New York News: How Climate Change is Effecting Your Mood, and More
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from New York City business schools this week.
Climate Change Could Explain the Personality of Your Significant Other – CBS Newsroom
New research from Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky, along with Ph.D. candidate Jackson Lu has found a curious connection between the climates to which we grew accustomed as youngsters and our dispositions.
“Ambient temperature can shape the fundamental dimensions of personality. Our research reveals a connection between the ambient temperature that individuals were exposed to when they were young and their personality today. This finding can help explain the personality differences we observe in people of different regions.”
To further study to potential climate differences, the paper’s authors conducted research in two of the world’s most densely populated and geographically large countries: the United States and China. Lu explains the results:
“Clement [mild] temperatures encourage individuals to explore the outside environment, where social interactions and new experiences abound. Venturing outdoors and interacting with lots of people make people more agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, extraverted, and open to new experiences. But when the temperature is too hot or too cold, individuals are less likely to go outside to meet up with friends or to try new activities.”
Read more about the duo’s research here.
Launching a New Alumni Initiative – Rutgers Business School
The Rutgers Business School recently launched a new Corporate Alumni Advisory Council to strengthen the engagement between its current students and RBS alumni at marquee companies like PwC, Johnson & Johnson, and Wells Fargo.
Several members of the brand new Rutgers Business School Corporate Alumni Advisory Council / Photo via RBS
“This is a very exciting initiative with huge potential for networking, lifelong learning and connecting on so many levels that can benefit our alumni, their companies and Rutgers Business School,” said Andrea Cunnell, director of alumni and corporate engagement at Rutgers Business School.
Read more about the initiative here.
Campus Recruiting Hurts Older Workers, Suit Against PricewaterhouseCoopers Claims – Wall Street Journal
In an interview with Kelsey Gee of the Wall Street Journal, NYU Stern School of Business assistant professor Michael North says that as more and more Americans over the age of 65 delay their retirement, certain corporate biases are hurting them. The result of the bias has become the basis of a lawsuit against PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Gee explains:
Attorneys for the unsuccessful candidates—men who applied to PwC dozens of times in their late 40s and early 50s—aimed to convince San Francisco District Judge Jon Tigar on Tuesday that 14,000 older workers were similarly disadvantaged by the accounting firm’s system of finding applicants at university career fairs and school-affiliated job websites, over a four-year period.
You can read more about the lawsuit here.
For the Most Complex Technology Problems, Stevens Research Turns to Nature – Stevens Institute of Technology
Data science expert Dr. Amir H Gandomi, at the Stevens Institute of Technology School of Business, has used techniques from evolutionary computation to gain insight into large-scale optimization and data-mining problems, as well as supply chain management and customer engagement and interaction.
“When you have mathematical solutions to your problems, that’s great, but real-world problems are more complex — they’re nonlinear, mixed variables, large scale, sometimes black box. In these cases, these kinds of algorithms are flexible and adaptable enough to help you find answers.”
Read more about about Dr. Gandomi’s innovative research here.
Stevens Alum Takes Disruptive FinTech Lessons Back Home to Brazil
ZeroBeta founder Rodrigo Silva Cosme, a MS ’16 Stevens Institute of Technology’s School of Business graduate, recently returned to his alma mater to present his master’s thesis, explaining how machine learning can apply to financial markets.
Cosme, who was invited by Professor Khaldoun Khashanah, explains; “The world is getting more automated, more efficient, more intelligent, and finance is no different. You need complete professionals who know how to code and also can handle the financial side of the business and implement solutions.” Cosme, who arrived in the United States with a “lifetime fascination with financial markets,” believes people who choose to trade by themselves can’t do it optimally.
Rodrigo Silva Cosme delivers his thesis at a recent Bloomberg conference at Stevens/Photo via Stevens.
The São Paulo-based ZeroBeta is a unicorn of sorts in the Brazilian market, which “lacks the liquidity that allows for more diversified risk in investment strategies.” The startup leverages algorithmic trading and portfolio optimization techniques to “build smarter strategies for trading.
Cosme continues, saying, “Instead of working for [hedge fund managers], we trade with them—we develop the strategies for the accounts, we make the trading decisions, and they do the commercial side of the business, getting customers and raising capital.”
Cosme attributes ZeroBeta’s success largely to the first-hand exposure he received at Stevens to the myriad ways that finance and technology can intersect. “What I do at my job, every day, is what I learned at Stevens — from trading option spreads, to coding through C++ design patterns, to portfolio rebalancing. If you’re not able to find the answers with the kind of resources Stevens has, you can’t find them anywhere.”
