Top MBA Recruiters: Slack
In a job landscape continually dominated by newer tech companies, many MBAs have chosen a tech-focused specialty in their future career plans. Among the companies with the greatest need for MBA talent are those that are in growth stages. Founders of startups or early stage ventures are not always certain of how to manage the finer points of finance, marketing, project management, and accounting. As they grow, so does their need for strong MBA candidates to attend to these details.
Tech companies specializing in cloud-based collaboration software are always on the hunt for new talent. Slack, Inc., for example, is a leader in a growing field of these communication tools, and its popularity is soaring. Here is a look at how and why a Slack career might be a wise front-runner on your job wish list.
The History of Slack, Inc.
Founded in 2013, Slack is still a relatively young company. Its recent acquisition of the assets of Atlassian’s enterprise communication tools in 2018 speak to its prevalence. With Slack, employees can chat with one another and form discussions around topics and groups, all with the goal of making connection with your peers easier and more direct. All chats are searchable which makes for a dynamic storage system for companies of all sizes.
Seeking a Slack Internship?
On its University Recruitment site, Slack boasts that joining “fosters curiosity and celebrates creativity in an effort to help everyone—here at Slack and around the world—do their best work,” (which incidentally is one of the company’s motto’s.) By assigning interns to project teams that tackle real assignments, Slack prepares future employees for life at the company. Internships take place over a 12 or 16-week session during the summer or fall, with application deadlines in May and August. If an application is accepted, Slack offers a phone or video interview along with a take-home assignment before coming to a decision.
Those looking for an internship in the tech world should seek out Slack’s San Francisco headquarters.
Each intern is guided by a mentor, and can connect with executives and team leaders on a daily basis. Outside of the office responsibilities, Slack offers interns volunteer opportunities and networking as you build your resume. Currently, Slack’s San Francisco headquarters is seeking a Sales Strategy Intern. Ideally, candidates for the position will possess several years of prior management consulting experience, and will receive their MBA in 2020.
Applying for a Slack Career
One of Slack’s greatest assets is its diversity. According to a recent article in The Atlantic, “Slack has been outperforming other Silicon Valley companies, [in diversity of its workforce]. At Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, women hold between 19 percent and 28 percent of leadership positions … At Slack, women make up 31 percent of leaders and hold 34 percent of technical roles. Also … percentages of underrepresented minorities … are, in some cases, triple that of peer companies.”
This alone makes a Slack career appealing, but additional benefits are numerous. The company gives each employee $500 a year toward personal development, and $2000 annually toward professional development. One hundred percenter of health care expenses are covered for employees and their families, and $150 per month reimbursement for fitness/wellness memberships. Slack gives its workers “generous parental and new child bonding leave”.
Massage therapy, catered lunch and breakfast, game nights, and a ‘meeting-light’ culture round out the list of the company’s appealing perks.
Currently, there are close to 200 open positions at Slack both in the U.S. and abroad. Here is a look at just a few.
San Francisco
- Business Intelligence – Marketing and Business Intelligence – Product
- Data Scientists for Lifecycle and Product
- Corporate Development Manager
- Business Development Manager – Platform
- Various Accountancy Positions
New York City
- Business Intelligence Analyst, Product
- Sales Operations, Deal Strategy Lead
Denver
- Senior Systems Analyst
- Sales Operations, Senior Commissions Analyst
In Tokyo, Slack is seeking a Partner Manager, Systems Integrator Alliances along with a Head of Enterprise Marketing. In London, there is an open position for a Senior Analyst Relations Manager, and the Dublin office is in search of Accountant, along with a Customer Experience Specialist.
Slack Career Salaries
According to data gathered by Paysa, Slack’s San Francisco office pays an average of $183,997 per year. This falls within a range of $126,305 to $222,941. A breakdown of the average is as follows: $132,038 base salary; $34,566 in equity; $17,392 annual bonus, and a $9,641 signing bonus. For specific positions more in-line with MBA talent, a senior marketing manager earns an average base salary of $108,000
For a full listing of Slack’s current open positions along with application instructions, visit the careers site.
