New Transportation Industry Jobs Emerge for B-School Grads
There’s no getting around the fact that car culture is the primary means by which Americans get around. While it is highly unlikely that this culture will disappear altogether, many factors including electric and hybrid vehicles, rideshare programs like Uber and Lyft, improved mass transit, and far-flung projects like Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, suggest transportation will change dramatically in the not-too-distant future.
MBAs would do well to take note of the many opportunities embedded in the transportation industry.
Corporate Development and Global M&A – Analyst — General Motors
General Motors is the largest automotive manufacturer in the United States. Traditionally known as one of the Big Three car companies—the other two are Ford and Fiat Chrysler—General Motors’ best-known brands in the United States are Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac.
General Motors is hiring a Corporate Development and Global M&A – Analyst to work at either its headquarters in Detroit, Michigan, or its offices in Bupyeong, Korea. The person hired for this position will join the company’s Corporate Development and Global M&A team, which is tasked with developing methods to deliver on corporate strategy. Some of the team’s areas of focus are alliance management, new business development, and corporate and regional strategic initiatives. This job requires at least three years of prior relevant experience, and an MBA is preferred.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading business case development for deals
- Supporting transaction execution
- Managing post-transaction partner relationships
To learn more about this and other jobs, please visit the General Motors career page.
Associate Director — BP
BP is a global energy firm that employs 75,000 people across 80 countries. The company covers all aspects of the energy market, from drilling and refining to trading and renewable energy.
BP is looking for more MBA talent to join its Houston team.
BP is hiring an Associate Director who will work from its office in Houston, Texas. The person hired in this position will be working as part of a team that provides bespoke energy risk management services and solutions to clients. The hiree will serve oil and gas producers, refiners, and airlines, among other corporate and financial parties. This job requires at least five years of relevant prior experience, and an MBA is preferred.
Key responsibilities include:
- Identifying possible transactions
- Delivering gross margin targets and business returns
- Managing various financial relationships
Visit the BP website to learn more about this positions and other employment opportunities.
Sr. Inventory Control Analyst — Tesla
Based in Fremont, California, Tesla is a major leader in the transition to sustainable energy. Although it is best known for its cars, the company also produces a variety of energy storage and generation units, including the Powerwall, Powerpack, and Solar Roof.
Tesla is hiring for a Sr. Inventory Control Analyst who will be based in its Fremont headquarters. The person hired to this position will be responsible for keeping an eye on the company’s inventory, ensuring its accuracy and maintaining an appropriate balance. The best candidates for this position will have at least five years of previous relevant experience. The company prefers candidates who possess an MBA.
Key responsibilities include:
- Monitoring inventory accuracy to enable reviews by senior management
- Reviewing inventory reconciliations
- Supporting the implementation of policies that ensure accurate inventory tracking
Visit the Tesla website to learn about this position and others.
Global Revenue Management Center of Excellence Advisor — ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil is a major player in the global petrochemical industry. The company plays a role in all aspects of the energy chain, from mining and refining to marketing and retail through its brands (Exxon, Mobil, Esso).
ExxonMobil is hiring a Global Revenue Management Center of Excellent Advisor who will work out of the company’s office in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas. The person hired to this position will be responsible for many things, including ensuring the delivery of effective revenue management processes and frameworks for the lubricants value chain. This job requires prior relevant experience, and an MBA is preferred.
Key responsibilities include:
- Contributing to revenue management objectives and strategies
- Analyzing market influences to develop optimal decision-making and business improvement recommendations
- Establishing an analytics work plan
More information about this job and others can be found at the ExxonMobil website.
Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship Startup Challenge Winner Revealed
The 2018-19 Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship Startup Challenge took place on May 3 with 27 teams from across Penn to compete for a chance to win $135,000 in cash and prizes. Eliot Ingram, who has more than 21 years of experience in MBA admissions and is the founder of Clear Admit, headed out to Wharton’s Huntsman’s Hall to experience the event first hand.
Here’s what his experience was like.
Choosing the Finalists
The morning was taken up by 27 semi-finalist teams presenting in front of a panel of judges. From there, the teams were narrowed down to eight finalists who would present in the afternoon. When Ingram arrived at 1:30 p.m., he was just in time to hear the final pitches. Each team was given about six minutes to present and then had about 12 minutes to answer questions from four judges, all of whom had experience as venture capitalists.
