Wednesday, July 23, 2008

10 KEYS TO CLIMBING THE CORPORATE LADDER FAST!!!!


Want to know how to climb the corporate ladder in rapid fashion? After completing 12 weeks of working as an MBA Intern, I compiled my list of what I consider 10 of the greatest tips for success in you career and life.

1) BE PRESENT- This is hands down my greatest take away for success in life, relationships, and your career. When I picked up the Eckhart Tolle book that I read, it was like his words began to echo in my life. From senior executives to people I met at various bars in San Diego, the greatest wisdom I’ve gained is the need and ability to be present.

2) Be a learner- I may have heard this in an organizational behavior class. But, I have to say that in this summer I’ve learned more in 3 months than I have in 3 years because I was willing to be a sponge. I soaked up as much information as I could and now I feel like somewhat of a subject matter expert in my field. Become addicted to learning and your passion will come across.

3) Embrace your strengths – For half my adult life I have tried to improve all the things I am weak at. While it’s ok to fix things, I think that embracing your strengths is really the key to a successful life. Find what you love, and what you are good at and the rest will fall into place

4) Be flexible – Life is full of curve balls. As many self improvement gurus have said, it’s not about what happens to you, but how you react to it.

5) Be Patient- My best friend once said “It’s not a race. What are you going to do, race to the death?” Too often in life we are in such a hurry to make everything happen and the irony is being in a hurry slows you down

6) Learn to Control your energy- Energy is an amazingly powerful, yet intangible force. The right energy can literally make miracles happen in your life. With good energy you draw the most amazing circumstances. I left my car in La Jolla over night where they ticket like mad, and I got no parking ticket.

7) Know your Story- This is a strange one. But, your story is the story you tell yourself. If you tell yourself a story of failure then that’s exactly what it becomes.

8) Don’t be Realistic- Realism is just pessimism disguised as practicality. Rational thinking never made anybody famous. In fact, it might have killed a man or two

9) You’re always Networking- Whether you know it or not, you are always networking. However, you don’t want to go out with the idea of “I’m networking.” Just talk to people and let it all happen. Last year at a bar, a southern real estate mogul who owned shopping malls, practically offered me a job after a 5 minute conversation.

10) Choose the right job – Most people will make choices based on money. While we may need it to survive the people who have been willing to give up everything and take risks often have tremendous success. There is a great deal of truth to the statement “the greater the risk, the greater the reward.” It’s ironic when you’re willing to give up your attachment to things, how easy it becomes to obtain them.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Search Every Craigslist Site at Once

For MBA job seekers who are reading this, I posted this because it's extremely useful if you want to do a job search on Craigslist across multiple geographic locations.

read more | digg story

Friday, July 18, 2008

Reflections, Looking, Back and more....

This morning was I was driving to work, I was reflecting on the time that I've spent at Intuit over the last 12-13 weeks. Then I started to think about my career as a whole and the journey. When I graduated from college, I was living in a delusional world with expectations that everything should be handed to me on a silver platter and that I shouldn't have to work for less than a certain amount. It was basically the ego of the first dot com generation. We all felt entitled to say the least.

When I look back over the last 13 weeks, one thing really stands out to me. The amount of personal growth I've experience over the summer is probably equivalent or greater than the personal growth I've experienced since I graduated from college. Personal growth from come from a number of experiences, moving to a new city where you don't know anybody, working in an industry where you have absolutely NOTHING in common with the people you are working with, working somewhere that forces you to deal with people from ALL walks of life and more. While this isn't my final blog post for my intern blog, it's getting really close. But the advice I would give somebody when searching for a job or an internship is, don't just look at whats going to give you professional growth, look at something that will give you the opportunity for personal growth too because the personal growth is the fuel for your professional growth.


Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Business School vs. the Real World

After spending a summer working in corporate America, I realized that you go to business school to get your MBA and they basically will give you a piece of paper with three letters on the end of your name. Then you start working and you have to earn your degree all over again. While you do learn a good amount in the classroom, the classroom is about the fundamentals of business. Most of that stuff doesn’t change, but bringing those skills into the real world forces you to evolve and combine the b-school skills with the real world skills. In school things are pretty black and white. In the real world, there’s a good amount of grey area. There’s way more risk involved. But, that’s what makes it interesting!!!