Penn State Smeal Director of Admissions Answers 5 Burning MBA Questions
In our latest installment of the MetroMBA “5 Questions” series, we speak with Michael Waldhier, the Director of Admissions at Penn State University’s Smeal College of Business. Waldhier talks about the close-knit, collaborative community at Smeal, his alumni experience, and the many activities, clubs, and opportunities available for students. He also shares about the 150-year-old Penn State Berkey Creamery—excuse us while we go grab some ice cream!
Michael Waldhier, Director of Admissions at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business
1. What is the Smeal College of Business’ greatest asset and what do you wish MBA students knew more about?
“Rather than discussing our #1 ranking in supply chain management or the fact that Penn State has the largest active alumni network in the country, I honestly think our greatest asset is our class—specifically the individual, tightly-knit, collaborative atmosphere that exists in our MBA program. We only accept 60 students per year in the resident MBA program, which allows for an unparalleled amount of interaction within the cohort, and ensures that faculty and staff build strong, personal relationships with everyone in the class.”
2. What makes the Smeal College of Business a special place for you?
“In addition to being Director of Admissions, I am also an alum of the Smeal MBA program, and remain extremely close to most of my classmates and many of the professors who still teach in the program today. After graduation, I was fortunate to land a principal role in strategy consulting and had the wonderful opportunity to travel extensively over the course of my career. When it was time to transition to something new, returning to Penn State, to ‘Happy Valley,’ and to Smeal was an easy decision for my family to make. This program had an enormous positive impact on my life and set me on the path to success, and I can’t think of any better way to pay it forward to future generations of Smeal MBAs than to be where I am today.”
3. How would you describe the culture of the Smeal College of Business? Is it more collaborative or competitive?
“As mentioned, given the small size of our MBA community and the amount of teamwork that is required throughout the experience, our program is extremely collaborative, so much so that students often help each other to broaden networks, land internships and jobs, and even study for exams. We put a lot of emphasis upon collaboration and teamwork, and students will recognize each other for positive contributions to the program that are aligned with the Penn State Values of integrity, responsibility, excellence, respect, discovery, and, of course, community.”
4. How does Smeal help MBA students pursue their special interests?
“While the MBA program itself may be very small in size, Penn State University is one of the largest in the nation, and there are activities and special interest clubs and groups for virtually everyone. Within the MBA program, we have numerous clubs and associations for students to join such as the MBA Association, Consulting Club, Net Impact, Finance Association, Military and Veterans MBA Association, and more. In addition, students have access to courses across the university if they want to explore a topic outside of the core Finance, Marketing, Supply Chain, and Consulting concentrations. To that end, we have packaged optional programs of study in nearly 20 topic areas, with more being added each year. This allows students the flexibility to customize their MBA experience and pursue just the right mix of coursework to satisfy any career or personal interest.”
5. What is your favorite part of the Penn State campus?
“There are a plethora of wonderful hiking and biking trails in the mountains surrounding Penn State, but the Arboretum is a special place where one can walk through gardens inspired by cultures across the world and study or relax amidst fountains and koi ponds,” Waldhier says.
A lot of people will talk about the Penn State Berkey Creamery, which has been making ice cream for over 150 years, or Beaver Stadium, one of the largest college football stadiums in the United States, but one of my favorite places on campus is the Penn State Arboretum. There are a plethora of wonderful hiking and biking trails in the mountains surrounding Penn State, but the Arboretum is a special place where one can walk through gardens inspired by cultures across the world and study or relax amidst fountains and koi ponds. It also helps that it is right next door to the Smeal College of Business, so students frequently go there after class for team meetings or to relax and unwind after a stressful day.”
Friday News Roundup – Lehigh’s New Head of Executive Education, Ethics at VT, and More
Let’s take a look at some of the biggest stories from this week, including the all new Wharton FinTech Center.
