Blogging about the BOC w/Jake Yosafat

Hey guys,

While you may not know it, chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’ve read a lot of the stuff I’ve written this summer. As the BOC Intern, I’ve been the person primarily in charge of the upkeep of the blog, the BOC Facebook page, and writing new HTML content for the BOC website’s company listing.

While not an official member of the Tepper Interns blog team, I though it would be a good idea for me to lend some insight into what it’s like being part of an internship program that is less formal and in which you are working for a lot of individuals who already know you. Chances are that many of you will be faced with the potential situation of working for a small business or interning at Carnegie Mellon. Here is my take on the whole situation.

The hardest part of the job is autonomy. Being the only individual on campus working for the BOC day in and day out doesn’t lend a lot of oversight to the process. I decide when to come in, when to leave, and how many hours to work (within reason of course). No one is here telling me what to do each day, whether it is researching additional companies, writing recruitment letters, tracking down bad debt from past conferences, it is largely up to me. I can guarantee this is not going to be the case with most internships, but I can attest that it is a great exercise in self-motivation.

The other primary challenge is coordinating all the committee members. This summer we have had directors in the Eastern and Central U.S. time zones, the United Kingdom, France, a semester at sea in the Mediterranean, Rwanda, India, Singapore, China, Malaysia and Indonesia. Having to coordinate email schedules and cycles of productivity has lent insight into what transnational corporations must go through on a day-to-day basis.

I can assure you, I along with the rest of the Committee have been working to make this the best conference in years. We are already ahead of where were last year on company recruitment and we have six times as many high-level sponsors as we did last year. The BOC is still a mammoth operation, so I encourage you to get involved. Attend, volunteer, interview for a director position. I continue to look forward to September 16^th, as I’m sure you do to.

Until Then,

Jake

The Core of a Consulting Internship w/Byungwoo Ko

Hey All,

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer. I want to give you guys quick updates on my internship at Accenture.

Last weekend, all Accenture interns were invited to St. Charles, which is located outside of Chicago for a leadership conference. It was awesome to see people from different locations, different backgrounds and different projects. The conference focused on teaching interns how to become better team members and better leaders; it entailed a series of lectures, team-building activities and seminars. It was really fun. I got to know so many new people and got to listen to what senior executives at Accenture had to say about leadership. Only bad part about it was that I had to go back to work on Monday after a busy weekend… haha.

I am currently working on a couple of big projects. First, the fiscal year for Accenture ends in August, so our team has been putting a lot of effort in reviewing the numbers for the current fiscal year and planning for the next fiscal year. This has been a very exciting experience as I get to learn how professionals plan and decide what their goal should be for the future. There are many factors that must be considered and every factor should be considered very importantly. You learn to constantly question yourself on how this process is going to affect your team, your company and your client, how much are we going to save, how can we generate more review and so forth. I am sure many of you have already done this through some classes but the process gets extremely intense when a huge amount of money is on the table. Secondly, my supervisor assigned me a summer project that I need to present to his team members. The project needs to cover the overall contingent labor industry and how our team can improve to lead the trend and not follow it. I have been doing a lot of research to understand how contingent labor works, why companies want to use contingent labor, how can we our services to our clients and etc. I just want to make sure that I deliver something that can be useful to the team and Accenture. I will be holding interviews this week with some team members to get their input and to learn how they fit into the big picture of the procurement process. The presentation is coming up soon, so I will be working long hours for the remainder of my internship. Wish me luck!

BK

Selling IT w/Kimberly Chan

HELLO!

Johnson & Johnson is going so well! I am so grateful that I landed this internship that utilizes both Marketing and IT. I'm currently a little past my halfway mark and I finally feel like I am making a contribution to the group. My role has changed since the beginning, so I act as more of a Communication Strategist for the team. I find the best ways to showcase and market the group to other companies under the J&J umbrella. To my surprise, J&J is MUCH bigger than I thought and the services my group offers can go unheard. Thus, I have been exploring avenues of communication.

A few projects that I've been working on include writing articles for our IT portal. These news pieces keep other J&J employees up-to-date with what other departments are working on. Lots of operational companies within J&J go there to see what new technologies are out and whatnot. It's a great medium to get our name out there!

Additionally, I've been acting as a Project Liaison for the Reach brand. They have new additions in their toothbrush line and want updating to their website. My role is to communicate between the creative agency that does the artwork and global services as well as the Reach employees. So far, I've created the pricing sheet as well as the Statement of Work (Sow). An SoW basically outlines the finances, activities, and timeline of a particular project. Now I’m just waiting for that to be approved!

