Tag: Career

Use your UCD Smurfit MBA to pursue that dream.

Ciara O’Brien (weekend eMBA 2014), founder of iSave, recently joined UCC’s start-up accelerator Ignite.

My advice to new MBAs is to really make the most of every resource that’s available to you within the MBA system. While there’s lots to learn from your core modules and lecturers, don’t forget to look outside the curriculum to find other opportunities. Two years is quite a short time frame to achieve big things!

My only regret from the MBA is that I didn’t seek out those opportunities even sooner.  Starting the course is such an overwhelming experience – learning to deal with the teams, assignments and exams.

In year 2, once I kick-started my start-up idea, the various MBA structures were a huge asset. Michael McDonnell brought me the UCD Student Innovation Fund (which we subsequently won!), Brian Marrinan connected me with MasterCard’s start-up accelerator which was invaluable and Bruce Martin, entrepreneurship lecturer, supported me to refine iSave’s value proposition even though I wasn’t in his class!

This has all been key to our success in winning seed funding, acceptance to the Ignite programme and now a potential spot at The Summit’s APLHA programme for start-ups.

So whatever your goal: take the knock-backs in your stride, seek out people who believe in your idea and can help and don’t waste any of the resources that are available to you. If you have an idea you want to pursue this is probably the best time in your life to do it. It’ll all be over before you know it!

Ciara O’Brien, EMBA 2014 and Founder of iSave.

MBA Careers at UCD Smurfit

Careers support and development is very important for any reputable MBA Programme. In Smurfit great emphasis is placed on providing the best of both to all participants full-time and EMBA according to their need. The Head of the Smurfit Careers Office is also the MBA Careers Manager, ably supported by two other managers who work with MBA and MSc as needed.

More than just lipstick and make up …

Friday April 4th saw the second session in the Dean’s Speaker Series presented by the MBA Thought Leadership Club. Our speaker on the day was Alan Ennis, a member of the School’s North America Advisory Board and former CEO of Revlon. During his presentation, Alan reflected on lessons learned on his journey from trainee accountant in Dublin to the CEO of a multi-billion dollar turnover business in 2009. Alan spoke candidly about his role as CEO, a role which he held until recently, and passed on some inspirational messages to those in attendance. He advised all students to fully immerse themselves in any career that they pursue. In his own case he told us that while at Revlon this included physically testing nail varnish to see if it really did dry in 60 seconds or lipstick to see how hydrating it really was! He also advised us that as a leader you have to create a culture in the workplace where others want you to win, it is okay to be wrong and that life does not owe you a living – you need to work hard in order to achieve your goals.

Impressively, for someone who has managed a company as large as Revlon, Alan came across as an approachable, normal person. At lunch after the presentation we shared a few laughs about life and work. Alan seemed to be fun, outgoing and engaging just like any member of our class. Talking through his rise to responsibility it could be seen how anyone on the MBA could be progress to the levels that Alan has. He admitted that achieving in one’s career took preparation, hard work and a pinch of luck to spot and access opportunities to progress. Let’s hope that the hard work we’ve been putting in over the last year will meet some good luck on the road and this time next year we’ll be well on our ways to career success.

Liam Doyle

UCD Smurfit MBA 2014








Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamdoyledublin

UCD Smurfit Careers office moves and expands

As part of the on-going commitment to ensuring success for our MBA students here at the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, the Career Development and Skills team has grown and has moved to a new location.

The team now consists of four people: Cathy Savage, Dee Murphy, Cathy Harrison and Brian Marrinan.

Before joining the UCD Smurfit School 4 years ago, Cathy Savage had almost a decade of experience in the recruitment industry, hiring roles from graduates through to senior management. Cathy Harrison joined us in October from the financial services industry to work with both careers and alumni relations and is a friendly face welcome you when you come to visit. Dee Murphy joined the team in January and brings with her a wealth of experience in careers, organisational development and consulting. Finally, Brian Marrinan, who also has worked with Smurfit for over 4 years and has a background in investment banking, insurance, consulting and executive search sectors, will lead the new team in delivering the best service to our students, our corporate partners and the academic community.