Lehigh Announces New Head of Executive Education – Lehigh University News
Lehigh University’s College of Business and Economics has announced the appointment of Alison McGrath Peirce as Director of the Vistex Institute of Executive Education and Leadership. Her tenure began on March 18, 2019.
At her former position at Wharton Executive Education, Peirce was responsible for launching the Advanced Management Program, as well as for forming new initiatives for executive training. She then formed Magna Learning Group, a consulting practice that worked with academic and for-profit organizations on marketing and business development strategies.
After a decade of running Magna, Peirce returned to Wharton, where she worked with Financial and Professional Services Firms to develop best practices. At Lehigh, Peirce will work to foster collaboration between faculty and practitioners in developing non-credit curriculum for companies and organizations. The work of the Vistex Institute has local, regional and national reach.
Georgette Chapman Phillips, Dean of the College of Business and Economics at Lehigh, says of Peirce’s appointment, “Alison brings a depth and breadth of experience to her role as executive director of the Vistex Institute that will take our executive education program to new heights … We are proud that our program attracted such a talented leader.”
You can read more about the new executive education appointment here.
LeBow Students Meet a PR Challenge in Marketing Competition – LeBow College of Business News
Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business recently hosted a Marketing Crisis Challenge, which presented MBA and MS student teams with a real world scenario, in which their skills for strategy and problem solving were put to the test.
The hypothetical crisis involved a scenario at Talen Energy Stadium, in which a soccer fan attempts to bring a firearm into a game. The fan is prohibited from entering and is arrested, but the stadium’s marketing team must make a public statement regarding the event. The students were challenged to assess the political risk of the statement, along with the integrity of Talen’s brand. The presentation had to be completed in eight hours.
The winning team, made up of first year MBAs, presented a solution in which the organization reiterates its prohibition of guns in the stadium without taking a specific stance on the larger issue of gun control.
Talen Energy Stadium in Chester, PA, home to the Philadelphia Union MLS franchise and the site of this year’s Lebow Market Crisis Challenge.
Marianna Tretiak, a current MBA who has a background in television and film production, was part of the winning team. She says, “Early on, we came up with a one-sentence line—‘However you feel at home, guns have no place in the stadium’—and settled on that. After that it was figuring out how best to present it.”
Judges came from a wide selection of leading organizations, including: Dan Keir, Executive Director, Consumer Marketing at Comcast; Brian Papson, Vice President of Marketing at the Philadelphia Eagles; Catherine Trefz, Director of Content Marketing at Ricoh USA, Inc.; and Jeff Haas, Director of Business Strategy at Seer Interactive all weighed in upon the teams’ approaches, and decided upon this one.
The competition was hosted by the Dornsife Office for Experiential Learning. You can learn more about the challenge here.
Pamplin to Host 28th Annual Business Ethics Symposium – Pamplin College of Business Notices & News
Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business will host the Del Alamo/Hogan Symposium on Business Ethics on April 2, 2019 at Burruss Auditorium on VT’s campus.
The Virginia Tech Burruss Auditorium, which will feature the April 2 Del Alamo/Hogan Symposium on Business Ethics.
Featured speaker Leo S. Mackay Jr., a leading executive at Lockheed Martin, will discuss the importance of business ethics at all levels of professional life. Mackay serves both as Lockheed Martin’s chief audit executive and its senior vice president of internal audit, ethics, and assurance. He also heads LM Ventures, Lockheed Martin’s venture capital fund which is valued at $200 million.
April 1 will mark the beginning of Ethics Week at Pamplin, in which faculty will integrate discussion of ethics issues into their current curriculum. The symposium is in its 28th year, and it is free and open to the public.
Click here for more on the event including registration.
Columbia Business School Professor on Great Artists and Social Networks – Columbia Business School News & Releases
Professor Paul Ingram of Columbia University Business School recently published research stating social networks have more of an impact than creativity upon how much fame a person has acquired.
