Originally posted by Jordan Fujiwara.
The way I view the program, it’s kind of like a launch pad… if you have the ambition.”
These sage words were spoken by Steve Olsen, one of my peers and current Corporate Residency MBA student. Steve is 24 years old and hails from the city of Regina, Saskatchewan. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration with a Major in Marketing from the University of Regina, likes a fine glass of wine and does some great Zoolander impressions (if you don’t know what that is don’t worry about it).
In January, Steve began his corporate residency as a Research Analyst with Corporate Research Associates (http://www.cra.ca), a leading firm in the area of market research with many locations in Canada. Steve’s office is in Halifax, where he is having a blast: “I wake up looking forward to going to work every day, and I’m never watching the clock to see when the day ends.” What’s his secret? Well, Steve had the CRA in mind for his residency before he even came to Nova Scotia! Inspired by his undergrad experiences and some key professors, Steve decided that market research was what he wanted to do. So when he saw that CRA was an employer partner with the Corporate Residency MBA program, he jumped at the chance. And he got it. “This is exactly what I wanted to do,” he says. “It takes a certain kind of personality, you have to like numbers and writing.” That being said, it’s not all about the data: just yesterday Steve came into work at 8:30am, and was told that a big client wanted his team to do a presentation on a major project they had completed a while ago (and had put out of mind)… at 2:00pm the same day! “I got to see my work have an impact. I mean, it’s their [the client’s] life, it’s their job and we’re presenting data on that and coming up with ways to help them improve.”In the near future Steve hopes to be able to sit in on some focus groups and be involved with survey design.
Securing his ideal residency isn’t the only thing that has Steve smiling. He has thoroughly enjoyed the academic portion of the program prior to the residency. He notes that in his undergrad there were average profs and then really great profs… “but at Dal they’re all great. The profs are challenging without being mean, like a coach who makes you run hard during a workout… we perform better when people expect a lot from us.” Steve clearly loves a challenge. He recalls his positive experience with our eight-hour economics exam. (That’s right. Eight hours. Remember when I said this program was intense? To be fair, it was a take home, open book exam. But still.) He remembers taking it home to his apartment, staring at it, and then beginning to schedule his day into 30-minute chunks and being mentally engaged and satisfied nonstop. “I was pulling up data and doing research and matching numbers, and it was really neat because it was all applicable.” When it was over and he could gather his thoughts, Steve says, and I do quote: “I felt like a young stag triumphantly snorting over its fallen foe.” Now, uh, we here at Dalhousie cannot guarantee that all students will experience this exhilarating primal sensation upon completing all or any of their exams, but it IS something you can… hope for. Another thing Steve enjoyed about the program was the group work. He says it is different from group work in his undergrad, where technically one person in any group could, if they really wanted to, do all the assigned work individually. In the Corporate Residency MBA, it’s not like that at all: “a big challenge is coming to grips with the fact that you can’t complete all the tasks that have been given to you the way you wanted. Many times the problem couldn’t be solved by working harder, but instead by working smarter; you have to rely on your classmates, be able to delegate – it was hard and required a lot of ingenuity!”
Steve finds this experience has been truly helpful in the workplace; at CRA his position involves dealing with two different departments where sometimes the tasks double up, so he must be able to make the decision (and muster the courage) to tell his superiors that he simply cannot complete the task in the time frame they want. But that’s about as stressed as Steve gets working at CRA: he describes the atmosphere as “very collegial” and very team oriented.
Steve’s story just goes to show what Corporate Residency MBA can do for you, especially if you know what you want! But don’t fret if you don’t know. Steve considers himself to be a rarity in the class in that he did know exactly what he wanted. You’ll read many incredible stories in the coming weeks about those who were less certain and have come just as far. See you next week!