Free Money...Compliments of the IRS

It’s no fun sitting on the sidelines while the IRS gives out $100 billion in free money -- and you watch friends and family spend it to fill their gas tanks or take summer vacations.

read more | digg story

Free Money...Compliments of the IRS

It’s no fun sitting on the sidelines while the IRS gives out $100 billion in free money -- and you watch friends and family spend it to fill their gas tanks or take summer vacations.

read more | digg story

Monday, July 14, 2008

Being in the Moment

I wrote a previous blog post about this subject where I talked about being present. The reason I'm writing about it again is because I feel like it's really an ongoing theme in my growth this summer. The power of presence has made me realize that it really is essential to your happiness. What I've found is that in my career and in my life, I've always been worried about getting ahead. It's ironic that the extreme desire to get ahead can actual be counterproductive. You'd think that a focus on getting ahead would get you there. Ironically excessive focus on getting ahead reduces the quality of the work you are currently producing.

After reading a ton of books this summer, listening to podcasts, hearing executives talk, I realized that when you can master presence, the rest of your success in life is just a byproduct of being present. Looking back over the course of my internship, I would say the major thing I was guilty of was being so obsessed with making my internship lead to a full time offer that it actually took away from the experience to some degree. So, my one piece of advice to anybody in any internship is to go ahead and let the cards fall where they may, enjoy yourself, work hard, and live in the now, not the future.

Friday, July 11, 2008

The law of attraction





I thought I would post this as a blog post today because it seems to be very relevant to my life. Recently I read a book called a New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and for some reason every time I'm out in public or everywhere I go, I seem to attract people who have read this book. It's happen probably close to 6 times in the last month which makes me realize that your own thought process is tremendously powerful. If something as simple as a book is drawing these people to me, then imagine the power behind what you can do with this. So, just a cool video I wanted to share.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Patience and Humility

One of the things that I realized yesterday after hearing the talk from our CMO, was that patience has been something I’ve never been really good at. Yet, the value that patience has is tremendously valuable.

Patience is a sign of power and control, and most people don’t have it, so when you are patient other people are influenced by it. One of the members in my marketing group was tremendously patient and I learned more from him than I ever expected. He was extremely patient in highly turbulent periods of the semester and made our team run like clockwork. When I think about this desire to get ahead, the desire to get promoted, the desire to climb the ladder I always remember the words of my best friend from college when she said “It’s not a race Srini. What are you going to do, race to the death?” To me those words are so important now that I will probably print them out and put them on my wall in my first office when I get done with business school.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Intern Briefing with Intuit CMO

I wanted to write this blog entry right away while all of the ideas/career advice that Intuit CMO shared with us. One of the first things he did was he talked about his career journey which I think almost all people who do these kinds of presentations do, but he had an interesting spin that I hadn't seen before. He showed his career journey in terms of the trajectory (jobs, life events, etc) on the x axis, but on the y-axis of this he showed his emotional energy level which was really an interesting way to think about things. After he talked about that and about Intuit, he opened up the floor for questions and this was really great because one thing I've realized with these executives is that time with with them is invaluable because they really are booked back to back. So, I've written a pseudo-transcript of my questions

If you could give us three pieces of career advice that you would say have really been responsible for your success what would you say those are?


1) Foundation- Choose a place what will provide you with a solid foundation for your career. Make sure it's somewhere that will give you the kind of training/experience that will be invaluable throughout your career. When I look at resumes I always will look for whether this person has had the foundation necessary to succeed.

2) A role that gets noticed- Make sure that whatever you are working on has a great deal of visibility. This can be challenging in large corporate environments, but if you are working on something that has a great deal of visibility, then you will be at the top of mind across the organization.

3) Innovation/Teamwork- Well, I can't remember if this was exact. But, he did talk about how companies are being forced to be innovative in order to succeed and those that don't innovate are becoming obsolete. Even the most old school businesses are innovating.


What are the things that you took into consideration when choosing your first employer and what do you think are the main criteria to choosing the right employer?

