Two weeks ago (put date here) Alex and Jan from Atenta asked me if I wasn't interested in writing a few articles for their head hunting blog Wollmilchsau; I would represent the view of job seekers. As I am myself a Social Media enthusiast and also use it for my job search, I agreed.

About myself: my name is Fernando Bresslau, I am German-Brazilian, was born, raised and went to university in São Paulo. As a young engineer it is always good to collect international experience early on. Germany was a natural choice, as I already knew the culture and the language. The double citizenship made everything even easier and, after five months in China, I was ready to emigrate to Germany.

I have to say, I like it here. I often have to hear that leaving that beautiful country with its beautiful sun, the pretty beaches, gorgeous women and... and... to come to a dark, serious land was a mistake. Naturally, I see it differently. The fantastic infrastructure, lots of green spaces, the smaller cities, the high respect others' rights, the cultural awareness, the regular lifestyle, the bike paths are only a part of that which makes this country pleasant in its own way. And one can find pretty women everywhere ;-)

About Social Media: my first job in Germany I earned through internet fora and e-mail. But this is for the next article.

Some of the first people I met in Hamburg in the Twitter community where Alex and Jan, from the Atenta recruiting firm. Their focus as headhunters is to use not only the internet, but also social media for recruitment. They are very innovative and have done some interesting project, like a job search engine for twitter (www.jobtweet.de) and the German language headhunting blog Wollmilchsau (www.personalberater-blog.de).

The name of this blog is interesting by itself: Wollmilchsau means something like “wool giving milk sow”. It comes from a German expression where you say that there isn’t such a thing like a female pig which gives milk, lays eggs and provides wool. And, in the end, companies are looking for employees who can do everything expertly. We all know that that doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t keep looking.

Anyway, this blog has earned a good standing among corporate recruiters and headhunters in Germany, so, when Jan and Alex asked me to write a series of blog articles about the current job market situation from the perspective of a jobseeker, I gladly agreed.

I have written 5 articles already, 4 of which have been already published, but in German. My intent is to translate them to English and publish them here, with a certain delay. So far, the published articles are:

• A short introduction of yours truly
• How I got my first job in Germany via e-mail
• The reasons that led me to do an MBA
• A digression on the use of video-CVs

The links above take you to the original articles in German. The next one to be published deals with my job search during and after the MBA and the next one in the production pipe deals with my job search in 2009.

So let me get started translating the first blog article into English.

Since mid-August I had been locked out of blogger.com. Today, after almost a week without posting, I found out that my login at blogger.com works again. No idea why, no word from the not so nice people at blogger.com.

Funny that this happens now, because I have been thinking about this blog and its future. What is its purpose and who my audience is or should be.

When I first started blogging, it was a way to keep friends and family informed, and it was relatively private. I had a robots.txt file which prevented google to list it. It was written in Portuguese. And I passed the link to selected friends and family.

The MBA changed the aim of this blog. It certainly changed the audience I had in mind for it. I still wanted to keep family and friends informed. Luckily, they are all smart and well educated, so it was possible to change the language to English ;-) This was necessary to include three additional groups of readers: future MBA colleagues,  potential employers and future MBA candidates.

I am happy with the results. My MBA colleagues, their relatives and members of the 2009 class of the Mannheim MBA told me they read this. My family and friends certainly do. And, if your google "Fernando Bresslau" you find this blog followed by my LinkedIn and Xing profiles.

But soon I will be definitely employed. And I have been far from the MBA life for a couple of months already. So the audience of my blog will revert to what it was before: family and friends. With one big change: more of my friends now don't speak Portuguese, so the language will continue to be English.

I will certainly blog about my new job, the industry and the trends. But this will be on a blog separate from my personal blog. I could be blogging, starting in February 2009, about the chemical, automotive or wind power, depending where I'll land. And I would then blog with the interests of the company in mind. But this is the future, let's see.

I was also thinking about the declining frequency of my posts here. Sure, I have a project at DHL Brussels which keeps me busy 8 hours a day, job search and career decisions get another chunk of my attention and other beautiful things in life also captivate me, Brussels is an interesting city.

