Summer Internship

I spent the summer interning at Quintiles as a Corporate Digital Strategy Coordinator. Quintiles is the only fully integrated biopharmaceutical services company offering clinical, commercial, consulting and capital solutions worldwide. The Digital Strategy group is a fairly new group, part of the overall Corporate Communication (CorpComm) department. A big project going on with Digital Strategy this summer was the re-design of Quintiles.com, internally known as Q.com.

 My boss is the lead on the re-design, and I was her "right hand girl". We had a “core” group of 5 people including my boss, another Digital Strategy member, another intern, our outside vendor contact along with myself. We were each assigned sections of the overall structure to own from start to finish.  For each of my sections, I had to contact the department head and set up initial and follow up meetings to discuss and finalize content for each section. I worked with the HR department for the Careers section, CorpComm for News and Our Markets, and Marketing for Therapeutics, Events and Services. For the Careers section, I also helped to design specific templates based on the needs of the site and wrote content for certain pages.

 

In addition to working on the re-design of Q.com, I was tasked with the project of putting together the Digital Content & Style guide. This document would include information on how to write for our site based on our audience and our overall company strategy. It also included branding information (typography, color palette, fonts, and restrictions), template and wireframe examples, interface designs and examples of the live site. It will be added to the Marketing Brand Guidelines for the company, and would be a document to distribute to outside vendors who write for our site or create additional pages for Q.com.

 My internship has been extended through December as of now, because the site has not launched yet. I will help see the site through launch, and then develop a training guide for Quintiles employees and external vendors to learn best practices and ways to navigate through the CMS, Ektron.

 

My team was absolutely amazing from day 1, and I was never treated like a traditional intern. I was treated as part of the team where my suggestions and comments were weighed the same as everyone in the department. It's been a littly busy balancing class and work, but I feel its completely worth the few sacrifices I might make!

Peer Coaches

Each year, roughly 10 First Year students are selected to be Peer Coaches for the incoming MBA students. I was honored to be chosen as one for the 2012-2012 year. We had 2 training sessions-the first was with Laura Taylor and the second was with Belinda. We were able to gain insights from the current Peer Coaches in the first meeting as well, and their rewards and struggles with the program.

We have a total of 11 for this year: Mark Frazier, Donavon Boykin, Brian Kubis, Patrick Ferguson, Alysia Baker, Lionel Grebert, Marko Zivkovic, Jackelyn Vander Veer, Binu Raj & Mike Westrich.

Each person has different backgrounds, and we will be able to direct the incoming students to other coaches if they have specific questions about topics we aren't as familiar with.

We will meet with our students for lunch during their Orientation week, and I'm excited to meet the incoming class!

Suprise Interview!

Early this week, a recruiter from Company X (I’ll say their name in a later post if I work there) called and told me that the Marketing position I had applied for had been filled with a contractor because they really wanted someone to be able to work full time into the Fall. She said they found another internship that they wanted to talk to me about based on my experience. She sent me the link, and although it wasn’t a Marketing internship I let her know that I would like to talk to the hiring manager more about the position and just get some other details. I said I was available Friday morning, and she told me she’d let me know when the hiring manager would give me a call.

I never received a confirmation email, so I assumed he was busy on Friday morning and we’d schedule something for the next week. At 10am, I was woken up to my phone ringing. I answered and it was the hiring manager plus another colleague calling me about the position. I was in shock/panic because I honestly had no idea they would be calling me. So they started off telling me how impressed they were with my resume, and then jumped right into asking me why I’d be a good fit for the position. And that is where I really panicked. This was an actual PHONE INTERVIEW.  I really thought I’d be talking to them about the position details so I could determine if I was interested.  I somehow asked them for more information about the position so I could buy some time to grab my computer and pull up the description. I went into how I thought I’d be a good fit, and then they asked me a few more questions about my background and experience. I’m a little calmer now because I think I recovered somewhat well, but it was short lived because they asked me what questions I had for them. Clearly I hadn’t prepared any questions except how much does it pay, and I didn’t feel comfortable asking them that right off the bat. So I somehow came up with 3 questions for them. They asked me one final question, “we normally give our candidates a chance to wow us with a last statement as to why we should hire them since Company X is so competitive.” Yikes. I talked about a few of my strengths that I knew were important to the company in general and backed them up with a few examples from an old boss and project.

My surprise phone screen was over. I’ve never really had that experience where I had no idea someone would be calling and I was completely unprepared. I honestly didn’t think I would be offered the position because as a former recruiter, I would be able to tell that I was super unprepared to start off the interview. I talked to my Dad shortly after and he laughed at the situation and even thought they may have caught me off guard to see if it was really was flexible and adaptable to different, “surprise” situation. So I took it as a learning experience, and hopefully I won’t have to experience a surprise phone interview again.

