UCD Smurfit MBA Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Networking’

Day 5 (continued.): We landed in Rio de Janeiro after four exciting days in Sao Paulo and headed straight to Corcovado, where the monumental statue of Christ the Redeemer is located. Once arrived, we were left standing in awe of the legendary figure and the spectacular view from the top of the mountain. In the evening we had a Brazilian style dinner at a local Churrascaria.

The group at Corcovado

Day 6: The day began with a presentation by major development bank BNDES in down town Rio. It was very interesting to find out how Brazil was preparing for major sporting events including the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games in 2016. Following the insightful morning session, we had an eclectic lunch at Café Colombo. We then attended a meeting with Brazil’s largest company, Petrobras. After that we were free to explore Rio and the beautiful Ipanema beach by night!

Day 7: We had a meeting with Deloitte that morning and then visited Vigário Geral, one of Rio’s favelas for lunch and presentations by the social enterprise organization, Afro Reggae. It was a once in a lifetime experience where we witnessed a few exhilarating music performances and got to do some drumming ourselves! The final dinner was held that evening at one of Brazil’s finest restaurants, Porcao Rio’s. Most of the group then headed to Lapa, probably the most happening place in Rio on a Friday night!

Getting a taste of Brazilian music

Day 8: The last morning in Brazil was at leisure and I took that opportunity to visit the landmark Sugar Loaf Mountain. We all then boarded the flight back to Dublin after an intensive week of work that gave us a wonderful opportunity to get a first-hand experience of rich Latin American culture and understand how it influences business and society.

- Vishal Balasubramaniam, Full-time MBA 2011/12

Networking is one of those words that started out sounding interesting and catchy and came to mean the soulless pursuit of people you can manipulate into thinking you like them and use to achieve your own objectives. Nowadays, only people with fangs and razor-sharp claws participate in ‘networking’.  Even in an MBA programme that is ranked in the Financial Times as one of the world’s best, networking started as a bad word, whispered only in dark corners of hidden corridors.

A wise man (my dad) once told me that he thought that out of all of his clients built up over his more than 20 year career, the ones that ended up staying with him were the ones that, had he just met them in the street, would have ended up being his friends anyway.  After spending several years in marketing, sales and PR, that’s how I see networking.  It’s just meeting as many people as you can to find out with which you might share a connection.  You meet a person, you like them, you might even become friends, and then they are in your network.  It’s easy.  It’s fun.  If you do it right, it will make your life better and happier.  Why then, does the term ‘networking’ get such bad reactions? Read the rest of this entry »

As part of the MBA personal and professional development programme, we recently had the privilege of learning about the essentials of networking from Kingsley Aikins and Ed Kelly of Networking Matters. Kingsley is a former President and CEO of the Worldwide Ireland Funds and during his tenure cultivated an international network that raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cultural, community and educational projects across Ireland.

Through their four-step method, and highlighting some fascinating examples, Kingsley and Ed described how networking is a continuous process of research, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship. The concept of cultivating relationships certainly raised a few eyebrows in the room, but through learning from real-life examples of patient persistence and attentive mutual respect, the rewards of such techniques became increasingly obvious.

Undoubtedly, the most challenging aspect of networking then becomes the “ask”. It is also the most important. Whether it is asking for a further contact, reference, advice or even donation, learning how to do this successfully from Kinglsey and Ed was invaluable. In closing this uniquely beneficial session, the importance of maintaining and evolving existing relationships through real and regular contact was summed up brilliantly; “A bad day on the road beats a good day in the office.” To a current MBA student however, they both sound considerably better than a long day in the library!

- David Pierce



So, I am now an MBA. My desire to consolidate 25 years of work experience has been achieved. The CV is now ‘interesting’ and business relevant. So:  Job Hunting. To be honest, when I finished the course I wasn’t sure I want to work for anybody. I spent the past 10 years in self-employment. Nor did I know what I wanted to do with the rest of my work life. I looked at Not for Profit and Facilities Management, but in addition to there being a lot of qualified people in the job market, neither felt right.

Two months after finishing the course 38 of my 45 strong class are in jobs. It’s not that the remaining 7 are less capable; in fact I regard some of them as the most capable and talented of my class. No, I think they find themselves in a somewhat similar position to me. They may not have been Laser focused on specific areas of work like the other 38. Like me, they know what they want to do, but in a slightly more vague way. So what’s an MBA to do?

In my case it seems that not worrying too much helps. Not beating myself up about how few responses I have received. About the Not for Profit job that I wanted, but was probably not what I needed. Realising that Facilities Management was not going to be any more interesting to me now than it was when I left the sector. It seems that patience is more a necessity than a virtue for the MBA graduate who wants to change career direction.

In the end my decision on career path came from a series of random events.  My wife was offered a job in Singapore ‘out of the blue’, so we are moving the family there for three years. In looking at the job market there I saw some jobs in Recruitment and realised that with my experience, personality, and MBA, I might be suited to Executive Search. My wife, who works in HR agreed. So I am now focused on this area.  I doubt I could easily find a suitable Search role in Dublin, while Singapore is a far larger market and the Irish community is quite strong there.

So, the post MBA scramble to get a job may soon be over for me. What have I learned? Well, use the time on the course to consider your options, listen to Brian Marrinan and start job searching early to get a sense of what you want/don’t want; don’t panic when the course finishes as may take time to find the right job (for some it may be back to the area they were keen to exit; as funds are short; for other it may be a case of getting in at a lower level/salary than envisaged to get a start in a new industry) but most of all life is quirky and we must keep our eyes and ears open, we must network and we must ‘chance our arm’ a bit.  And I know all of this because the Smurfit MBA graduate is a formidable package. A package which may not fully reveal itself for months or even years, but which is all about innovation and measured risk taking.

Good luck to all; whether in/out of/or considering entering, the world of the MBA student. It is certain to me that we change during the one/two years, and become better able to read life, not just business. As one lecturer sad to me ‘Everyone on an MBA is in crisis of some sort. The course helps in facilitating life change of one sort or another.’ Let the change begin!

- David Gosling, FT MBA Class of 2011