Last but not least, I've also been working on creating a leave behind for clients who visit our Creative Lab. The Lab has aesthetics mimicking that of a marketing or advertising agency to brand J&J's IT in a more creative way. We take clients in here to have brainstorming sessions of how our group can help theirs. Areas of the Lab also showcase potential IT and Digital capabilities we have, website development, mobile application development, e-commerce and augmented reality. So this leave behind I'm creating has to capture the 'creative' aspect of IT. My ideas include creating a recycled notebook which has a few opaque pages in the background to feature part of the portfolio. This way, the parts of our portfolio will be staying with the client at all times (assuming they use the notebook). This unobtrusive advertising concept is the main sell for my pitch. I will be presenting my idea to the Director next week! Wish me luck!

Stay tuned to my next post!

Best,

Kim

Wall Street Power Hour w/ Jay Kapoor

Hey Everyone,

Things have finally slowed down a little bit - both of the deals I was on are finished and I'm on to new things and working on an entirely new deal.

This seems like a good time to talk about how the work flows in a group such as mine and the day-to-day work environment in a bulge bracket bank. The team, like most enterprises, is a hierarchy where Analysts – recent college graduates i.e. the bottom of the food chain - are accountable to their Associates, who report to Directors or Executive Directors who work under their respective Managing Director. As one climbs through the ranks, the job becomes more client relationship oriented and in a product group such as mine - MDs and EDs tend to have 2 or 3 specific industry sub-sectors that they attend to.

An MD's job is to generate ideas for their clients in, say for example, the construction equipment sector. As we are focused on High Yield, these ideas generally come from the sector. Their compensation is also based on their P&L (profit and loss), meaning, how much did your deals net the bank and how much did they cost. The higher ther P&L the better the bonus -- in that way banking truly is a meritocracy.

An MD or ED will target a client to "pitch" an idea and will request the deal team (an MD, ED or D, Assoc & Analyst) to help prepare a presentation with highlights on an opportunity for the client. We also fill it with facts about how our bank is the best and better than all the other banks.

The ED or D quarterbacks the process, setting up meetings with the client or clients and oversees the creation of the (notorious) Pitch Book materials that he/she will use to "win" business. The associate and analyst(s) put together the materials used in the Pitch which uses the full extent of your MSOffice skill set.

If the team wins the Pitch, we get "mandated" to work on the deal, and the process starts all over again -- marching orders come from the top and the analysts serve as infantry to carry them out. Even so, the process is not as bureaucratic as I would have expected and is often pretty collaborative up and down the chain of command, i.e. your MDs actually take the time to listen to your suggestions.

The analyst work culture is definitely focused on learning and MDs, EDs and Directors are happy to explain things to you because they know it is in their best interest for you to the most efficient at their job. One caveat -- if you need to ask a question, ask it but make sure you really listen to the answer. Listening attentively is the hallmark of a good analyst and asking questions just for the sake of asking questions wastes both your time and the other person's.

Also important is to always take pen, paper and calculator with you when you go to any meeting and take extremely diligent notes. Once, my deal team was asked to recall how many times oversubscribed a debt offering was, from a phone call that was two days earlier. I was the only one who remembered to write it down -- I didn't know that it was important at the time but ended up being very useful later. Also became a good way to show attention to detail - which is absolutely key in IBanking. As my associate wisely said – “there is so such thing as an almost right number."

Lastly, for those of you with a little reading time this summer and want to get some more information about how Banking is and was - here is some stuff from my reading list

1) "Monkey Business" by John Rolfe and Peter Troob

-- Famous account of Analysts at DLJ in the 90's. A little outdated, still very informative and ridiculously funny. Might scare some away from banking but still, a really honest and good read.

2) "The Accidental Investment Banker" by Johnathan A. Knee

-- Monkey Business for the upper level exectuive. John Knee's narrative features a lot more than just his personal experiences climbing the ladder at Goldman and Morgan Stanley. It also has some good history on the golden age of banking and where it has gone. Highly Recommended.

Hope everyone is having a good summer!

Jay Kapoor

New Team Member

Hey guys! I hope your summers are all going well. We've recently added a new team member to expand the Blog's offerings. In addition to BK's Consulting, Jay's Finance, and Kim's IT experiences, we're proud to introduce to you Jackie, who will clue you in to some of her marketing experiences. Enjoy!

Hello all!

My name is Jackie Zhang, a Business Administration major (class of 2011) in Tepper tracking in General Management with a focus on Marketing and Manufacturing, Management and Consulting. This summer, I'm working in none other than Pittsburgh, PA, with USG Insurance as part of their marketing department, innovations.

As one of five interns in the program, I work on projects both marketing internally for USG, as well as for other companies in the service industry. While our work is mainly separate and on a variety of different projects that are given to us (ranging from creating advertising campaigns for our clients to redesigning internal materials), we often come together to work on larger projects, or to collaborate on parts requiring brainstorming. In the upcoming weeks, it is also an intern project to research, create and present a complete proposal to higher execs.