Team Presentations
According to Ingram, the teams gave high-quality presentations. Compared to other early-stage investor conferences, Igram felt these teams were competitive, and it was clear Penn Startup venture did a great job coaching each team through the process.
“They each did a great job of conveying the key parts of an investor pitch,” he said. “In addition, the management teams seemed to be a good fit for the business ideas they were presenting. Furthermore, each of the teams did a good job of answering the questions posed by the judges.”
The results were especially impressive given the tight time restriction for each pitch. The teams had to choose what to focus on and make a good argument all in six minutes. Most teams focused on the market size, problem, their solution, and why their team had a competitive advantage rather than financial projection or exit strategies, which must have been a deliberate decision.
The Eight Competitors
- Aerate: Aerate is an innovative air conditioning unit that is 20 times more efficient than current air conditioners. Given the vast market for air conditioning, the rising middle class in India, and the harm that current air conditioners do to the environment, they offered a compelling, scalable tech solution that met a broad market while limiting the environmental impact (team members: Spencer Collins, Jake Fine, Ashwin Kishen, Yann Pfitzer, Conner Sendel, Sam Weintraub).
- Strella Biotech: Strella Biotech offers an innovative and patented way to help fruit packers minimize food waste and maximize produce quality. They do this by using biosensors that measure the ethylene in fruit in order to determine which fruit is ripe and needs to be taken out of the warehouse and sold in the market (team members: Katherine Sizov, Malika Shukurova, Reginald Lamaute, Zuyang Liu).
- Minimize: Minimize is a wearable device that counteracts hand tremors using the same technology that allows buildings to survive earthquakes. It can reduce tremors by up to 95 percent for Essential Tremor and Parkinson Disease patients (team member: Maanav Narula).
- Halo: Halo is a digital monitor attached to taxis or Uber/Lyft cars, which allows advertisers to offer location-enabled digital ads while providing the driver with incremental revenue (team members: Kenan Saleh, Faizan Bhatty, Nabeel Farooqi, Ryanne Fadel).
- Clove: Clove is a shoe design company that creates a shoe customized for health care professionals who spend a lot of time on their feet walking around. Their idea is to build a brand in the health care industry and have brand devotion be the key barrier to entry (team members: Joe Ammon, Jordyn Amoroso, Paula Belatti).
- #PeriodPainFree: #PeriodPainFree offers a women’s health solution based on Chinese herbal medicine and modern technology. It’s a personalized solution to help the 80 percent of women who experience period pains (team members: Lulu Ge, Nicole Glathe).
- Aavrani: Aavrani offers a premium skincare product line inspired by India’s ancient beauty rituals. One of the team members had experience growing a skin care product line from $3 million to $50 million, so they had the expertise needed to deliver clean, non-toxic products. (Team members: Rooshy Roychoudhury, Justin Silver, Nina Davuluri)
- Sigo Insurance: Sigo Insurance offers an auto insurance product tailored for non-traditional or high-risk customers. The company brings the insurance process online to reduce operating costs and remove predatory fees (team members: Nestor Hugo Solari, Julio Erdos).
Long Day
Eight pitches over 2.5 hours is a lot of information over a long time, which was challenging to handle and remain engaged.
“To be honest, while all of the presentations were quite good, after about an hour of listening to three pitches, my mind was getting fatigued with the amount of information being presented,” Ingram remembers. “In fact, I think that the first three teams had a decided advantage in terms of maintaining audience interest, particularly since the first team that presented won first place and the second team that presented won 2nd place.”
The Winners
Seniors Ashwin Kishen, Connor Sendel, and the rest of the Aerate team #Penn19
After all the finalists presented, the judges met for about an hour to decide on the conference winners. During this time, the presenters and the attendees enjoyed booths in the conference hall, a few speeches, as well as a people’s choice voting on the eight finalists. As part of this process, the same eight teams each gave a one-minute elevator pitch in front of the audience.
The winners were:
- Aerate: Grand Prize, Blank Award Winner, Gloeckner Undergraduate Award Winner, & People’s Choice Award Winner
- Strella Biotech: Runner-Up
- Minimize: Innovation Award
- Halo: Launch Award
Overall, Ingram was quite impressed with the high quality of the teams and their presentations.