Look for companies that value these criteria. The problem with companies that don't value these criteria is that you may get ahead by stepping on people, but you have to ask yourself is that the kind of environment you want to work in?
1) Leadership
2) Problem Solving
3) Communication


What are your thoughts on the speed at which somebody gets promoted and moving up the ladder quickly in your career?

Don't be in a hurry. Believe it or not, usually when the times it took me longer to get promoted were the most valuable to my career. As a result of having two extra years before a promotion, I was able to observe at least two extra business cycles which ended being very different than the first and as a result I had even a stronger foundation.

What do you think of this Web 2.0 thing? Are we headed for another 1999-style dot com bust or have we learned from our mistakes? (this was really interesting)

Google actually believe it or not has hired a guy who's like an internet historian. He's like a professor of the internet and they hired him because they can hire anybody. But this guy's job is to sit around think about the internet and where it's headed. The prediction is that the internet as we know it today has reached about 10% of it's evolution. This basically means we've probably still got some boom and bust cycles to come, but we're getting smarter and more disciplined about how we do this. There will definitely be shake out, but the downturns also always result in creation of new businesses.



The Final Stretch

Well, I thought I'd write a quick blog post on the final stretch. I'm about 12 working days away from being done with my internship. I started much earlier than most MBA students, but it has been a jam packed summer with a ton of learning opportunity. I've gained significant expertise in areas I was previously unfamiliar with. I'd like to think that I've added value to my resume that will make me quite marketable. I was in the middle of wrapping up one of my projects and came to realize how much I really did use skills from my MBA to work on my projects. I think the biggest challenge I've had as an MBA is to be concise and to the point. But, when I write things now, I think about how much shorter I can make everything. I'll have another update on my wrap up and some video footage posted pretty soon. Oh yeah, if you ever get to live in San Diego, do it.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

5 FASTEST WAYS TO FIND A JOB

5 FASTEST WAYS TO FIND A JOB


1) JOB ALERTS- Simplyhired.com and Indeed.com allow you to setup numerous job alerts based on keywords and can also be setup with an exact phrase. For example, if your interest is internet marketing positions for MBA’s, setup an alert that says internet marketing MBA and every job with that combination will be sent to you daily or weekly.


2) LINKEDIN- Linkedin is probably the most awesome thing in the world for finding jobs. Linkedin can help you find hiring managers, contact info and more. Here’s some cool ways to get right in touch with people.

· Find a job on indeed or simplyhired

· Do a search for the title/department and company on Linkedin

· Make a list of names



4) FACEBOOK- Today with massive growth of Web 2.0, companies are setting up Facebook pages constantly. Many are even recruiting from Facebook. Do a simple search under Facebook groups and you’ll see groups dedicated to careers with specific people you can reach out to.


5) JOB BOARD FORUMS- Simplyhired and Indeed.com have discussion forums on companies. Sometimes you’ll even find recruiters there looking for resumes.





Thursday, July 3, 2008

Feedback, Innovation, and more....

I thought I'd share a little bit of information on my performance review and the general guidance that is provided to interns from a career standpoint. One thing that continually amazes me about working here is how strongly managers work on helping you shape your career and align it to your strengths. The great thing about the feedback process at Intuit is that you don't just get one person making a decision and deciding your fate. Feedback is provided from all the teams and all the people you work with. They also give you advice in terms of what you're doing well, what you can do better, and what you shouldn't do. This is really great because it makes you well rounded and you get very well rounded feedback. I had a positive review, with some suggestions on things I could improve. The great part was my boss said he would help me no matter what I decide to do. AT the end of the day I've seen how business planning and strategy is done for a business that generates over a billion dollars in revenue in 12 weeks.