Stevens Lecture Encourages Employees to Take Life and Career Into Their Own Hands
When it comes to relationships between employees and their employers, a lacking connection often means workers must do more for their own future, says Fran Dramis, who recently spoke at the Stevens Institute of Technology’s School of Business.
Dramis, a former leader at financial institutions like Salomon Brothers, CitiBank, BellSouth, and Coopers & Lybrand, explained that the lack of a meaningful social contract between corporations and employees means that workers must be strategic about their own job security.
“How do you make it so unintended consequences become intended? When the downsizing happens, the people who get eliminated are the support people, not the strategic people. Your job as a leader is to make your organization and your employees strategic. Don’t go to work someplace that doesn’t offer you that, or you’ll be the first to be laid off,” he explains.
As the CIO at BellSouth, Dramis retention strategy was to give employees “life security,” as opposed to job security. “You have to increase their marketability, help them learn new skills. If you give someone life security, they’ll stay with you.”
Stevens Professor and information systems expert Michael Parfett worked under Dramis in a few different positions over the years. In his introduction, Parfett praised Dramis’ “life security” approach. “He kept asking me if I was updating my résumé. No other boss has ever asked me to do that. People do that when they’re getting ready to leave. In his book, it’s part of his technique — he gives you the ability to leave, but you don’t want to.”
Dramis concluded his talk with some words that he hoped might light a fire under future MBAs. “We’re rapidly moving to a digital society, where the interaction between business processes and digital enhancement is creating incredible opportunities. No company will hire you and tell you you’ll be there for the next 30 years. You have to take responsibility for your own life security.”
New Stevens Research Explores Impact of Paid Family Leave
Often “derided as costly giveaways,” the Stevens Institute of Technology looked deeper into the economic benefits of paid family leave policies, finding a fairly surprising positive effect across the board.
Stevens Associate Industry Professor Dr. Joelle Saad-Lessler and economist Kate Bahn surveyed paid family leave policies in California by looking at SIPP data from 2001, 2004, and 2008, which “gathers information on people who provide regular unpaid care or assistance to a family member or friend who has a long-term illness or a disability.” At 6 weeks of partially paid leave, California remains only one of two states, along with New Jersey, to adopt and implement such a program.
Dr. Saad-Lessler explains that that the only federal policy on the books regarding leave—signed by President Clinton in 1993—stipulates that employees are entitled to 12 weeks’ unpaid leave. But there’s a vocal consensus about the need for access to paid leave, particularly with an increased aging population. “Access to paid leave is a crucial part of the ability to care for one’s own family beyond the immediate need to take time off with a new child,” they say.
Saad-Lessler and Bahn’s research, which was funded by the Center for American Progress, explored how young women’s wages were affected when new mothers and caregivers took leave. The researchers found that labor force participation increased 8 percent in the short term and 14 percent in the long run. While there was a decline in full-time work, as workers took advantage of being able to transition to part-time roles without losing access to paid leave, the notion of a mass workforce exodus “would be a crushing economic blow.”
Dr. Saad-Lessler concludes, “We have hit a threshold where families cannot manage their careers and their caregiving responsibilities without adequate work-life policy, including paid family and medical leave. As our results show, when families do have access, they are able to increase their labor force participation.”
Stevens Hosts Lecture That Explores Morality of Artificial Intelligence
Fear of artificial intelligence is as real as Ryan Gosling’s smooth, calming skin in Blade Runner 2049. But is our future really doomed to despair because of sensual robots? Dr. Oren Etzioni recently spoke of the prognostication, as part of the Stevens Institute of Technology‘s President’s Distinguished Lecture Series (PDLS).
How An MBA Degree Can Land You a Job at Pfizer
MBA grads looking to make headway in an ever-expanding field with massive growth potential should look no further than healthcare and pharmaceuticals. There’s a reason more and more business school graduates have begun to pursue pharma over more tried-and-true post-MBA paths like real estate, consulting, and finance: the pharma industry offers a myriad of opportunities. There’s an almost inexhaustible supply of interesting problems to solve while earning boast-worthy salaries.
When it comes to major industry players, Pfizer is one of the undisputed global pharmaceutical leaders. Many of its products have burrowed their way into popular consciousness—both figuratively and literally. Lipitor, Viagra, Zoloft, Xanax, Advil, ChapStick, Preparation H, and Robitussin are iconic brands unto themselves.
Below, we’ll take a deeper look into exactly how MBAs can gain a foothold at Pfizer.
Why Do MBAs Love Pfizer?
