Welcome back. After a 3-week break, we have returned to the classroom to being our Spring Semester. I’ll have many different topics to write about, but for now, all anyone can talk about is the economy coming into 2009. The outgoing class faces perhaps the most difficult job market we’ve faced in half a century.
While I was home, I sat down with a friend’s father who has been the CEO of two major companies. He told me: “Ryan, I’ve never seen a situation like this, where companies are just completely hunkering down, freezing benefits, freezing raises, not hiring, and just not making decisions. Everyone is simply trying to weather the storm.”
That pretty much sums up the situation we’re left in. Just this week, we received an announcement from our Career Resources office that the annual joint job fair between NCSU, UNC, Duke and Wake Forest had been cancelled due to a lack of companies registering for the fair. Obviously, this isn’t the kind of news MBA students who are seeking jobs and internships want to hear.
In addition to the rough news faced by current students, prospective students are also facing a tough environment. Almost every major business school in America and abroad has seen a spike in applications. People are wanting to seek refuge from the horrific job market by returning to graduate school, and they’re coming back in droves.
Needless to say, this will be a topic I’ll be following closely this year.
In my last post I provided a link to the overview of the different concentrations NCSU’s program offers. Instead of reviewing each of the concentrations, which you can do at the website, I’d rather take the time to offer a rationale for my two choices: Supply Chain Management and Marketing.
I knew from the moment I came into the program that I wanted to double concentrate in order to expose myself to both sides of an organization: production and commercial. Concentrating in SCM and Marketing will give me that experience.
The Supply Chain Management program at NC State is consistently recognized as one of the top SCM/logistics programs in the country. Additionally, managers with Supply Chain experience are in high demand in today’s business environment, particularly in the energy and biopharma sectors. But I also want to overlay knowledge of the production side with knowledge of the commercial side, hence the choice to add the Marketing concentration.
When I graduate, I’d like to begin my career in one of two directions. First, I could see myself in Product Management, which requires direct interaction with supply and commercial departments in an organization. I could also see myself in Corporate Business Development, which requires a fundamental grasp of innovation techniques, production capabilities and market positioning that comprise an organization’s overall strategy.