Another thing that's really amazing about this place is that it is truly innovative. With the recent addition of unstructured time (similar to Google), there's opportunities galore that are very entrepreneurial in nature. That means you get 10% of your time to work on projects and there is now Intuit labs. Needless to say, working as an Intuit intern is a very mind-blowing experience.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The most efficient construction company in the world

With a title like that you must be wondering, what kind of construction company can become known as the most efficient construction company in the world. Well, somehow I seem to keep coming back to the same theme. It's the one in your head. That's right, it's known as your brain. The world around you, the life you have, the job situation, life as you've come to know it as a mental construct, created by energy and thought. Think about how fast things go from idea to inception in today's world. Think about how much has changed in just 10 years from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. The failure of Friendster resulted in the success of Myspace and Facebook. People can micro blog and tell you every detail of their life in on Twitter. The rate at which information transfers is something that was inconceivable a few years ago. Only something as efficient as your mind can construct and conceive such rapid innovation.

So, what does that have to do with my internship, career success, etc? If all of it is a mental construct created by energy and thought, that means that you can ultimately control how successful or unsuccessful you are in your career. It all really depends on what the focus of your life is on a daily basis. In the early part of my career I worked in sales and I spent about 80% of my time fearing that I wouldn't make quota and wouldn't have a job. That thought pattern carried over into other areas of my life, and needless to say it was a self destructive pattern. If there's anything the first year of my MBA program taught me, it was how to control my focus and be aware of self-destructive thought patterns and tendencies.

The other night I had dinner with a high school friend who is now a doctor. When I asked her about residency she described some rather stressful experiences like trying perform a surgical procedure at 3am after no sleep, where one slip could cause somebody to die and nobody was there to help. She was an extremely mild mannered person in high school, but I could tell the experienced had actually made her quite a bit tougher, in a good way. So, I guess what the point is that life, your jobs, your internships, will all throw curve balls at you, and it's now what happens but how you react to what happens that will determine your success.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

10 Classic TV Show intros

PERFECT STRANGERS



PUNKY BREWSTER



GROWING PAINS



WONDER YEARS




BOSSOM BUDDIES



CHARLES CHARGE IN CHARGE



FAMILY TIES



WHO'S THE BOSS?




FULL HOUSE



DIFFERENT STROKES

Monday, June 30, 2008

Leadership, Career Growth, and Evolution

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”
-Eckhart Tolle

I was trying to think of a subject line and a starting point for my blog entry today and as I was listening to the Eckhart Tolle Audiobook, A New Earth, I stopped when I heard the above quote and decided to write today's blog entry.

A few days ago, I had written a post on being present, which was inspired by an employee orientation that I attended. One of the components of the new employee orientation was a presentation from one of the senior leaders in the company. The senior leader described her own evolution both personally and professionally here at Intuit. This was yet another thing that really amazed me about the culture here at Intuit. Employees at Intuit are empowered to succeed and build on what their strengths are and focus on what they are passionate about. Her own passion was building and leading teams. She also talked about how she had helped others become focused on areas they were passionate about. Finally, she concluded her presentation with some general career advice, and the one that stood out to me the most was to "Be Present."

Although I already wrote about it when I heard the quote at the beginning of the is blog post, it made me think about careers, personal growth and more. I look back at the earlier part of my career which was an unpleasant but character building experience, and realize that life was giving me the experience that was most helpful for the evolution of my consciousness. So my advice to MBA students, regardless of your situation, if you're at a top tier school with more jobs than you know what do with, or if you're at a second tier school struggling to find the right job, or if you are applied and didn't get into your dream school, is to keep the above words in mind.

Friday, June 27, 2008

How to live longer

Last night I was lucky enough to see the legendary blues singer BB KING. What amazed me wasn't his ability to perform but, the guy's energy. At the age of 82 he still had the energy to sit on stage and entertain a large crowd. For a guy who is on the verge of dying, he seemed to be in quite a jovial mood. He was a great story teller.

The one thing I realized is this guy has lived to be 82 because he's happy. People spend so much time making life more difficult then it needs to be. So, may one tip for the day is find whatever you can to make you smile and spend at least 15 minutes a day thinking about it. It'll probably add 10 years to your life.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

5 Best First Person Narrators- Actor’s whose voices you wish where in your head


1. MORGAN FREEMAN –SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION/PENGUINS


It would be difficult to argue against the fact that Morgan Freeman has the greatest storytelling voice of all time. In Shawshank Redemption his ability to tell the story was what made the movie. The guy’s voice is so great he managed to make a movie about Penguins with no actors absolutely incredible. If the voice in your headed sounded like this you’d probably sleep like a baby every single night. This guy could probably narrate a story about two people staring at each other for 5 hours and you’d find it interesting.