I certainly have transfered much of my broadcasting to a new tool, twitter. Actually, twitter linked to my Facebook status, through which I reach most of my MBA colleagues. Interestingly enough, Luli Radfharer, a professor at the arts and communication school at the University of São Paulo, whose courses I took in 2002 and 2003, twittered about an article stating that blogging was passé. I kept in touch with Luli over all these years through our blogs at first, and now through twitter. And I can see where Paul Boutin, the article's author, is going. He has good observations on how blogging has emerged and developed, and what we can expect from personal communication (or broadcasting) in the near future.

I will continue to blog. But I suggest you to follow me on twitter or on facebook. I will certainly be more present there.

And if this article is a bit confusing, please excuse me. It has been a long day, a long week, a long month and a long year. Can't wait to go to Brazil on Christmas and take the whole month of January off.

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.
  

I applied for and was invited to the EBS Symposium this weekend. It is an impressive event held by the European Business School, a private institution, and its students. It seems that 1200 people were invited, among students, young professionals and representatives from the business world.
The list of speakers was also impressive, with many high caliber personalities there. Unfortunately, many simply didn't show up, maybe because of the consequences of the games played in Wall Street last week. But, just as an example, the German or European bosses of the main consultancies were all there. Again, impressive.
I stayed with 4 other students i nthe apartment of 3 EBS students. This was a good thing, as this created a group of familiar faces with whom I spent most of the time during the event.
We were well taken care of. Besides the simple, but free accomodation, we had a very good shuttle service, all meals taken care of, internet access and even a very nice party on Friday evening, at a winery. I didn't stay for the party on Saturday nigh.
Some of the talks were very good, like the one from John Major and the one from Dr. Burgess, EMEA Chairman of BearingPoint. Other talks were not as good and I missed one or two talks because they were post poned or simply cancelled, without notice. But there was always something going on, so that was ok.
Furthermore, there was a good career fair and pre-scheduled interviews with interested employers. The list of companies was very good, of course. But after being in Berlin, Mannheim, Darmstadt and München at career fairs, you start recognize some of the faces and new information gets more scarce. The interview with KPMG was very interesting, though, and I got the confirmation that I would be invited for the next partner round. But this will probably be after Belgium and Brazil, in 2009. Let's see.

I have put some pictures up on Picasa. I hope you enjoy them.
Tomorrow I should be leaving to Brussels, finally.

It happened very suddenly during the "thesis week", the days before the deadline. An e-mail from a good friend from Warwick advertising a job at DHL in Brussels, a CV and motivation letter sent very quickly and an interview on the next day: I will be working for DHL in Brussels until Christmas.
It is a very interesting project in the finance department, working with the finance director of DHL Service Parts Logistics. It is a new field for me, therefore I expect to learn a lot.
I am also excited to be in Brussels. I have been there a little over one year ago and have some confusing, but nonetheless, fond memories from the city (well, not really the city).
I am also glad to have some time to research and think about the next permanent employment. This job gives me the opportunity to do the job search while employed, which takes some pressure of the job hunt. I now have the time to consider the offers that I already have and the ones I expect to get in the next few weeks carefully.
Of course, linked to the job search, DHL itself and the DPWN group are employers which have been on my radar since the beginning of the MBA and I am looking forward to getting to know this group better. They are growing rapidly and I expect to find interesting possibilities there.
So now you know. If any of you plans to be near Brussels in the next few months, send me an e-mail, I would be glad to show you around and, if possible, even offer a coach or sofa to sleep for a night or two.

I saw the title above in a twit from SJDelaney and thought that was a very counterintuitive thing. I don't want to look for jobs using the small screen of my mobile phone. And my Nokia E61 has a pretty decent screen. So I dismissed it as a hype, but went after the post anyway.
And lo and behold, I had to change my opinion after reading this paragraph written by Julian Stopps:

At the same time changes in corporate culture have motivated employees to migrate their job seeking off the PC and onto the mobile phone. The tightening of business policies and attitudes towards acceptable Internet usage has resulted in companies restricting access to career sites from office computers. Employees who wish to conduct their job hunt over lunch now have little option but to use an Internet cafe or their mobile device.

Well, I am looking intensively for a job from my own computer and wouldn't want to migrate to mobile. But now I see why other people might want to. Always question your assumptions.