As part of this process, the Smurfit Career Development & Skills office have moved to a dedicated centre, ensuring a collaborative and engaging space for you to work with us on your career.

We look forward to seeing you here!

Brian Marrinan

Brian Marrinan, Dee Murphy and Cathy Savage chilling in their new office, photographer Cathy Harrison

Meet the team at http://www.ucd.ie/careers/ourstaff/careerdevelopmentteamsmurfit/

The end of the semester is nigh

After our massively successful trip to China it’s back to the grindstone at Smurfit. Since returning many students are commenting just how close to the end of lectures we are, with essentially only four weeks of classes remaining. While this idea dawned on me several days ago I was heartened to see some of our class presentations this week which were really of a very high quality (they had numbers, they had words, the material all fitted together, they worked!). It would be truly interesting for us to sit down as a class and watch some videos of ourselves presenting last autumn, I’m sure we’ve all really come a long way.

Asides from the few weeks of lectures remaining, we have two weeks of exams and the Capstone project. This project will put us out in small teams into the real world to work with companies on consulting projects. I’m slightly concerned how my body clock is going to react to early mornings as leading in to exam season I’ve started studying into the night-time and waking up late but apart from this I’m definitely looking forward to applying all that I’ve learned. I’ve heard rumours that real companies are more complex than what can be described in 15 pages of a Harvard Business School case study! Anyway, the experience should be a great final hurrah and a real chance to gain experience in a new business sector.

Conal Campbell

FT MBA


Ireland – Realising the Potential

The CV book launch event, “Ireland – Realising the Potential,” was a beautiful evening that provided an opportunity to meet alumni and expand networks to people from varied companies. The evening was prepared far in advance by student representatives and the MBA Careers team, who contacted and invited many companies to attend. This was a special time for MBA students on the full-time and executive programmes to get together and meet guests from prestigious companies.

The evening began with a cocktail hour before welcoming two Smurfit MBA alumni speakers, Julie O’Neill and Fintan Slye, who gave accounts of their professional life leading up to becoming senior leaders in the pharmaceutical and energy sectors. By listening to them, we realized the extent of the opportunities available after an MBA. The speakers provided strong messages about passion, independence of thinking, and finding courage in his/her convictions, which are the characteristics of a leader who unites people in business. These human values ​​derive business as well as innovation, entrepreneurship, performance, incentive, investment and infrastructure development.

Listening to them, we found there are a number of routes available to each of us.
The evening continued with Dean Ciaran O’hogartaigh providing a strong message to keep, maintain and build this special link with other students who are future alumni, with the school and companies.

The evening ended with the distribution of the 2014 CV Book, the resume synthesis of the Smurfit Business School’s MBA cohort which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

Everyone met afterword around a friendly nightcap.

As the Dean said: “Stay connected, Stay plugged in.”


Erwan Le Pavec

Full-time MBA 2014

France

Staying on Track

Semester two is tough. It is not tough because the workload is greater than Semester one. Nor is it tough because the courses are more challenging. In fact, for a vast majority of the class the workload is lighter for the option modules. It isn’t the obvious things that make Semester two tough. It is the growing realisation of the need to figure out where the next stage of my life, post-MBA, is going to take me. Deciding what and then moving onto the how should be the focus of my time. It is, let’s face it, the reason anyone embarks on an MBA. Whilst some of the academic staff may not wish to admit it, the academic parts of an MBA course are a means to an end. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty to learn and plenty to stimulate the intellectual curiosity, but the MBA is a springboard into a potentially new and exciting career.