2. Daniel Stern “The voice of the Wonder Years”


Let’s face it Fred Savage was pretty worthless without that voice inside his head. Those quirky insights and hilarious commentary was all Daniel Stern. Yes, it’s that other guy from Home Alone who was Joe Pesci’s partner in crime. He is the voice of Kevin Arnold. Can you imagine waking up every morning with that voice in your head? Just brushing your teeth and taking a dump would be a captivating story.


3. Edward Norton- Fight Club


Talk about a storyteller. Having his voice inside your head might be a bit disturbing. But, this guy in my mind is one of the most versatile actors around. Hopefully you’d have his voice in your head and not Tyler Durden’s voice.


4. Johnny Depp – BLOW


After watching this movie, I wanted to be the largest distributor of narcotics in the US and hang out with Pablo Escobar. The way he told the story made every moment poetic. When he described Pablo Escobar and said “For those you have been on the moon the last 20 year’s, he was it, the king of it all, El Majico” that made the scene.


5. Robert Deniro-CASINO


After this you feel like you want to be in the Maffia. Can you imagine walking around, going to bars, clubs, etc, with this guy’s voice in your head. “When she ordered a long island, I just knew right then and there I was F#$#$d.

Be Present

I know that I've spent a good deal of time writing about thinking about your future, thinking about your job search and more. One of the things that humanity as a whole has become completely obsessed with is progress. Ironically, so much of our progress has led to misery. We become obsessed with getting ahead and moving forward, so that there is never any ability to be present. You can see this all around you.

  • The person who sits in a restaurant or a bar looking at their cell phone or their watch waiting for the other person
  • The person who spends all their time planning for the future, writing down ideas, and never acting on them
  • The person who lives in the past and constantly starts stories with "I used to"
  • Waiting for events or circumstances to be favorable in order to have a favorable emotional response
When you are not present, you are in a mental prison which keeps your from reaching your full potential. This mental prison is really responsible for the state of misery you are in. At the rate that information reaches us today through mediums like the Internet, there is a tremendous danger that humanity will not only perpetuate this misery but fuel rapid spread of this misery.

After my recent reading of the Eckhart Tolle Book A New Earth, I realized that when you get to the future you are still in the present moment, and the future will continue to exist until you die.
You will find that the more present you are, the more power and impact your interactions with people will have. Just to be clear, I'm not saying don't have goals, don't plan, the key is to make plans and not concern yourself with arriving at your destination. In other words, enjoy the journey.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

9 most pointless groups on Facebook-The Power of Web 2.0





Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Pure Energy

This is an article written by my friend Brent Smith and I thought I'd post it here for the world to see.



Pure Energy (by Brent Smith)


I'm always telling you that it's your "energy"
that's the key to having an extraordinary life
but some of you are having a hard time grasping
the concept. So, I think it's time that I explain
it.

Here it goes:

Nobel Prize winning physicists have proven beyond
doubt that the physical world is one large sea of
energy that flashes into and out of being in
billionth's of a second, over and over again.
This is the world of quantum physics. They've
proven that thoughts are what put together and
hold together this ever-changing energy field into
the "objects" that you see. So why do you see a
person instead of a flashing cluster of energy?
Think of a movie reel. A movie is a collection of
about twenty-four frames a second. Each frame is
separated by a gap. However, because of the speed
at which one frame replaces another, your eyes get
cheated into thinking that you see a continuous
and moving picture.

Think of a television. A TV tube is simply a tube
with heaps of electrons hitting the screen in a
certain way, creating the illusion of form and
motion. This is what all objects are.

You have five physical senses:

Sight, sound, touch, smell, taste.

Each of these senses has a specific spectrum; for
example, a dog hears a different range of sound
than a human does; a snake sees a different
spectrum of light than you do; and so on. In
other words, your set of senses perceives the sea
of energy from a certain limited standpoint and
makes up an image from that. It's not complete,
nor is it accurate. It's just an interpretation.
All of your interpretations are solely based on an
"internal map" of reality and not the real truth.
Your "map" is a result of your personal life's
collective experiences.