At Queen's University I wrote a lot about start-ups. I decided that I would write start-up like this, with the dash. Not startup nor start up. Start-up.
And now I am involved with start-ups again. First for my master thesis at the Heraeus Corporate Development department. We are developing a technology scouting strategy and are naturally looking at start-ups. I am using Yahoo! Pipes and Twitter for a part of the project, let's see if it works.
Then I was contacted by a start-up looking for managerial talent to invite as founding members. It is in the area of social networks, which I find very interesting.
And today I read the following article at VentureHacks which deals with the situation above, so a link is appropriate.

I have a job offer at a startup, am I getting a good deal? Part 1

And all Mannheim MBAs are invited for lunch at EO at 12:30 today.


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Well, actually a bit more than a week, as the picture below was taken two Saturdays ago. I went with 2 other colleagues, one Canadian, one French, to a very small town somewhere in the wine lands around here to a wine and castle festival with some live music. The first band was bad, the second was ok. The festival was much smaller than I expected, but the Weinschorle (whine mixed with - little - sparkling water) was plentyful and cheap. The place was called Wachenheim.

Monday saw us rowing again, as well as Wednesday. I believe that I will be able to post better pictures later during the week, as I cannot take my camera in the boat. On Wednesday I tried to row a single boat for the first time and landed 3 times in the water. Of course. But it was warm, so that wasn't a problem.
Monday was also the day when I discovered that my locked bicycle was stolen from the locked bike garage in the locked apartment building. Really upsetting.

On Tuesday I went to an interesting networking event in Stuttgart organized by the BWcon institution, on the role of business angels in start-up financing.

Thursday was a busy day. Career strategy coaching session at the business school and soccer game watching with barbecue in the same location, in company of the students of the EMAT course. It was also the day I got my push scooter as a replacement for the stolen bike.

Germany won, everybody went to the Wasserturm to commemorate.

Saturday saw me taking the train to Idstein, for a Jazz Festival in a very picturesque town. Was really fun with good company. We even did a small rock climbing stunt which reminded me of Dee's blog: Venture to the top.

Barrelhouse Jazz Band in Idstein.

Sunday saw me for some hours in Mainz, and this is the only view I had from the impressive cathedral.

Today the last MBA course for our class and my sixt in Mannheim started: Global Information Management. It started slow with an analysis of Friedman's "The world is flat" text.
The afternoon was a bit more exciting, with a quick (and I mean quick: 1000 years in 1 hour) review of the world's history based on economic cores and a tentative look on how the world might look like in the next 50 years. I am curious to see how the course progresses and how today's class integrates with the rest of the course's material.

We went to rowing practice again and I spent half an hour in the single boat once more, this time returning safe and dry to land.

And tomorrow I will be the CIO of Volkswagen of America, at least during the case study discussion.

There is a kind of an institute in Stuttgart aimed towards start-up companies which has a series of interesting events for those who want to learn a bit more about the venture capital industry in Germany.

I am going tomorrow to the following event, if everything works out:

bwcon: Business Roundtable „Was macht ein Business Angel? – Unterstützungsansätze für Technologieunternehmen am Beispiel der FUZZY! Informatik AG“

I have this week free, as I am not taking the EC Law course at Mannheim Business School and the activity tomorrow is part of my job search. I hope to learn some and meet interesting professionals, let's see how it goes. But all this has costs:

• I will not be able to attend to the company presentation of Deutsche Börse AG at MBS and
• I will invest almost €100,00 in the event, which, at the moment, is a considerable sum for a student with a bank loan like me

But it should be worth it. No pain, no gain.

Some of you know that I use to twitter (that is, when its servers are up). And I do comment on the MBA course. And it was exactly one twit on the global supply chain course that got the attention of BearingPoint's Interactive Marketing team in the US. They twittered me back and asked if I was interested in writing an article on GSC. And so I did and you can see the result at the New Thinking BearingPoint blog:

http://newthinking.bearingpoint.com/2008/06/04/global-supply-chain-the-next-frontier/

I guess you will recognize the picture there.

BearingPoint is a company I want to apply for, so I am happy for the contact that I have had with them so far. During the GSC course we had a one day workshop with Sven Martin, a manager working in Switzerland, I have had the chance to talk to other consultants during career fairs and now this online collaboration. Way to go.