Later in the afternoon, the recruiter called me and said she had some feedback about the interview. She said the hiring manager liked me, and wanted to extend the offer. I told her I’d let her know in the next week because I wanted to make the best decision. Clearly, I recovered better than I thought. My past as a recruiter definitely paid off in the situation because I knew how to recover and knew certain things to do and tell them. So my first interview of this internship search process turned out to be a success! At least now I know that I will have an internship this summer!

18 days. 18 days. 18 days.

COME ON MAY 9th!

Only 18 days until we are finished our FIRST YEAR! 18 days until we are 2nd year MBAs!

This year has absolutely FLOWN by. We've learned so much and grown together as a class. It has been an incredible experience so far. Next year will be completely different. We only have 1 class together each semester all together, and the rest we're split into our concentrations. I'll definitely miss having everyone together in the majority of our classes and being able to work with Team Dominate for everything, but I am excited to get into more Marketing focused classes.

Now the only thing that stands between me and being a 2nd year MBA:

MarkStrat paper

Markstrat presentation

Brand Management presentation (paper is finished!)

Tech Management presentation

Brand Management take home final

Supply Chain Homework #3

Supply Chain Final

Finance cumulative Final.

A few fun things throw in the mix...Beach Music Fest, my Birthday and the End of Year Party.

The worst really is saved for last. If I say Finance test, its still hard. And each test was roughly 4-5 chapters. When I say Finance cumulative Final...I panic. Because not only does it include ALL the information from test 1 & 2 (9 chapters?) but also the 3 remaining chapters that weren't covered on a previous test. Yikes. 12 chapters of Finance. Hard Finance by the way. Hopefully I survive this one...

MarkStrat Results

Our MarkStrat simulation ended last week. Each of our 5 teams started out with 2 products in the Sonite market, with the option to go into the new Vodite market. It ended with 13 Sonite products and 5 Vodite products.

Our team decided on a strategy that would benefit us in the last few years. We did a few rounds of R&D on both of our Sonite products because they were pretty bad to start out with. We had a good idea of what our target audience was looking for, however they did change preferences slightly each period. We also made the decision to enter the Vodite market as soon as we could. This was fairly risky because in picking the specs of the product, we had absolutely nothing to go on and it was pretty much just picking numbers out of a hat.

We started out as last in stock price, last in Sonite with only 16% of the market share, and the first couple years in the Vodite market our product was getting crushed by our 1 competitor.

The end was slightly different. We were #1 in stock price by over 750, #1 in Sonite market share at 40% and #2 in Vodite at 46.1% (only #2 by 1%).

We took everyone by surprise because of our presence in the top 3 highest growing areas. They might not have been the biggest the first few years, however they grew at a ridiculous rate in the last few years so our stock price, market share and net contribution numbers soared.

Quote for the rest of the semester!

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now.

Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday until the words

become as much a habit as my breathing and the action which follows

becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids.

With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for

MY SUCCESS.

I will act now.

I will repeat these words again, and again, and again.

I will walk where failures fear to walk.

I will work when failures seek rest.

I will act now for now is all I have.

Tomorrow is the day reserved for the lazy.

Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed.

I am not a failure.

I will act now.

Success will NOT wait.

If I delay, success will become wed to another and los to me forever.

This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.

 

I WILL ACT NOW.

One of my favorites..

"The cure for anything is salt water;

sweat, tears or the sea."

-Isak Dinesen

I found this quote last week, and it's pretty much perfect for me. When

I'm upset about something, I can do 1 of a few things.

1. I go work out. The instant rush of endorphins automatically puts me in a better mood.

I listen to my iPod, clear my head and forget about my own issues a least for a little while.

2. I cry. I don't let anyone see me cry though. Crying is just an

emotion that lets me personally let everything out.

3. I go to the beach. I read in a hammock. I lounge at the pool. I listen to music

on the beach. I'm instantly in a better mood as soon as I hit Route 10.

Something about it is just a relief, its a home away from home.

 

The stress of the last third of the semester has definitely set in. We have Easter break

next week and it couldn't come at a more perfect time.

As usual, a few things stand in my way of 4 days at the beach.

-Finance test

-Brand Management project paper

-Supply Chain Homework

 

This entire weekend is pretty much dedicated to Finance. The second test

is definitely going to be harder than the first, so looks like a

very busy weekend of Finance for me!

 

But only 5 more days until the ocean takes away all my stress for 4 days!