“There are clearly some talented innovators within the Penn student community,” Ingram says. “In addition, it’s clear that the Penn Start Up Business Plan competition did a good job of helping these teams refine their pitches and getting them ready to meet with investors.”
This Penn entrepreneurship article has been edited and republished with permissions from its original source, Clear Admit.
Improved Candidates, Working in Puerto Rico, and More – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week.
Take 5: Tips for Widening — and Improving — Your Candidate Pool – Kellogg Insight
Northwestern Kellogg Associate Professor of Management and Organizations Lauren Rivera and Professor of Finance Paola Sapienza recently published new research that offers discrete advice on how to “widen the talent pool, whether by uncovering your own hiring biases or by turning your sights to often-overlooked candidates.”
1. Be Aware of Biases
According to the article, “Even when we set out to hire on the basis of merit, hidden biases can get in the way. Being aware of those can help us not only act more fairly, but also make the best business decisions.” For instance, “Hiring managers also tend to look for a sense of personal connection with an applicant — with upper-class interviewers generally preferring candidates with similar pedigrees, whether they realize it or not.”
2. Think Small Specialist
According to the article, the late professor of management and organizations Keith Murnighan “found evidence of a bias towards generalists over specialists because hiring managers tend to look for one employee at a time — rather than hire an entire team all at once — it’s hard for them to see exactly which specialists they need.”
Murnighan wrote, “Look at the interactions from a distance and say, ‘What is it that I need to change? What do I know that I’m too close to the process to really see?’”
3. Look to Local Talent
Professors Rivera and Sapienza encourage companies to focus on hiring local talent so “reps are able to build solid relationships with their accounts.” In other words, “firms whose success depends on establishing themselves as a “local” brand should consider the importance of thinking — and hiring — locally.”
4. Value Veterans
Many companies overlook veterans as viable candidates, which is a shame because the military “fosters collaboration, adaptability, leadership, selflessness, and many other qualities that make veterans invaluable in the business world. The article cites research from Kellogg finance professors Efraim Benmelech and Carola Frydman who found that “firms run by CEOs with military experience performed better under pressure than those run by other CEOs.” They also found that “CEOs with a military background were up to 70 percent less likely to engage in corporate fraud compared to their civilian-only peers.”
5. Consider the Ex-Offender
Another population that job searches tend to neglect is ex-offenders. According to the article, “Many employers are reluctant to hire people with criminal records, assuming that they possess fewer skills, are more likely to behave unethically in the workplace, or both.”
“Not only can doing so save money on turnover costs, but from a societal level, it also can help keep ex-offenders from going to jail again.
Research from professor of managerial economics and decision sciences Nicola Persico, finds that “ex-offenders who do get hired are no more likely to be fired than non-offenders — and are about 13 percent less likely to quit, resulting in lower turnover costs for the companies that hire them.”
You can read the rest of the article here.
Testing the Waters: How a Team of MBA Students Put Their Business Skills to Work in Puerto Rico – Mendoza Ideas & News
Notre Dame MBA candidate Corey Waldrep ’19 samples the result of a low-cost water filtration kit in Puerto Rico. On the right is dirty, debris-filled water and on the left is filtered water. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)
Last month, Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business MBA students and former military veterans Tyler Shields, Luke Wilson, Dan Weathers, Corey Waldrep, and Robert (R.J.) Dulin, as well as advisor Andrew Wendelborn, traveled to Puerto Rico as part of nonprofit Waves for Water’s initiative to provide global access to clean water in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, whose 175 mph winds “destroyed more than 80 percent of the island’s power lines and left 3.4 million Americans in the dark” last September.
According to the article, the objectives of project were for “students to gather and utilize important demographic data; gain first-hand experience in working with an NGO partner to provide crisis support; learn a model for creating self-sustaining practices for local populations; and become immersed in best practices for working with indigent populations with dignity, equality and compassion.”
Shields writes, “A lot of what we did over there in Puerto Rico was so-called guerrilla humanitarianism. You don’t necessarily know where the need is or what the need is. You just know that there is a need.”
You can read more from the article here.
As Uber, Lyft Eye Public Offerings, Gies Professor Says Clock Could Work to Smaller Rival’s Advantage – Gies College of Business News
University of Illinois Gies College of Business Clinical Assistant Professor of Finance Rob Metzger took to the blog to offer his expertise drawn from 20 years in investment banking on whether Lyft or Uber should go public first.