I have been checking the site lohnspiegel.de. It has, besides a very complete database of salaries, a tool to calculate the net salary dependent on some variables.
Being single and independent, I am classified as Steuerklasse I, that is, tax category I.
Take a look at the chart below. It shows the monthly net income according to gross yearly salaries. Below the yearly salary you will see the percentage of taxes and other duties in relation to gross salary. Figures in Euro.

1. It is a lot of work. Each application I send out takes up to one hour to be ready. It consists of e-mail, cover letter, CV and additional documents. All bundled up in a pretty PDF document. I try to tailor the applications to each firm, as the fit varies from company to company. Templates work only in a limited sense.
2. The wait. You have to keep up with the applications you sent out, give follow up calls or send follow up e-mails. Keep track of what worked and what didn't. Find the balance between showing interest and being annoying.
3. Being turned down. You know you want to work for the company in the position you applied for, or in a similar position. You are sure you can adapt and learn quick to cover for the fields where you could improve to be a better fit for the company. But you cannot always get that across with a set of documents and you get rejected.

At least some companies are polite enough to send you an e-mail giving you their final decision in clear words, like the example below. Others just don't bother. Others, like McKinsey, go the the extra step and give you a personalized feedback, provided you ask for it.
But, in the end, you have to get used to receiving e-mails like the following:

Dear Mr. Bresslau,

Thank you for your letter of application of 14th May.

We are pleased that you are interested in working with us. Your excellent background would certainly benefit many employers.

Although your credentials are definitely impressive, they do not specifically meet our current needs.

We will however keep your CV for future reference.

Thank you once again for your interest and we wish you the best of luck in your employment search.

With best regards,

So far, job search has been going well. I am primarily interested in two areas:

• Venture Capital and growth Private Equity
• Strategic management consulting, technology and innovation oriented

I have had two interviews so far. One in each area, one in Frankfurt and another over the phone. So far, so good. I am invited for a follow up interview for one of them and am waiting for a decision by the second company. I am also scheduled for another interview with a third company in June.

This is all exciting an I am looking very positively into the future. I am sure that I will get multiple offers and that I hope to have the peace of mind to choose the company which is a better fit in a long term perspective for me.

This is going to be a short post. But suffice it to say that I have had another enjoyable week at MBS. It was not an easy week and I am writing although I should be sleeping to prepare for the International Marketing Strategy Simulation tomorrow, but the course has been really good, again. I am happy with my choices, so far.
It is a very high content course, building nicely on the material of Cross-Cultural Management and International Management. We used concepts from both courses often. But I am glad that the lectures' part of the course is over. We had 404 slides in 3 days, but still have to actually discount the time of the 6 case presentations (15 minutes, plus at least 10 minutes discussion each) from the overall discussion time.
Now remains the question of how to review so many slides. And I have to admit, every slide was there for a reason and they were well used, so the unusually high number is justified.
But let me go to sleep. It has been a long day and I have to wake up early tomorrow to do some reading before class.
And some good news: I am scheduling interviews with two other companies, my efforts from last week are paying off.

The "Business and Corporate Taxation in Europe" was one of the modules that I decided not take here at Mannheim Business School. We have 10 courses to choose at least 6 from. I know it is important to understand taxation mechanisms and strategies, but I figured that, if this becomes important to me one day, I'll know how to learn it on my own.
That meant that the week was class free for me. But not free. I focused on my starting job search, which needs a lot of time and effort to start well. The good thing is that, so far, so good. I have had some really positive responses to applications and conversations I had in the past months and believe that getting a job won't be a problem. Getting THE job though, is another story.

The week and the picture series started in Frankfurt, where I was invited for an initial interview with a PE (Private Equity) firm. The interview went well and it was good to have a feel of the kind of environment that will await me, if, as I intend to, get into Venture Capital or PE. In June we will have the second round, with other partners, so I guess that they liked what they saw.


On Tuesday I went to the excellent Konaktiva career fair in Darmstadt. It is organized by students, but extremely professional and organized.

I especially enjoyed the pannels where they brought 5 companies together, gave each company 5 minutes presentation time and then opened the floor for questions from the audience. A very good way of getting the feel of the companies, especially the smaller ones one doesn't get much info about from the media.
I was lucky and the Tuesday was the consulting day, so I was able to talk to several companies and get relevant recruitment contact information.