Semester two is tough. There are so many pulls on your time and it is too easy to neglect the longer and longer shadow being cast on a future career. Many will say this is simply down to time management, and there is a certain degree of validity in that assertion. There is more complexity to it, however. Using the year in an MBA is, as has no doubt been noted by my colleagues previously, a unique opportunity to explore a totally different career path. However, this requires a depth of research and contact building that could in its own right be a full time job. Notwithstanding the HR strategies to get you around, the Activity Based Costing in Managerial Accounting and Investment Management classes that leave you mentally exhausted, trying to forge a new career is a considerable challenge.

Semester two is tough. As more and more gets thrown at you from preparing for the trip to China to extracurricular activities to assignments and late night classes, many things can knock you down. The prospect of developing an exciting new career from September is enough to motivate you to keep bouncing back off the canvas. But it is easy to lose track, no matter how often you are reminded of the real reason you are doing an MBA.

As the days get longer and (hopefully) the sun starts to get warmer, it is a great time to revaluate priorities and at the same time maintain the commitments you have made to family, friends and colleagues. That is the challenge.


Jim Radmore

Full-time MBA 2014

United Kingdom

Breaking Through the Career Ceiling

Why I did an MBA:

Before the MBA I was working as IT consultant on multi-million European-wide deals. When we were finalising these deals, I found myself in a room with the EMEA heads of HR, finance, marketing etc. I was representing the EMEA lead for consulting. I was keeping up with these high-power conversations, but only just. I had hit a career ceiling and to progress my career further, I needed to break out of my consulting zone and get on the same level as these domain specialists.

The Smurfit MBA was how I did this.

What my head knew but my heart denied:

The content of an MBA isn’t difficult; it’s the breadth and depth of knowledge that you have to consume in a compressed time that’s the challenge.

What everyone says, but I didn’t believe until I got there:

You learn quite a lot from your classmates, and yes – you get out what you put in. Push yourself out of your comfort zone and you will be rewarded.

What I learned most:

Over the years, I had already worked out many of the concepts from the MBA in my own head, from first principles. The MBA put structure and a formal nomenclature on the fuzziness, allowing me again to work with other domain leaders.

What shocked me about the MBA:

In the last 5-10 years before the MBA I had gotten used to being the “smartest guy in the room”. In the first couple of weeks in Smurfit, I realised I was in the lower 50-percentile of the class. This was quite a shock to the ego.

My favourite moment on the MBA:

We had a presentation from the conductor of a concert orchestra. I didn’t engage initially – I wasn’t going to apply for the job. But he slowly explained his role: to coordinate 80 primadonnas, all who believe they are better at their job than he is at his.  All who think they could work better without him, all who wanted to give their own 90 second opinion, some of whom were just passengers, and somehow his role was to add value so the whole was significantly better than the sum of the parts.

EUREKA! I realised these were the same challenges that I faced in my role as a programme manager, and therefore certain knowledge and skills are fungible.

It was these insights that were the highlights of the MBA.

What I did with my MBA

I was hired by a major IT organisation to improve their “Value Engineering:” to create business propositions for large deals, especially where the CIO was convinced.  The CFO & CEO needed to see some financials, albeit based on the technology, and with real numbers before getting on board.

The job offer was routed through the Smurfit MBA Careers Office and the mandatory requirements for the position included an “MBA from a top European business school.”


Luke Beare

Full-time MBA 2009

Senior Director | Industry Strategy & Insight, Oracle

Smurfit MBA CV Book 2014 successfully launched

The MBA CV Book 2014 launch took place last night, Thursday 27 in the Law Society building at Blackhall Place.  Professor Pat Gibbons performed the introductions and made the opening and closing remarks.  Guest speakers were Julie O’Neill – Smurfit MBA Alumna 1996; First woman president of IBEC; VP and GM of Gilead Sciences and now GM of Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Fintan Slye – Smurfit MBA Alumnus 2001; CEO of EirGrid.  The book was launched officially by the Business School Dean Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh.

Congratulations are due to the current MBA students who organised the very successful and engaging event.  Thanks to to Brian Marrinan and the Careers team for their support.   Further accounts of the event and photos will follow.