Jacob Crandall is a T'16 who grew up in Buffalo, NY and attended Case Western Reserve University, graduating with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Upon graduation he worked at Newry Corp., a small consulting firm in Cleveland focusing on helping industrial and CPG clients develop growth strategies for new and existing products. More recently, he led a strategic planning and analytics group in the Global Procurement organization at Deutsche Bank in New York City. At Tuck, he plans to participate in the Tuck Student Consulting Services, Tuck Wine Society, and of course, Tripod Hockey amongst many other things.
While attending a Global Tuck Tails (i.e. happy hour for Tuckies) in New York City last month, a T’15 asked me if I was starting to get excited about attending Tuck in the fall. When I mentioned that I would actually be going on my first Tuck trip in the following weeks to learn more about recruiting for the tech industry, he said, “Wow, you guys are starting really early. That sounds really cool.” This fact was not lost on The Wall Street Journal either. As new MBA students enter their first year, they are bombarded with recruiting presentations from myriad companies, so the opportunity to begin to form thoughts around whether a particular space sounded interesting ahead of time seemed like a great idea. With all that said, I think there were a number of very important takeaways from the first annual Tuck Silicon Valley Boot Camp:
Sustained Networking. The tech industry follows a similar path for recruiting as it does for ventures: it’s very entrepreneurial. Early on in our visit to the Bay Area, the Tuck Career Development Office (CDO) shared some great stats with us regarding tech recruiting. Unlike many of the “standard” post-MBA recruiting paths (see consulting and investment banking), tech tends to mostly recruit later in the year (March and April) due to a lack of future visibility in resourcing requirements at many companies. Many students may take this to mean that if they want to recruit in tech they can wait until January or February to start looking for a role, but it is quite the opposite. Tech, as much as any other industry, requires building relationships with potential future employers. Many of the Tuck panelists we spoke with mentioned the need of doing this early in the academic year and nurturing those relationships throughout the year. A great way to build relationships is to offer up your services to some of the companies you want to work for; there’s simply no better interview than one where you can demonstrate your skills firsthand. Another great way to network is to get in front of your potential employer early and often, which leads to the next takeaway…
If you want to be in Silicon Valley, then be in Silicon Valley. If you are looking to recruit in tech (and want to be in the Bay Area) it is very likely you will be travelling there often, especially if you want to work at a smaller firm or a startup. As you will learn during your time at Tuck, most second-years don’t actually start their post-MBA jobs until three to six months after graduation. Those wanting to work in tech often forgo job offers in other areas and simply move out to the Bay Area after graduation to spend that transition time finding their perfect role as opposed to having it lined up ahead of time. We heard about this firsthand from Maggie Misztal T’14, who, having interned in corporate strategy, decided that what she really wanted was a job that combined health care and technology and that also made the world a better place. She knew she wanted to be in the Bay Area and spent countless hours nurturing relationships with contacts (both Tuckies and non-Tuckies) to land her perfect role. Aside from the networking aspect, the Bay Area offers opportunities that simply don’t exist everywhere. John Gronberg T’11 discussed the startup he helped found, which was very quickly (though not necessarily in tech-industry terms) acquired by Yahoo through a social interaction his team had with some other folks in the industry. Both of these examples also point to awareness of what is going on in tech, which leads to my final point…
Be Tech Conscious. At Google, we learned that when it comes to MBA hires, the company is looking for people who have both a passion for and knowledge of the tech industry. This was a theme we heard about time and time again from both Tuckies and non-Tuckies alike that we spoke with on the trek. Isabella Liu, a T’15 who is interning for Intel, mentioned the importance of getting better acquainted with programming languages, specifically SQL, which is becoming more and more important when dealing with Big Data given that Excel is no longer adequate. At OpenTable, we heard about the importance of design thinking, which was echoed by Maggie Misztal, who recommended that we take a design class at Dartmouth. Lastly, simply being up to date on the major trends in the industry is extremely important as it gives you topics to discuss in both networking situations and interviews. Some examples of ways to do so include subscribing to Tech Crunch, Bay Area Tech Wire, and VentureBeat, or simply creating Google alerts for companies you are interested in. Many times, your best way to start a conversation with an alum will come through an article you see about their company. To paraphrase a recruiter from Google, the more you are aware of what is happening in the tech space, the better you will be able to identify what you’re passionate about and the easier it will be to convince a potential employer that they need to hire you.
To sum it up, after four days of presentations, dinners, winery tours, and networking with Tuck alums, it is clear that the Bay Area is a thriving place for innovation, intelligent people, and entrepreneurial endeavors (both within large companies and small startups). There are a multitude of roles available to MBA grads in product management, sales, marketing, strategy, and analytics, to name a few—all of which you will undoubtedly hear much more about during tech club meetings and company presentations during the beginning of your first year. Many of my fellow boot campers and I came away with a much better understanding of what a job in tech would look like and the best way to get there. I have no doubt that this type of trip will catch on and continue year after year, perhaps even in other industry areas.