And during the fair I met a former colleague of mine from Brazil. He got into the Escola Politécnica during my last year there and came later to Darmstadt to do his double degree in Germany and Brazil. At the time he was here, we did not meet and I thought that he had long ago gone back to Brazil. So it was a surprise to meet him again in Germany. As cliché as it sounds, the world is really a small place.

I was back on Tuesday evening for the recruitment presentation of BASF at MBS. It was a good and interesting presentation and I enjoyed to talk with the global VP of procurement, a very open minded guy.
The rest of the week I invested in getting things done and applying for different companies, after doing the necessary research of the firms. This takes much more time and energy than I expected, and I wasn't really satisfied with my progress. But yesterday morning I had a very productive day, so it compensated some.

On Friday afternoon the whole class was invited to a company visit and fancy dinner in the evening.
The tour started with the very interesting Visitors' Center, a kind of an interactive museum about chemistry and BASF. I had loads of fun and, if time permits, I might go back to see it with more time.
Very nice was their multimedia table pictured below. I noticed that they used multiple media projectors in several installations and who designed these system really had some very nice ideas. Not to mention that the implementation was excellent.

But the dinner afterwards was the important event for those, like me, who are interested in working for the company (BASF has VC and New Business divisions). It was held in the fancy Casino, the company owned restaurant just outside the complex, in Ludwigshafen.

It was a good opportunity to talk to some of the employees at BASF and to some really senior recruiters, with the knowledge that you were pitching to somebody who really new what kind of people they wanted and what positions were available.

And it was not only a fancy dinner, but a really enjoyable one, where I had the opportunity to talk a lot to some of my MBA colleagues, including an American exchange student, in a different setting.
The only pity was that I wasn't able to go to Heidelberg meet a good Brazilian friend and catch the great hildesheimer blues band "B. B. & the Bluesshacks".

But, all in all, it was a good week, with even an offer to work part time as an MBA coach and GMAT trainer for aspiring MBA candidates. I don't know yet if I will be able to make time for it, but, if the pay is good, it will be an interesting way to put some of the knowledge I have gathered in the last year to good use. Let's see how it goes.

Great news, I am busy again. So, just to make a bit of peace with my publishing conscience, I}ll upload a nice photo of the group chilling last week.


But it has been a good week, so far. The course is OK, the new exchange colleagues really nice, as is the weather, and I have been talking to some recruiter, including a feedback talk with McKinsey, an interview appointment settlement in Frankfurt and a headhunter from overseas.
But now I have to go, pre-class meeting with the presentation group.
Ah, the picture is a stitch of 3 individual images.

The MBA Career Fair is an event organized by top Business Schools in the German speaking region to present their students to select companies every year. This year we had the participation of Mannheim Business School, HHL, WHU, GISMA and Sankt Gallen, from Switzerland.

As you have read before, we traveled to Berlin one day in advance, last Sunday. We used the afternoon for the very nice visit to the Reichstag building (Parliament) and had a monotonous but very funny and informative lecture on the building itself and the Parliament (Bundestag).

The first picture shows some of the Mannheimers at the dinner we had with all other schools on Sunday evening. It was a pleasant event and the food was nice. I had much fun choosing a random table with people I didn't know and inviting myself to sit. This way I was able to meet some people from the GISMA and Sankt Gallen schools, while most MBAs stayed in tables with their own colleagues.
Another interesting observation I made was that people were eager to find people either from their own country or, at least, speaking the same language. Two groups quickly formed: Russian speakers and Spanish speakers, and I even met Massimo, an Italian who spoke Portuguese very well, surprisingly.

But Monday was the day. It was the day of the fair, the workshops and the interviews. And it all started with a workshop by Johnson & Johnson.
Their workshop was an interesting way of bringing the company's values and culture closer to the candidates. The first part was a short introduction of Johnson & Johnson and a longer explanation about their credo and the 4 pillars it is based on: customers, employees, communities and shareholders. The moderator told us that the order isn't important, but I read employee accounts where they actually think this order, if it were a priority, would be a great way to prioritize the company's values.
After this presentation we were divided into two groups to analyze the decision of a particular manager to close or not to close a particular plant. It was a very short case, only one page and, as expected, very little hard data, which made the groups struggle a bit with coming to a final answer. But it was exactly this lack of data which made the discussion afterwards very interesting, and I found the task of defending the group's conclusion, even though it differed a bit from my own, interesting and actually fun.


