Jun 5, 2010
Square wrote:Paul, that's exactly the kind of feedback I needed. I may take you up on your offer of a phone call, but I need to chew on what you've written first.
I hope you're feeling better, Square
Jun 12, 2010
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Aug 5, 2010
Finance11 wrote:Hi Paul,
Great to hear that you are back. Just sent you a PM.
Aug 9, 2010
Aug 10, 2010
Aug 12, 2010
PaulLanzillotti wrote:futureconsultant:
wow, thanks for all the great detail. I hope to do it justice.
Let me start by first entering your primary question very directly. You do have a realistic chance at Harvard, Stanford and Wharton. Yes you do belong to a very competitive applicant pool but you do have the start of meaningful differentiation. I know exactly what you do right now with respect to your professional role. I used to do something very similar, except that I was more on the business side. When you read about this recent work experience, you need to write about the leadership that you gained from it. Talk about the collaborative nature of the decision in design process. Talk about how you were able to collaborate with other coworkers who represented different backgrounds to execute on project work. While your current professional experience may not be the biggest differentiator in your profile, it definitely is better than most from your demographic.
Where I think you need to differentiate yourself is in describing your extra curricular leadership activities and with your future goals. I do have several questions around these activities. Have all of these activities that you list in your "Leadership Experience" section ended? Or are they still in progress? If so, are you still involved? For example, what happened to the security services business? I'm assuming it is in India. Who were your clients? Did you sell the business? What was the out?
Yes the business is still going on, but it has reduced in the number of clients I service. I still have a few clients from who are Small to Mid sized manufacturing firms.
With respect to showing differentiation through your short and long-term career goals -- why is it that you want to get into management consulting? This is a very traditional, tried and true goal. What I see in your background is a very significant entrepreneurial passion and strength. This would form the basis for meaningful differentiation in terms of goals. I would focus on this show differentiation and show a personal connection to your goals. All I know is that you want to move into the management consulting industry. At face value, given the limited information about what it is that you want to do within management consulting, it seems a little drab. Also, with respect to a longer-term career goal, you do not want to say that you are going to remain in management consulting and move up the food chain. They can guess this already. So encourage you to really explore your entrepreneurial strengths as part of your long-term goal. not ignore it, you will not be doing yourself a favor.
I definitely have a long-term entrepreneurial goal to start an IT- product firm of my own, but I want to work in Strategy consulting firm so that it provides me exposure to other verticals (which would be future client industries for my firm) and also I get a feel of the best Strategy and decision making practices that could later prove really helpful in my own venture.
I see 4 pieces to the fulfilling the jigsaw of my entrepreneurial venture
1] Business and Operations handling knowledge/exp - Gained through the Businesses I've started and managed so far
2] Knowledge in developing core IT product solutions - Earned through my career path
2] Core Business Fundamentals - Ill learn at the B-school
3] Strategy and Decision making expertise - Wish to gain this experience at a Management consulting firm
With respect to all of your leadership experiences I do have one suggestion. Make sure that you can put a wrapper around all of these disparate experiences. This may require some work and is necessary so that you look focused to the admissions committee.
Once you define what it is that you really want to do and expand upon it, then I can really tell you about the other schools you list. Goal still remains management consulting, all of those schools are certainly competitive that. But even within management consulting, what specific industry or domain do you want to focus on? Look to see if those industries are located by the program in question. Or if the program has a very strong alumni base in that industry. Make sure you check the career center placement stats. It will probably be a PDF document that you can download from each school's career center. Downloaded look at it -- see where the graduates are going, to what industries and what geographic locations.
Since I wish to have an IT startup, I'd like to pursue technology consulting, but I don't want to be restricted to just that as I want exposure to other verticals as well especially Finance (although a lot of my IT work has been in Financial vertical), Pharma , Energy as these will be the sectors that I'd like to develop products for in the future.
If you want to come with safety schools I suggest UT Austin, Carnegie Mellon and UCLA Anderson.
I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
With this extra information can you please evaluate my chances at the top schools like
H/S/W
Sloan
Tuck
CBS
Kellog
Booth
A couple of
Respectfully,
Paul Lanzillotti
Updated on: Aug 15, 2010
Aug 13, 2010
Aug 16, 2010
artakmik wrote:Paul,
I have one another question. Are you working as personal consultant for the MBA candidates? If I decide to start MBA preparation, I will prefer to work with professional coacher as well.
Aug 17, 2010
artakmik wrote:Dear Paul
I will much appreciate if you could give an feedback on my highlighted background. I just started to think about MBA, but few conceptual questions are still unanswered. Before starting GMAT preparation, I would like at least to hear a professional opinion regarding to following questions:
- Do I need MBA, taking into account my current professional position?
- Is it too late for me to go with 2 year programs?
- Are my profile fit top MBA requirements (except GMAT for the time being)?
.........
I will much appreciate your feedback.
Aug 31, 2010
Sep 2, 2010
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