Well, as this site nears the end of it’s update-able life, I’ve decided to move it. You might notice that in the address bar now says mba.burtonsimmons.com instead of http://www.burtonsimmons.com or just burtonsimmons.com. It is my intention - when I finally get a job and move out of Salem - to start a new blog based on new experiences. (The implication here is that I’m not entirely employed yet, despite having graduated three months ago.) Still, when that day comes… watch out! The old addresses will forward here for the next while, but eventually this will just be a glimpse into the past and nothing more.

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I started this blog with the intention of capturing my MBA experience and its immediate aftermath. While I’m still unintentionally unemployed, eventually the purpose of this particular blog will no longer exist. My loyal reader(s) might be wondering, “what’s next?” The answer, as it so often is, is “it depends”. At some point I’ll be archiving the “Adventures in Business School” and starting a new project. I enjoy blogging, and I’ve enjoyed capturing my thoughts and feelings as I’ve gone through this process. When I move to Portland (which is where I really want to be) I’ll probably find a new theme to start writing about. My goal is to make this particular blog permanently accessible, though, for anyone else who might be thinking about an MBA. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this. I still have a few entries yet to put in (as the job hunt continues) but the blog will be winding down. Thanks for following my adventures!

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It’s been over a week since graduation, and I’m still unemployed. Apparently I’m not alone, though. As of last week, only about 40% of our graduating class had found positions, which is significantly lower than in previous years.
So let’s talk about my job hunt for a minute.
First off, there are two kinds of rejection. There’s the explicit rejection, where some company is good enough to tell me that no, they’re not interested. Or they’re looking for something else. Or they’re not filling the position. Or the salary I’m looking for isn’t in the range of what they’re looking to pay.
I can deal with explicit rejection. It provides a nice closure, and at least there’s feedback. What I’m experiencing a lot of, though, is implicit rejection. Implicit rejection sucks because there’s no feedback whatsoever. I just don’t hear back from a company. I put a lot of work into my resume, a cover letter, and putting all my information into their database online (which asks for the same information that’s in my resume, which they also want a copy of), yet they won’t do me the common courtesy of returning any of my follow-up phone calls or emails. Many companies just have a wall and a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” attitude which is, quite frankly, extremely disrespectful of the time I put into try to find employment there. So job hunting is unpleasant. It’s unrewarding. It’s frustrating to call a company to try to follow up and hear, “Oh, our recruiting department usually handles that… and they don’t take phone calls.” (Yes, that’s an actual quote.) It’s painful to try to get feedback so I can modify my search and search behavior… but I can’t even get an echo from the void.
Job hunting sucks a lot. That’s all I’m going to say.

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In the speeches we listened to during our commencement, we were showered with the advice of others. Everyone from Tom Brokaw to Theodore Roosevelt: You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. -Tom Brokaw and… To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. Theodore Roosevelt

Let me offer my own quote for posterity. Please, somebody, quote me on this view of education: Give a man a fish and you’re out one fish; teach a man to fish and you can charge him for the education. - Burton Simmons … it’s a business model.

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