The interviews were also mostly quite interesting. The companies had received the CVs of all students of the participating schools for review and invited those they were most interested in for formal interviews.
I was lucky and got 3 interviews. A curious one, and interesting one and an odd one.
The curious one was for a sales role for a manufacturer of vertical transportation solutions. I can certainly see myself as a sales person, although I am not actively looking for such positions. But I certainly will consider the chance, if the interview bears fruit.

The interesting one was for a leadership development program for a fast growing consumer product catalog and on line sales organization. I can see good opportunities for growth and professional development in the company, so am hoping for a contact.

And the odd interview was with a major IT consultancy. Well, I do work with computers and believe that I understand IT technology quite well, but I certainly don't have a background in the area and was very surprised to see myself in their interview list. I went to the interview with an open mind, they might have been seeking people for non-IT areas of their huge company.
It started well: the interviewer told me from the beginning that he had not been able to read my CV in advance and asked me to deliver my pitch. Not knowing what job I was being considered for, I gave him a very generic version of my vita. He quickly came to the conclusion that I didn't have the content he was looking for, and politely told me so. That didn't surprise me, so I took the opportunity to ask for some feedback about the story I delivered.
I have to say that I was amused to hear that he had expected a structured approach focused on his business area and a consulting position. Well, if he had told me such details beforehand, I would have... So I almost had the feeling that, because they were mightily unprepared, we both had lost time. But practice is always good and his feedback was valuable, so I left the room in a good mood.


The last aspect of the fair were the stands in the exhibition space of the hotel. There we had the opportunity to visit the companies' booths, talk to recruiting personnel and get company literature and goodies. Like a normal career fair but, this time, the recruiters were actively interested in MBAs.
The companies also had the possibility to deliver presentations in two different auditoriums and the one I saw, by J&J, was quite good.
So, all in all, it was a good event. It certainly was tiring, especially the travel back to Mannheim - we left Berlin at 21:00 and arrived in Mannheim at 04:30 - but really worthwhile. I did make good contacts with companies and students and had very good opportunities to practice my interview skills, so I am quite content and looking forward to another event in early May.

Capgemini came to Mannheim Business School to deliver a Consulting Skills workshop this Friday. It was an invitation event, you had to submit a letter of motivation and your CV to be chosen. I am glad I was one of the 16 participants.
The Capgemini team consisted of 4 people, from all levels, from consultant to principal. They were all very open and friendly and conducted the workshop in a very professional manner, as was to be expected.
The group was divided in 4 teams and each team had one Capgemini consultant as observer and moderator. The feedback they gave us was on spot, but, as a colleague of mine said in the last portion of the event, they were too kind to us.
For example, one of the exercises consisted in proving or disproving a set of assumptions or hypotheses. I did very well in explaining the assumption with relevant data, but didn't really check if the assumption was true to begin with. I talked to one of the consultants later and he confirmed that he had noticed that, but they didn't comment on it when we presented. I guess they don't want to scare any of us away with negative feedback. After all, this was a recruiting event.
I liked the people at Capgemini and am certainly going to apply. I received some encouraging feedback in the end, let's see how it goes.
All in all, the whole day event was well planned, with a good mix of theory and practical exercises, which were well chosen. I certainly learned some, got to know the company a bit better and had fun doing it.

So today was the first day of the Mannheim Career Fair. Comparing to similar events at the engineering school of the University of São Paulo, it was quite small.

In Brazil the event was organized by the junior consultancy company run by students and I helped organize its 8th edition.
The selection of companies was good, though, I must admit. At least for me, interested in Management Consulting and it was really good to do the rounds with my Russian speaking colleagues Viktoria and Tatjana, who were with me in Canada. I found it easier and nicer to talk to the companies' representatives in couples. And the good news is that they really seem interested to hire this year.
In the evening we had a Capgemini employee presenting the company to our class and I liked this activity too. I will take part in a consulting workshop with them on Friday, the whole day.