in Brazil. Unfortunately, since I got back to Germany, I didn't find bands to play with. So my musical activity has been limited to playing in my room, on the streets and in the corridors of different Business Schools around the globe. I've had the odd jam session of open mic from time to time, too.

I was looking into my music library today and found the crude recordings of some of the concerts of the second band I played with, Bunker 292 Acústico. The band was composed by a singer, a guitar player, another guitar player and myself on the harmonica. The singer and first guitar player were my cousins, and we used only acoustic instruments, which made rehearsing very easy. As a curiosity, all band members were from German decent, and a mix of German and Portuguese during rehearsals was common.

I had great fun playing with them on Sunday afternoons, which encourages me to try to get into a band as soon as possible. I am realistic enough to know that I won't be doing that while the MBA lasts, but I think music will continue to be an important part of my work/life balance (a theme that is very trendy at the moment).



Below you will find one of those recordings, I hope you enjoy it. It is already almost 5 years old and it was one of our first live concerts, so forgive any mistakes and the recording quality. The allAll band members have gotten much better now, I believe.



Plush

My career week

The "Business and Corporate Taxation in Europe" was one of the modules that I decided not take here at Mannheim Business School. We have 10 courses to choose at least 6 from. I know it is important to understand taxation mechanisms and strategies, but I figured that, if this becomes important to me one day, I'll know how to learn it on my own.
That meant that the week was class free for me. But not free. I focused on my starting job search, which needs a lot of time and effort to start well. The good thing is that, so far, so good. I have had some really positive responses to applications and conversations I had in the past months and believe that getting a job won't be a problem. Getting THE job though, is another story.

The week and the picture series started in Frankfurt, where I was invited for an initial interview with a PE (Private Equity) firm. The interview went well and it was good to have a feel of the kind of environment that will await me, if, as I intend to, get into Venture Capital or PE. In June we will have the second round, with other partners, so I guess that they liked what they saw.


On Tuesday I went to the excellent Konaktiva career fair in Darmstadt. It is organized by students, but extremely professional and organized.

I especially enjoyed the pannels where they brought 5 companies together, gave each company 5 minutes presentation time and then opened the floor for questions from the audience. A very good way of getting the feel of the companies, especially the smaller ones one doesn't get much info about from the media.
I was lucky and the Tuesday was the consulting day, so I was able to talk to several companies and get relevant recruitment contact information.

And during the fair I met a former colleague of mine from Brazil. He got into the Escola Politécnica during my last year there and came later to Darmstadt to do his double degree in Germany and Brazil. At the time he was here, we did not meet and I thought that he had long ago gone back to Brazil. So it was a surprise to meet him again in Germany. As cliché as it sounds, the world is really a small place.

I was back on Tuesday evening for the recruitment presentation of BASF at MBS. It was a good and interesting presentation and I enjoyed to talk with the global VP of procurement, a very open minded guy.
The rest of the week I invested in getting things done and applying for different companies, after doing the necessary research of the firms. This takes much more time and energy than I expected, and I wasn't really satisfied with my progress. But yesterday morning I had a very productive day, so it compensated some.

On Friday afternoon the whole class was invited to a company visit and fancy dinner in the evening.
The tour started with the very interesting Visitors' Center, a kind of an interactive museum about chemistry and BASF. I had loads of fun and, if time permits, I might go back to see it with more time.
Very nice was their multimedia table pictured below. I noticed that they used multiple media projectors in several installations and who designed these system really had some very nice ideas. Not to mention that the implementation was excellent.

But the dinner afterwards was the important event for those, like me, who are interested in working for the company (BASF has VC and New Business divisions). It was held in the fancy Casino, the company owned restaurant just outside the complex, in Ludwigshafen.

It was a good opportunity to talk to some of the employees at BASF and to some really senior recruiters, with the knowledge that you were pitching to somebody who really new what kind of people they wanted and what positions were available.

And it was not only a fancy dinner, but a really enjoyable one, where I had the opportunity to talk a lot to some of my MBA colleagues, including an American exchange student, in a different setting.
The only pity was that I wasn't able to go to Heidelberg meet a good Brazilian friend and catch the great hildesheimer blues band "B. B. & the Bluesshacks".

But, all in all, it was a good week, with even an offer to work part time as an MBA coach and GMAT trainer for aspiring MBA candidates. I don't know yet if I will be able to make time for it, but, if the pay is good, it will be an interesting way to put some of the knowledge I have gathered in the last year to good use. Let's see how it goes.

The 2008 International Management Class

Originally posted on May 1st, 2008.
And Dr. Perlitz at the left. It was a good week, I just hope that the exam tomorrow is OK.

Pradeep sent me the picture taken with his camera, and I think the quality is better, so here it is.

My apartment in Mannheim

I had already taken some pictures of the apartment the day I arrived, but I lost those pictures and the pictures of my last day in Canada with a careless key stroke.
So, after having putting my apartment in order again today morning, I took new ones. I hope this gives prospective Mannheim Business School MBA students a good idea of what kind of accommodations they can expect from MBS here in Mannheim.

080504 apartment

Link:
http://picasaweb.google.de/ferbress/080504Apartment

A day out

This picture was taken in the park by the River Rhein, today in the evening. We had a barbecue there and, coincidentally, we three had our gray Queens' T-shirts on, I couldn't miss the opportunity.
The day started with a trip to Heidelberg and a boat trip to Neckarsteinach and back.
And, to finish it off, party at night at the Schneckenhof.
It is really good to have weekly subject which end with the exam on the Friday. We have the weekend off. But tomorrow is job search day, nonetheless.