Your thoughts are linked to this invisible energy
and they determine what the energy forms. Your
thoughts literally shift the universe on a
particle-by-particle basis to create your physical
life. Look around you. Everything you see in
your physical world started as an idea, an idea
that grew as it was shared and expressed, until it
grew enough into a physical object through any
number of steps. You literally become what you
think about most. Your life becomes what you have
imagined and believed in most. The world is
literally your mirror, enabling you to experience
in the physical plane what you hold as your
truth...until you change it. Quantum physics shows
us that the world is not the hard an unchangeable
thing it may appear to be. Instead, it's a very
fluid place, continuously built up using your
individual and collective thoughts. What you
think is "true" is really an illusion, almost like
a magic trick. Fortunately we've begun to uncover
the illusion and most importantly, how to change
it.

What is your body made of?

Nine systems including cardiovascular, nervous,
and skeletal systems.

What are those made up of?

Tissues and organs.

What are tissues and organs made of?

Cells.

What are cells made of?

Molecules.

What are molecules made of?

Atoms.

What are atoms made of?

Sub-atomic particles.

What are sub-atomic particles made of?

Energy!

You are pure energy. Energy that is constantly
changing beneath the surface, and you control it
all with your powerful mind.

If you could see yourself under a powerful
electron microscope and conduct other experiments
on yourself, you would see that you are made up of
a cluster of ever-changing energy in the form of
electrons, neutrons, photons, and so on. And so
is everything else around you. Quantum physics
tells us that it is the act of observing an object
that causes it to be there where and how we
observe it. An object does not exist
independently of its observer!

So, as you can see, your observation, your
attention to something, and your intention,
literally creates that thing. This is scientific
and proven. Your world is made up of spirit,
mind, and body. Each has a function that is
unique to it and not shared with the other. What
you see with your eyes and experience with your
body is the physical world-which we call BODY.
Body is an effect, created by a cause. This cause
is THOUGHT. Body cannot create. It can only
experience and be experienced; that is its unique
function.

Thought cannot experience-it can only make up,
create, and interpret. It needs a world of
relativity (the physical world, i.e. body) to
experience itself. SPIRIT is "all that is;" that
which gives life to THOUGHT and BODY. Body has no
power to create, although it gives the illusion of
power to do so. This illusion is the cause of
much of your frustration. Body is purely an
effect and has no power to cause or create.

The key to all of this information is how you
learn to see the universe differently than you do
now so that you can manifest everything you truly
desire. Change the way you look at things and the
things you look at will change.

Try it and let me know what happens!

Top 10 Reasons to get your MBA (ridiculous reasons included)


1. Change Careers


Among the list of reasons that many people go back to business school, probably the top one is to change careers. I would venture to say that half of my class came in to change careers. What’s the downside for career changes? Be prepared to take some steps back in pay, and status. The entertainment industry is notorious for having Harvard MBA’s working in the mailroom.


2. Career Advancement


If you are looking to rise in the ranks, these days an MBA is pretty essential. It gives you an opportunity to apply for higher level positions, take an internship in a higher level position, and more. Additionally, you can probably get a higher salary.


3. Intellectual curiosity


This is a high price to pay to satisfy intellectual curiosity. You could just read articles on digg.com and reddit all day for free.


4. Move to a new location


This is a great excuse to jump ship from your current location and move somewhere new. Moving to a new location is a tremendous personal growth experience and forces you out of your comfort zone.


5. Happy Hour


Let’s face it. No B-school experience is complete without a bit of excessive drinking. In the MBA world, we call it “networking.” Some of the benefits of “networking”

  • Random Conversations
  • Bar tabs that make your eyes pop out of your head
  • You celebrate when the bar tab is below triple digits


6. Study abroad programs


It’s the perfect excuse to make up for not studying abroad as an undergrad. Get to b-school and plan your exodus for the following fall and you’ll be the envy of your friends and family. But, don’t forget to keep searching for a job while you are abroad. Or you may have to retire to the beach in some exotic location and open up a lemonade stand (maybe that’s better than being an i-banker)


7. New friends


The academic setting forces you to make new friends by default. Since you are going to spend countless hours together suffering through finance, marketing, and other things that are “useful”, you might as well make some friends in the process


8. Three more letters on the end of your name


Nowadays, acronyms are in. When you spend all day long (ADL) online talking people and LOL, what’s one more acronym? You get to hand out business cards that say MBA.