Pfizer’s name brand recognition just so happens to correlate with a stellar internal reputation among employees, both past and present. Forbes, Fortune, LinkedIn, CareerBliss all consistently rank Pfizer as one of the happiest, most employee-centric, and/or most in-demand employers in the American pharma space.
In an interview with the Stevens Institute of Technology blog, Pfizer Senior QA Manager Bill Mestrandrea, a Stevens MBA alum, spoke of the deep camaraderie that he has with his fellow MBAs at Pfizer, comparing it to a “band of brothers.”
He elaborates: “We’re all in it together. I’ve met people from other departments who my work influences, and they’ve influenced my work as well. It gave me a better understanding of the network within Pfizer, and how it all comes together to form one company, always working in support of our patients.”
An anonymous former Pfizer employee took to Glassdoor to extol the company’s virtues: “If you can keep up with the fast pace and are not overly sensitive, Pfizer is a great to work. Everyday is an adventure and the benefits are excellent.” An anonymous Technical Specialist in the New York branch lauded Pfizer’s “great gym, clinic, cafeteria, and day care” in a Forbes profile.
Payscale reports that MBAs earn an average starting salary of around $121,000. Pfizer prides itself on a competitive compensation and benefits package that rewards employees “based on the contributions they make to [the] business.”
The company offers a number of in-house health and wellness programs, including health and disability insurance, medical screening, free or reduced-cost vaccinations, discounts on Pfizer products, and nutrition and fitness counseling. As part of the benefits package, Pfizer also offers access to colleague-directed retirement funds, company contributions to retirement financial vehicles, life insurance, and financial planning education.
Working at Pfizer
If there’s a common thread that runs through day-to-day life for all MBA grads at Pfizer, no matter their function, it’s that they’re all expected to move quickly and keep up with the constant demand. Pfizer is sympathetic and has sought out solutions to help acclimate first-year MBAs—namely, its Summer Associate Program, which has placed alum in full-time roles for the past 15 years.
Pfizer’s 10-12 week Summer Associate Program recruits and provides “first-year MBA students from top-ranked business schools … with a variety of unique experiences that will serve to develop and broaden critical skill sets and competencies as they progress their development towards leadership roles within Pfizer.”
Students are assigned challenging projects within Consumer Marketing, Corporate Audit, Corporate Finance, Global Procurement, Pfizer Consulting & Execution, and Pharmaceutical Marketing. By the end, Summer Associates “gain a wealth of valuable industry knowledge, networking opportunities, and life experiences.”
According to Pfizer, “MBA Summer Associates receive an industry competitive salary, housing support options and the prospect of conversion to a full-time opportunity upon the completion of their MBA degree.”
Jane Scholl (Columbia Business School ’12), whose healthcare resume stemmed from a desire to “improve the lives of others,” discussed the way her 2012 internship led to a position with the Marketing Rotational Program the following year:
“Though I only spent three months with Pfizer during the summer, I was treated as a valued member of the team rather than an intern. I was encouraged to share my thoughts and ideas even if they differed from those of other colleagues. I worked on meaningful projects that contributed to the business, and some of my recommendations were implemented before the end of the summer.”
Oindrila Sardar (Chicago Booth ’11), a Senior Manager at Pfizer’s Established Products Marketing Platform, discussed the relationship she had with the rotation managers during her Summer Associate internship:
“My rotation managers have played a critical role in my development with weekly one-on-one meetings and their insightful project guidance. They have been receptive to my interests and have matched them with meaningful assignments Throughout my rotations I have worked with cross-functional colleagues from many areas of the company which has helped me further understand Pfizer and its structure. I have been surprised by the high level of trust and responsibility given from the very beginning.”
Landing a Job at Pfizer
It’s pretty straightforward: Pfizer’s Summer Associate Internship is a surefire way for MBAs to get hired. In fact, 16 out of its recent 25 summer associates were extended full-time offers. That said, there’s plenty of recruitment that takes place outside the sacred intern space.
In the fall, Pfizer aggressively targets top MBA programs, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast close to its New York HQ. The company is interested in drawing from a pool of diverse and competitive first-year applicants, especially those with a taste for finance, marketing, global supply, and general management. Although previous pharma experience will make your application more competitive, Pfizer is equally interested in applicants with compelling reasons for a career change.
Interviews begin in January and run until March. Pfizer sometimes conducts group interview sessions in which four or five applicants discuss issues with staff members. This process is designed to understand which folks will make a meaningful contribution to a Pfizer culture with many distinct and occasionally contentious points-of-view.