Ingram collaborated with Mitali Banjeree of HEC Paris on the paper, entitled “Fame as an Illusion of Creativity: Evidence from the Pioneers of Abstract Art.” Using the examples of 90 masters of abstract art such as Pablo Picasso, Banjeree and Ingram examined the social connections that strengthened the artists’ reputations and built up their level of fame.
Among the tools used to gauge relative creativity in the study were machine learning and ‘expert measures;’ both of which could not exhibit statistical success as much as the relationships that the famous artists had with their peers. According to the study, individuals with the most diverse group of friends and connections throughout diverse industries had the highest probability of becoming famous.
According to Ingram and Banjeree’s research brief, “[this] first-of-its-kind study reveals that social networks are actually a more reliable predictor of fame—even for artists who achieved critical acclaim long before the advent of Facebook and Instagram.”
Driehaus Professor Shares Expertise on Political Marketing – DePaul News & Events
DePaul University Driehaus College of Business Marketing Professor Bruce Newman, one of the world’s foremost experts on political marketing, recently participated in a discussion regarding the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.
Newman, the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Political Marketing, is a keen observer of how politicians employ the media to convey messaging and evolving trends.
“Marketing,” Newman says, “continues to be the most important medium through which a candidate has the best chance of getting elected because of the direct channel of … communication between the candidate and receiver of that information. No longer does a candidate have to get vetted by a political party. They can communicate directly to the voter.”
Bruce Newman, DePaul University Driehaus College of Business Marketing Professor, and co-author of Brand.
The rapid growth of technology and its extreme influence upon voters is a defining topic of Newman’s work. He says, “The speed at which information is conveyed … creates a crisis management mentality were campaigns are in a constant state of crises. Voters have the ability to get across their thoughts, their feelings, their instantaneous assessments and snapshots,” which greatly influences campaign outcomes.
Professor Newman is also the co-author of Brand, which explores the shifting ways in which consumers are influenced by branding and vice versa.
Booth Research Reveals Dominance of Snap Judgement, and More – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week amidst the Polar Vortex (stay warm, everyone).
Why People Make up Their Minds Sooner Than They Realize – Chicago Booth News
More information does not necessarily lead to more informed decisions. New research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business finds that people assume they can and will use more information in making decisions, despite the contrary evidence. Often, people make snap judgement without awareness and most collected information goes unused.
Ed O’Brien, Chicago Booth Associate Professor and co-author of “People Use Less Information Than They Think to Make Up Their Minds,” asserts, “In our studies, participants thought they would withhold judgment and await a lot of evidence before making up their minds but in reality, they cast judgment right when the evidence came in.”
Researchers note that the data suggests a gap between information seekers and information providers.
“For example, people who go online to research a topic or take part in a debate may only access a small fraction of what is available before making a decision while providers of that information may assume the seekers are taking in all the information and hear them ‘loud and clear.'”
You can read more about Ed O’Brien’s research here.
Why We Can’t All Get Away with Wearing Designer Clothes – Kellogg Insight
While luxury brands are a surefire way to indicate status, a new series of experiments reveal the surprising downsides of luxury consumption.
According to a new paper by Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Professor of Marketing Derek Rucker and Ph.D. candidate Christopher Cannon, luxury consumers may find themselves at a disadvantage in the hiring process. This instance is even more particular when the job involves interpersonal warmth. Rucker and Cannon’s research explores how consumers who wear luxury goods are viewed more negatively and perceived as “cold.”
Cannon notes, “We don’t find evidence in this work that the effects are driven by envy. We find evidence that luxury consumption can lead people to infer certain motives. Specifically, when people assume that someone has donned luxury goods in order to show off, this can lead them to see that person as less warm.”
Despite the obvious social appeal, Cannon and Rucker’s new research suggests that luxury brands, like Gucci, tend to create an impression that appears interpersonal.
Cannon and Rucker point out the importance of evaluating the situation before donning your Gucci. “We’ve shown situations exist where luxury consumption produces positive outcomes, such as when filling the corporate publicist role in the experiment. Rather than luxury always being good or always being bad, it depends on whether status or warmth is more important.”
You can read more about the luxury research here.
