Comments and suggestions for your job search strategy

I just answered a questionnaire by the Mannheim Business School on my job search. In the end, they asked to highlight what we thought was important and add other points. I added a few.

These are the points that the school suggested which I think are important:

• Career fairs
  
• Contacts to professors or to external people that came to our lecture
  
• Online career services
  
• Analyzing and focusing on capabilities and experience
  
• Career services by partner schools
  

There is no order of preference in the list above, nor in the list below, where I went on writing down what I thought was useful for my search.

• Apply to companies which are not on the top of your list first
  
• www.monster.de
  
• EBS Symposium
  
• Konaktiva Darmstadt
  
• www.access.de
  
• Send a big number of applications, but keep them relevant.
  
• Evaluate clearly what is important to you: salary, function, industry, location, work-life balance, company culture, ethics and reputation. There isn’t only McKinsey with fat bonus.
  
• Keep track of your expenses and follow up on interviews.
  
• Share jobs with your colleagues; they will send you good jobs back.
  
• When talking to companies at fair boths, go in pairs for a general Q&A session, than come back with focused questions alone.
  
• When talking to a company, try to have a specific position you want to apply to in mind. Germans like to see focus and confidence.
  
• Rewrite CVs and cover letters constantly, ask others for feedback and keep good version control. Expect to dedicate several hours a week for this task.
  
• Install a PDF printer driver to convert your documents. Send only PDF files to recruiters.
• Consider going back to your country of origin as a very concrete option.
  
• Be prepared by the fact that the MBA is still a big unknown in Germany.
  
• Learn as much German as you can.
  
• Use your master thesis project to interview high ranked executives in companies you plan to apply for. It is easier than you think, you learn a lot, you train for a real job interview and you get valuable contacts.
  
• Don’t expect too much from the semesters abroad in regards to job search. The timing is not right. Use the career services to refine your application documents and goals.
  
• Get as many reference letters as you can from past employers or professors as soon as possible. In Germany, every line of a CV has to be confirmed by an official document.
  
• Use Xing.com. In Germany, it is more important than LinkedIn, even if it has a horrible name.
  
• Use LinkedIn. Get recommendations from contacts.
  
• Blog and Twitter about relevant aspects of your MBA. I got a job lead through twitter.
  
• Let your colleagues know which kind of job you are looking for: industry, function, location.
  
• Get your GMAT book out and do some math exercises. Good preparation for consulting interviews.
  
• Look for MBA specific positions. In that way, you avoid being compared to 24 year old undergrads fresh out of college.
  
• Don’t ignore positions for 24 year old undergrads fresh out of college.