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The Consortium and Kelley: Enhancing Diversity in Business Starts Here

Posted on by Kelley School

by Ruby Jones, MBA’18
Consortium Fellow
Winner of the Wallace L. Jones Fellowship

On Tuesday, March 8, I received a beautiful cream and crimson box announcing my acceptance to the Kelley School of Business as a Consortium Fellow. Four hours later, I quit my job.

Quitting was not on my “To Do” list for the day, but I was so overcome with emotion and excitement that I couldn’t wait any longer. I should clarify that by “quit”, I mean I gave a four-month notice, but after nine years with the same employer four months can seem like a short notice. As word of my departure spread, I was bombarded with questions: What is the Consortium? What is a Consortium Fellow? Why an MBA? Why now?

What is the Consortium?

The mission of The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management is to enhance diversity in business education and leadership by helping to correct the serious underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in business schools and corporate management.

In its 50th year, the Consortium assists in recruiting promising students, of any race, who show a commitment to its mission, to attend 18 of the top business schools. In exchange for their commitment, students receive access to a close-knit on-campus family, a powerful network of more than 8,500 alumni, early exposure to internship recruiters and, for many, full-tuition fellowships from their respective universities.

What qualities define a Consortium Fellow? (more…)

Cutting the Cord: Best Practices for Transitioning Within the Same Organization

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by Stephanie J. Gray, Associate Director
Kelley Graduate Career Services
 
Stephanie J. Gray
You did it! You set your sights on a new position within your organization and after months of networking and interviewing you have earned a new title and a new set of job responsibilities. There’s one problem: you still work at the same company, so leaving your old job isn’t as easy as handing in two weeks’ notice. Your previous supervisor may have advocated for your promotion and your clients may not really understand how you work for the same organization, but can no longer help them.

I recently made this transition and I have come up with a few helpful tips to “cut the cord” with your old job and start your new adventure.

Take time off.
This is something that I wish I had done. If you have the opportunity, take a week off to decompress and get excited for your new role. This week will also help you to distance yourself from your previous position without having new responsibilities.
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Look In The Mirror. What Do You See?

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by Kendell Brown, Associate Director of Alumni Career Services
Kelley Graduate Career Services

Kendell Brown

Often alums and clients contact me wanting to initiate a job search but they’re at a loss as to where to start. All that they know is that they want to start now! So to jumpstart their thinking, I’ll have them assess where they are today. Self-evaluation is a great way to inventory who you are, what you have to offer and where you want to go. Here are the six areas I encourage someone to consider and the order to consider them.

Strengths – What do you do well? 
I encourage people to start here.  It’s typically an easy assessment to make. If you’re stuck or too modest to reflect on your strengths look at old performance reviews. Or think about what you like to do best and/or what comes easiest to you.
Transferrable skills – What will you leverage?
This is a natural next step from strengths. Transferrable skills are those skills that you have that can be applied across a variety of positions. Meaning if you’ve got a strong drive for results in your current role – you’ll have a strong drive for results in your next one. Typically, there’s a high degree of overlap between transferrable skills and strengths. Although, you should be aware that it’s not necessary for a transferrable skill to be a strength.

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Kelley Alumni Receive Free Career Support for Life

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by Kendell Brown, Associate Director of Alumni Career Services 
Kelley Graduate Career Services

Kendell Brown

At the Kelley School of Business, the Graduate Career Services staff considers alumni career services to be about lifetime career support. We are here for Kelley alumni at all stages of their careers. On-campus career services teams focus on understanding a student’s values and interests to help with a job search and getting off to a good start. Alumni career services marries that initial knowledge with the knowledge that comes with experience and being “in the real world” to set and achieve career development goals.

For short-term planning, almost all of my conversations are about the next career step—a promotion, an external job search or a career pivot (“I’m in finance but I’d like to get into marketing.”).

When it comes to mid-term planning, those discussions are more about having a broad career goal and the moves necessary to achieve it. We talk about expanding an alum’s responsibility scope, enhancing and expanding strengths and building visibility.

Kelley’s alumni career services support is free and unlimited. This is a testament to how much we value our alumni. I’ve talked with my colleagues in other schools’ alumni career services offices and they are stunned that I meet with each alum as often as he or she likes and at no cost. In this respect, Kelley is truly singular.
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You’ve Just Started your New Job. Now What?

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by Rebecca Cook, Director of Coaching and Development
Kelley Graduate Career Services

Rebecca Cook

We’ve all been there. You’ve accepted your “dream” job, maybe moved to a new city or new apartment, and now it’s DAY 1. You’re likely nervous and excited all at once. It is a new start for you and you want to do well, impress people and enjoy it. So, how can you make sure that happens?

For both internships and full-time positions, there are several key things to focus on that can help you to be successful.

Promote yourself.
Get to know your role and organization and figure out where you can contribute early. There is likely some low-hanging fruit you can pick, so focus on that to get yourself off to a good start. Ask questions and give your opinion. This is the perfect time to ask about how things work and how you can add value. You are your best cheerleader and others will not always notice all that you are doing.

Understand the company.
How does it make money? What does the organizational structure look like? How does work get done? What is the culture and etiquette? Read as much as you can about your new company, both in company produced documents and outside information. The more knowledge you have about your organization, the better you can contribute and make decisions. (more…)

Freak Out, But Be OK

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Anoop Bethapudy, MBA’16, and fellow Kelley Full-Time MBA students worked with
the Native American community in California during GLOBASE Native 2016.

by Anoop Bethapudy, MBA’16

The ability to write in a way that inspires and fosters teamwork is a key to great leadership. In collaboration with the Gotham Writers Workshop, students in the Kelley MBA Leadership Academy have produced a series of blog posts to demonstrate these skills.