Howe Teaches Students How to be Professional Leaders – Gies School of Business News
Alan Howe (BADM ’82), a professional board director, has served across multiple industries—including enterprise software, wireless, telecom, composite materials, and IT services—specializing in “turnaround” situations. He recently returned to the University of Illinois Gies College of Business to share his expertise with the next generation of business leaders.
“I tell students that what they think they’re going to be doing in the next three years is probably radically different than what they’ll be doing in 10 to 15 years, so get ready for change. Be adaptable because you never know where the next opportunity may come from,” Howe asserts in a recent profile.
In the interview, Howe further explains what makes a great business leader:
“The best characteristic is humility. You can’t ‘big dog’ in a corporate setting or talk about how smart you are. Lead with humility. Also listen and learn from people around you.”
You can read more from the Howe interview here.
Tackling Unemployment Insurance with Google, and More – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week.
What Google Is Teaching Economists About Unemployment Insurance – Kellogg Insight
For decades, policymakers have debated whether unemployment insurance provides a critical safety net during tough times or whether it extends joblessness by reducing the incentive to find a new job.
Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Associate Professor of Finance Scott R. Baker and BU Questrom’s Andrey Fradkin used data from Google Trends to shed some light on this question by providing real-time access to millions of searches that can be aggregated across geographies.
“We realized we could look at people’s job-search habits in a way that traditional government datasets had a hard time doing,” Baker says.
Baker says the value of the Google Job Search Index extends well beyond job-search tracking. The GJSI offers new ways to forecast consumer sentiment and economic uncertainty by tracking search terms such as “recession” and “bankruptcy.”
“This approach can be really useful for policymakers because it can be much more local and granular,” Baker notes, “and they can access it without a six-month or year-long lag.”
You can learn more about the duo unemployment insurance research here.
Pioneers in Education – Chicago Booth News
Six Booth School of Business graduates hope to apply their business backgrounds and bold ideas to a variety of roles within the education sector, including nonprofit management, education consulting, investing, and education technology.
Booth MBA alum Micki O’Neil, founder of Foundations College Prep, a public charter school in Chicago’s Roseland community on the city’s south side, explains how Booth provided her with the necessary skills to handle the rigors of running a charter school. “Starting a school is a pretty all-encompassing thing. It takes leadership and entrepreneurial skills, as well as operations, marketing, and financial know-how,” she says.
“Starting a school is a pretty all-encompassing thing. It takes leadership and entrepreneurial skills, as well as operations, marketing, and financial know-how,” O’Neil says.
As the school matures into its fifth year, O’Neil finds herself reflecting on her Booth coursework as she tackles ongoing challenges, noting “when we think about designing our school and the way we are structuring our time, it is grounded in strong economic theory.”
You can read more about O’Neil’s journey here.
Gies Business Cooking Up Food Science Entrepreneurs – Gies College of Business News
The University of Illinois Gies College of Business recently partnered with the College of ACES to develop a unique collaboration in which students take a deep dive into the business strategies of food science.
“This course collaboration was a perfect opportunity to infuse entrepreneurship education with an emphasis on social purpose into an effective food product development capstone,” says Valeri Werpetinski, Associate Director for Entrepreneurial Education with the Origin Ventures Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership at Gies College of Business.
Charlie Stahursky, a senior food science major, was paired with Patryk Swietek, a senior information systems major and mentor from Gies.
“We were coming more from a science and nutrition perspective, but Patryk forced us to think about our selling points and marketability. We had to go back to the drawing board a bit to find trendy ingredients and discover what people really wanted in their food. I think that set us on track to developing a really good product.”
You can read more about the new course collaboration at Gies here.
The Northeast Region’s Top Accelerated MBAs
The numerous advantages of an accelerated MBA start with one that’s particularly appealing–low cost. And while accelerated programs are more affordable, they are by no means less valuable or challenging than two year programs. In fact, they can be quite intensive in that they allow students to leverage their undergrad business education directly to MBA studies by covering core requirements.