9. Undergraduate girls


If Playboy can make an entire series of DVD’s out of this, they must be on to something. This is your opportunity to be the next Van Wilder. It’s like getting to be an undergrad with 10 times the brains and 5 times the money you had the first time around. WARNING: This could lead to excess unnecessary purchases.



10. You get to wear a cap and gown after 2 years and listen to Pomp and Circumstance.



Monday, June 23, 2008

Flexibility

"Don't flail against the world, use it. Flexibility is the operative principle in the art of war."
-Sun Tzu


I wanted to write about flexibility because I have been thinking about my job search and how I ended up in the position I did. One of the major mistakes I've seen numerous people make over the year that I was in school was unwillingness to be flexible. They would not consider living anywhere other than LA. The would not consider any deviation from their plan. While there's something to be said for persisting there's also something to be said for flexibility. Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results." Flexibility has caused an enormous amount of personal growth for me. I have had to come to a new town where I don't know a single person and start from scratch. Fortunately, I got trapped in paradise. But, I would have taken the same approach anywhere, and I was willing to go where the job took me for the summer internship. I knew that the most important thing was the quality of the internship, not the location. I was even willing to go to Tunica, MS. So, I hope that when students contemplate their job search next year, they are flexible.

Friday, June 20, 2008

The coolest job at Intuit, defining your identity, and more...

Today I was on a call with a business partner and when I described the projects I'm working on, he responded "wow, it sounds like you have the coolest job at Intuit." When I thought about, I realized, I really do have one of the coolest jobs I could possibly have. I get to constantly work on cutting edge stuff and get exposed to a bunch of different things. This topic actually ties really well to something I wanted to write about today. One of my good friends is a Life Coach, and I'm a big believer in investing in resources such as that because it is investing in yourself. People invest in tons of things to improve their lives, but they often forget to invest in the most important place which is themselves.

So, when we were talking the other day, we got into a discussion of identity. Identity can be thought of in numerous forms. You might identify yourself by name, ethnicity, job function, etc, etc. But really there is a deeper level of identity I think it's important for everybody to explore. I know that a good amount of students at Pepperdine are struggling with the internship search, and while it's easy to complain and discuss all the downfalls of our career office, I realize that this is quite self-destructive. This is where the concept of identity becomes important. So, I asked my friend "how do you change this identity or change what you want to have happened in your life?" The example I'll use is one that anybody who reads this blog can relate to. Let's say you are struggling in your job search or internship search. You go out and talk to your friends and they ask how you are doing and you respond as follows:

"You know, things are not going that well. I keep submitting resumes and I get no responses. When I do get responses, it's for a job that I hate or a salary that is unacceptable. The economy is terrible, and we're not Harvard MBA's, blah, blah, blah........"

You get the gist of it. That believe it or not is your identity. You associate yourself with the statement above when you are in that situation. The strange thing is you think that in order for that to change the situation has to change. What's funny is the situation will change when that changes. Every time you tell this story to a friend or tell it to yourself, you are reinforcing that identity. So what's the key? Change the story. Write it out, put it on your wall and read it everyday.

"You know, it's going really great. I keep getting all these calls for interviews. Every one of these jobs sounds so exciting, and they all pay really well. It's going to be hard to figure out which job to choose. The economy....for some reason....well let's just say it's irrelevant in my job search."