I was 20 years old. I had no real work experience, no funds, no team, and a concert (with some of India’s best artists) to put on. Fast forward seven years and this time I was trying to lead a Global Business and Social Enterprise (GLOBASE) consulting project. Déjà vu! I had no clients, no team and no idea where to start. I remember sitting in a conference room with Rachel Fleishman, our staff coordinator, and all of the previous GLOBASE leaders. They were trying to give me tons of important information but I barely understood any of it. It was like being in the Core again!

As you may have already guessed, I pulled off both these projects (I wouldn’t write about them otherwise). As much as I would like to talk about my sheer brilliance, that is not the point of this blog and perhaps not the reality either. When I was 20 years old, I freaked out, complained and worried, but eventually made it. At 27 and with a Kelley MBA behind me, I freak out but I know it’s OK. Ambiguity is just natural.
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Congratulations, Class of 2016!

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You’ve come so far in two years. All of the faculty and staff at the Kelley Full-Time MBA Program are so very proud of your tenacity, talent and perseverance. Congratulations, and good luck in all of your future endeavors.

Watch the video to relive our MBA graduation festivities, held May 6, 2016 in Bloomington.

Congratulations, Kelley MBA Class of 2016 from Kelley School of Business on Vimeo.

Bloomington Audit: Daniel Castelline, MBA’17

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Daniel Castelline, MBA’17, continues our #BtownAudit series and shares some of his favorite things about Bloomington, Indiana.

Daniel Castelline, MBA’17, and his favorite things.

When I first relocated to Bloomington from Boston, “apprehensive” would have been an appropriate expression of my uncertainty. Southern Indiana doesn’t exactly jump off the map, but the prospect of attending the Kelley Full-Time MBA Program was too alluring to pass up. So I packed my bags, and off to the land of corn I went.

Bloomington has been an ideal place to pursue my MBA. I often refer to the town as a “student’s utopia.” A town that punches above its weight, Bloomington is affordable, convenient, friendly and, oh yeah, did I mention affordable? Because of its intimate size, Bloomington also fosters an environment of community, culture and collaboration; and you’re bound to run into classmates wherever you go.

Here’s a short list of my favorite city slicker things to do in Bloomington:

Andrew Davis
Whenever in need of a little retail-therapy, Andrew Davis is the place of choice for high-end menswear. A premier boutique in Bloomington, Andrew Davis carries an assortment of top-line labels. Drop by to have a beer, peruse their latest collection, and chat with storeowner Andy Mallor, a Kelley alumnus and IU enthusiast.

The Tap
A favorite among the Kelley MBA community, The Tap is a wonderful place to unwind with both classmates and faculty. With more than 300 craft beers, The Tap’s variety is terrific for those with an adventurous pallet. Looking for a recommendation? Start with the Kentucky Bourbon—on tap, of course!
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Leaving Hollywood and Its Tyrannical Leaders Behind

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by Kyle Hebenstreit, MBA’16

The ability to write in a way that inspires and fosters teamwork is a trait of great leadership. Students in the Kelley MBA Leadership Academy, in collaboration with the Gotham Writers Workshop, have produced a series of blog posts to demonstrate these skills.

Hollywood is a weird place to work. Maybe it’s fictional characters like Ari Gold, Buddy Ackerman or Les Grossman that glorify the notion of an office tyrant, but there’s a celebrated culture of intensely demanding and, frankly, disrespectful bosses. Schadenfreude-fueled tales of misconduct drifted through the halls of talent agencies and studios where I worked.

There’s the time the agent publicly went ballistic on his assistant for not turning all of the Perrier bottles east, as requested. Or the time an executive didn’t like his assistant’s tie, so he took a pair of scissors and cut it in half to make what I’m sure was an important point. Or the time the head of the agency stood on his assistant’s desk, golf club in hand, screaming, “I don’t pay you to think!”

An explanation for why people act this way is for another blog, or cultural anthropology dissertation. What I’m trying to illustrate is that this is where I started my education on what it means to be a manager, a coach, a leader.
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Perfect Your On-The-Job Elevator Pitch

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by Kendell Brown, Associate Director of Alumni Career Services 

Kendell Brown

By now you are likely familiar with the idea of an elevator pitch. It’s a concise summary of an individual’s brand. I like to think of it as a 30-second commercial highlighting someone’s strengths and leverage-able skills. We talk about elevator pitches all of the time in job search circles. It can be used as an intro at a coffee chat, it’s the foundation for an answer to the “Tell me about yourself” question and if you happen to see a hiring manager on an elevator, well you figure it out.  Bottom line, they are useful and you can use them throughout your job search.

The thing is, once people find a new job, they typically abandon their elevator pitch. The thinking is, “I’ve got a job, why do I still need an elevator pitch?” If you take a more expansive view of an elevator pitch and define it as not just a tool to help me get a job, but instead as a professional executive summary you’ll see that you can use an elevator pitch in a variety of settings.

Entrepreneurs and salespeople often have a pitch ready to go, because they recognize that they cannot let an opportunity pass that could lead to an investment or sale.

But what about you, the cubicle jockey who’s just trying to get ahead—do you need an elevator pitch? Yes! Just because you have a job, doesn’t mean that you are not still trying to sell yourself. Let’s say that you are working on a big project, it’s your No. 1 priority and you feel as if you are really rocking it. Sure your manager and everyone on your team knows how well things are going and they recognize that you’re the reason. But what about your manager’s manager? Or the VP that your director reports to? (more…)

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