need an actual product/solution to consult with. The 2 places will be banks. As for everyhting else. u can make it up.

Guidelines for Interviewing senior management (at least 2, one can be current employer)

Objective:

1. Give you an experience in sales.

2. Put you out of your comfort zone.

3. Force you to connect with senior management and give you experience of interacting with them so that you do not hesitate during such interactions in the future.

4. Learn how to deal with rejection.

5. Deal with uncertainty associated with continuous rejections and failures, all the while hoping that the big breakthrough deal is just around the corner.

Premise:

Successful people are good salespeople. You are always selling no matter what. You do not have to be a salesman to sell. Even when you are talking to your friends or family, you are selling. You are selling your opinion. You are trying to make them see things from your point of view. At job you are selling yourself. You are trying to convince colleagues to do things, juniors of your vision and seniors of your skills set and potential. Selling never stops.

Assignment:

Now I want you to put yourself out there trying to sell something. To make it slightly easier for you I am letting you do it as a class assignment because people are more sympathetic towards university students. They will at least give you a chance and hear you for a few minutes. You then have to use that opportunity to connect with them. In reality you are selling yourself, your skills. However, you will do so in the form of an interview. You are trying to pursue your interviewee to give you the opportunity to work on a real project in their company as a consultant. Now obviously, they are not going to give any meaningful consulting project to a student. In order to solve that problem, you will actually be selling the following proposition.

In order to provide meaningful education and real life experience to the students, some faculty members have teamed up to do consulting projects for companies. The faculty members supervise a team of hand-chosen MBA students suitable for the project. The project is the responsibility of the faculty member. This is not a free service but the company is able to get quality consulting at half prices and at the same time make a meaningful contribution towards developing a quality workforce in the community. I have quite a few students end with job offers right there when they were interviewing the senior management for the project even though they were not looking for a job. However, you never know when that connection might come in handy.

Moreover, by your mere action of doing this assignment you end up increasing the value of your degree. As all of you go about approaching the senior management people in the community, irrespective of whether they grant you an audience or not, you improve NSU’s reputation and inform the community that MBA students at NSU do not just read textbooks and take exams but they actually learn by getting their hands dirty in the field. Remember the value of your degree is based on the perception of the employers. You are improving that perception every single time you interact with the community as a part of your coursework.

Generally speaking I am extremely busy and up to my ears in work but I will get faculty members who are capable and willing to accept a project if any of you are able to actually convince somebody to buy the concept. However, I am not expecting you to be able to get a project, neither will I grade you based on the outcome of your selling effort. Over the last 3 semesters I have had only one student successfully get a project. In that instance, I led a team of six students and one other faculty member on that project. The project was for a company with 5 billion dollars in annual sales and we completed the 4 month project on time and with such good quality that the company, who regularly employed Boston Consulting Group for its projects, wrote us a letter stating that the team actually did a better job than BCG. It was an invaluable experience for the students. Two of those students now actually work for companies in my portfolio.

I will restate here, your grade is not based on your being able to get a good outcome, rather on your honest effort. The objective is only to make you go thru the anxiety and experience associated with selling. If you get a project, not only will you benefit from the experience and become more marketable and valuable but you will create such opportunity for a few more students.

Deliverable:

You will write a report stating the following:

• How you went about deciding who to interview?

• How did you approach them?

• How you changed your approach as you encountered problems getting an interview?

• How you prepared for the interview?

• How did you connect with the interviewee?

• How did you bring up the idea of consulting projects?

• What was the interviewee’s response?

• How did you conclude?

• What did you learn?

• How would you change your approach if you had to interview the same person again?

• What would you change if you had to do the same assignment again?

I am not looking for a particular format for the report neither am I looking for a question answer format for the above questions. The list of questions above is a guide for you. Your objective is to show that you put thought and effort into the assignment and came out learning something.

If you have any objection at all with this assignment, you are free to propose an assignment for yourself that broadly meets the objectives of this assignment and reflects favorably upon NSU. As long as any self-chosen assignment meets the objectives I will not differentiate when it comes to grading.