It's amazing how the way you use words and construct language impacts the results in your life. So, that is my take away for today. Below are some pictures of yet another perk for working at Intuit: FREE CORP HOUSING



www.flickr.com



Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Web 2.0, Infancy of the Internet, and other more Intuit Perks

I know I haven't actually written about my internship for a while because I've been on this sort of spiritual trend of what may seem like some hippy new-age nonsense. Anyways, I figured it was time to get back to some more internship specific stuff. One of the really cool things about this summer is I have had the opportunity to sit on meetings with numerous partners, vendors, and agencies. One of the great things about those meetings in a company the size of Intuit is you meet the highest level people in each of those organizations, like Vice Presidents, CEO's, etc. Last night I got to attend a dinner with a vendor, and we were talking about the Internet and one of the insights I got is that the Internet is still in it's infancy. Funny that somebody who's worked in the industry since it's practically existed would say that. But when you look at technology, and the industry as a whole, it really is in its infancy. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc have only become huge in the last 3 years. If you compare it to something like the steel industry the Internet is like a little kid who has more time than you can possible imagine to mature.

When it comes to taking care of interns, the Intuit HR team really goes above and beyond. I've never seen anything like it. Some of the interns don't have cars, and the HR team has not only worked on setting up car pools, but they are compensating the drivers with a stipend that would cover your gas costs for the entire month. So, the perks just keep on rolling.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Ego, Waiting on the world to change, and more..

John Mayer once said in his song Waiting on the World to Change "When you trust your telelvision, what you get is what you got. When they own the information they can bend it all they want." So, what does this have to do with our jobs, our internships, etc? Pretty much everything. Most of our lives we are so influenced by external factors and fail to look for answers in the most obvious place, inside ourselves. I recently picked up a book by Eckhart Tolle, called A New Earth: Awakening to your Life's purpose. What amazed me about it his how much of our lives are driven by our ego on an unconscious level and how we give meaning to everything, including success and failure. But if we can get to a place of peace in our mind without these labels, we have achieved the ability to be successful far beyond just finding the right job or the right internship. This is the level that allows us to excel and really shine in any environment. This is my latest revelation. More internship-specific stuff tomorrow.

Monday, June 16, 2008

The Power of Your Thought

After this weekend, I thought I would write a quick blog entry. Most of us don't realize it but our mind moves at a million miles an hour and we are thinking about things all day long. You'd be amazed if you actually paid attention how self destructive our own thought process can be. For example in a 15 minute drive, you could start from being in a great mood when you get in the car to being completely pissed off when you reach your destination. Why does that happen? Let' s look at the process for this

1) You get in the car
2) Something external (some guy cuts you off, somebody drives too slow) triggers an emotion
3) That emotion is tied to a certain negative memory
4) You're now in the state of mind that was created by that negative memory
5) Now you're going to spend the rest of the car ride thinking about that negative memory and by the time you get to your destination it's almost as if you had that experience again during you car ride.

But it's worse because you did it in your mind and now you've had that miserable experience twice instead of once. Isn't our mind amazing? :). Well, actually it is. If you watch the above video, hopefully you'll realize how to use this exact process for doing something better. Ok, so you're probably wondering what this has to do with my internship. Believe it or not, this is the underlying key to your own success/failure and if I had known this early in my career, I would have been much more careful to pay attention to what many dismiss has hippy new-age bs.

This weekend I took a surf lesson and it was almost like a philosophy lesson. The instructor kept telling me to relax and not fight the waves but embrace them and everything would be easy. Sounded like the universe and life work in kind of the same way.




Friday, June 13, 2008

Parallel Universes/Living on the Edge

They say that the best thing about the past is that it's over. While there are good and bad things in all our pasts, I try not to look at how bad it was, but how good it became because of how bad it was. Lately for some reason, I have been pondering the idea of the parallel universe and I wonder what that universe would look like, and is there somebody out there in a parallel universe who made the opposite of each the decisions I made. Is it possible that one different decision could shift the entire direction of your life. Well, according the movie Mr.Destiny, one incident can have that much of an impact, but I think it's only if you let it. Last night I was talking to a guy who's lived in La Jolla for 20 years so I'm guessing he's done ok financially. The advice he gave me was remember to live on the edge, just don't jump off it. So, for a second I wondered what the hell does that mean? Then I told him that was the smartest thing I've learned since I've lived here in SD. So, on that note, take risks, take chances, but control your emotions and keep your proverbial s#$#$t in check.