According to the article, Uber’s $120 billion IPO is more likely to go public first in late 2019. But Lyft’s roughly $15 billion IPO could beat them to the punch in spring of 2019.
Metzger writes, “I think the Lyft team feels that, even though they’re significantly smaller, they believe that their financial metrics are better, their operating metrics are better, and they haven’t had some of the negative press that Uber has had.
“So [Lyft] may want to be out on the forefront to tell that story, as opposed to being in Uber’s shadow.”
Telecommuting and the Gig Economy, and More – New York City News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from New York business schools this week.
The Changing Workplace – Lehigh College of Business and Economics News
The Lehigh College of Business and Economics recently published an overview of the impact that telecommuting continues to have on the future of work—and the surging gig economy.
“With email, instant messaging, smartphones, Skype for Business, Webex, and other connecting technologies, more and more companies are allowing their employees to work from home—even if home is a thousand miles from the corporate headquarters.”
Case in point: Vermont Department of Economic Development’s recent announcement that it would give $10,000 cash to anyone who wanted to move to the Green Mountain State and work remotely.
Ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft, as well as platforms like Upwork, which connect organizations and freelancers, depend on the flexible schedules of side-hustlers and entrepreneurs alike.
Lehigh Associate Professor of Management Naomi Rothman writes, “Being able to work from home for periods of time to care for children could enable more women to stay in the workforce and advance. If we have these issues of women not being able to make it to the upper echelons of corporate America, part of that reason is they are having work/life-balance issues.”
She adds, “Flexibility is one of the most important and critical solutions in helping dual-career families. In families in which you have two professions with both parents working, issues of child care become a fundamental problem. Flexibility is one thing that parents say allows them to keep their careers on track.”
Lehigh Professor of Management Andrew Ward predicts that the larger economy will more closely resemble the structure of the motion picture industry.
“When a movie is [green lit] by a studio, they bring together hundreds, even thousands, of workers—from the director and stars to the gaffers and the gofers—to make the movie. Once the film is done, they all move on to other projects. Some continue to work together on various projects, sometimes at the same studio, but many do not.”
You can read the full Lehigh College of Business and Economics News article here.
Consulting Challenge Win Leads to Hubble Contacts Concept Trial – Gabelli Connect
The Fordham University Gabelli School of Business recently published an overview of a recent student collaboration with Hubble Contacts’ co-CEO and co-founder Jesse Horwitz and Director of Internal Operations Barbara Almeida, MBA ’17.
Hubble Contacts, a “direct-to-consumer online marketplace for contact lens subscriptions,” is interested in finding new ways to reach consumers and increase revenue.
Joanne Ball, MBA ’20, and her team of students (Andrew Clark, Oliver Flynn, Sandeep Jacob, and Jessica Nebbeling) devised a campus pop-up shop that “would offer free eye exams and a student discount … to allow them to create a physical presence for their online DTC brand and also engage their target at a younger age segment.”
You can read the full piece from Gabelli Connect here.
Binghamton University Unveils New Master of Science in Data Analytics Program – Binghamton SOM Blog
Binghamton SOM announced a new 1-year, 30-credit Master of Science in Data Analytics (MSDA), the result of a cross-disciplinary partnership with Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences.
The MSDA, which qualifies as a STEM degree, will give students a “comprehensive foundation in data analytics, while also giving them confidence in the analytical, quantitative, technical and leadership skills needed for successful careers in data analysis.”
MSDA Program Director and Binghamton SOM Professor of Marketing Manoj Agarwal writes, “With three schools behind the curriculum of the program, we believe a multidisciplinary approach will produce successful, multidisciplinary graduates who can face the unstructured data challenges of the future.”
The first MSDA cohort is due to kick off July 2019.
Click here to find out more about the Binghamton 30-credit Master of Science in Data Analytics program.
Haas Sharing Economy Study Explores How Manufacturers Can Adapt
New working research from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley suggests that the sharing economy might actually be more beneficial to manufacturers than previously thought.
Getting Paid: Highest MBA Salaries in San Francisco
San Franciso means many things to many people. Equal parts counter-cultural mecca, ground zero tech hub, haven for diversity, and real estate development nightmare, SF conjures images of Silicon Valley introverts and Haight-Ashbury hippies, as well as the high-earning Facebook employees who displace them.