While working in insurance may not have been anyone's first choice in career as a kid (it certainly wasn't mine), it's actually quite interesting what you can learn from it. Since basically all industries and individuals need insurance, we learn a lot about various industries because we have to cover their basic activities. Additionally, as part of the marketing team, I have a say in every part of the new service creation process--in contrast to marketing for physical products, it's definitely more interesting and challenging to think of innovative methods of marketing the intangible.

Recently, my main projects have focused on doing thorough market research on areas of business that we plan on moving into, editing and creating proposals for the insurance and financial services software developed by our IT department, and designing marketing materials and advertising for external clients, as well as our own insurance agents. Our work environment is pretty casual (in stark contrast to the underwriting agent work area outside our office)--we play music, go out to lunches, and sit on green chairs.

The only real downfall of the internship so far is the long commute: living in the same house from the school year that neighbors the CMU campus, it's an awfully long drive to get to the Southpointe business park (especially hellish during rush hour back through the Fort Pitt tunnel!). Otherwise, living in Pittsburgh over the summer is surprisingly pleasant with more sunshine than you'd ever see during the school year (and a lot less stress in the air).

-Jackie Z

The Lay of the Internship Land

Hey readers! Welcome back for another update on the Tepper Bloggers. All three have progressed nicely in their internships and are eager to share their experiences with you. We're happy to announce that we have a fourth blogger, Jackie Zhang, who will be joining us starting with our next post. Jackie is a Marketing Intern here in Pittsburgh and should round out our team nicely along with Kim's IT, Jay's Finance, and BK's Consulting experiences. I hope you enjoy and learn from this post and you'll be hearing from us again soon.

Hello everyone!

A few weeks have passed and I'm slowly getting assimilated with the work culture at Johnson & Johnson. I must say, it's taking me awhile. I feel like I just got here and yet it's been 4 weeks already! My impressions of the company are overall positive. I love that it's a big corporation full of people from diverse backgrounds and new things to learn. Everyone here has a story of their own and SO much to offer. They are so helpful and friendly, I literally can ask anyone anything and I won't feel dumb.

Lately I've been thinking about balancing work and social life. It's a toughy during the week. It seems like I have no time for myself. I get up around 7am, get to work around 8:30am and leave around 5pm, get home at 5:45pm. Settle, cook dinner, and it's 8:30pm already! Dilly dally for a bit and it's time for bed. The whole cycle begins again. My body is slowly transforming to just fat and bones because I never exercise. It's quite sad. The most exercise I get is my walk to the bathroom at work. I need to figure work-life balance. Suggestions?

Till next time! Have a good one!

-Kim

Hi Guys,

Things have gotten a lot busier over the last few days which means the nights and weekends have started getting longer and longer. Before I get into my personal experience in the Leveraged Finance group these past few weeks, I wanted to offer a brief primer on the Investment Banking Division and my specific group if to give you some idea as to how my internship is structured.

Groups in the Investment Banking Division are classified as either industry groups or products groups and unlike most Sales & Trading Internships, which rotate you through 3 desks over the course of 9 weeks (after a week of training) we spend our entire internship in one group. Industry groups are responsible for covering a particular sector, such as Technology, Media, Power & Utilities or Real Estate, etc. They manage relations with corporate clients and get specific expertise on their industry over a wide range of deals, be that M&A. Equity/Debt Offerings or Restructuring. On the other hand, the Product groups focus on one specific deal type, such as Mergers or Leveraged Finance and your deals range over all the different sectors but you become an expert in that one product.

Leveraged Finance is a product group and focuses on High-Yield Debt financed deals. These range from leveraged bond and loan origination to refinancing a company's bank debt (which is exactly what it sounds like -- you take out a new loan with the sole purpose of paying off the old one, generally to get a better rate or for strategic reasons). We also spend a good deal of focus on Leveraged Buyout (LBO) opportunities.

Going off the principle in Finance that greater risk must show greater returns; high yield debt is corporate debt that is rated below investment grade by ratings agencies (Moody's, Fitch, S&P) and offers percentage returns that are much greater than the High-Grade AAA rated bonds of blue chip companies. A Leveraged Buyout, therefore, is where a Private Equity investor will buy up full stake in a public company in order to take it private. The investor then makes changes to the company structure/operations/assets/strategy and soon after takes it public once again to reap the financial benefits. The assets of the target company are used as collateral for the acquisition --- creating the need for high-yield debt (reflecting the higher risk of an LBO) as a vehicle for potential investors who provide financing for the deal.

After the first week of training with the entire intern class, our joint Financial Sponsors/Leveraged Finance (FS/LF) intern class of 14 had another week of in-depth high-yield debt training, led by Analysts on up to Managing Directors in the FS/LF team. We covered topics from Debt Covenants (the legal documents surrounding the bond or loans we offer) to different Bank Loan and Bond options we offer to the basics of Bond Math. Now that we are done with both training regimens we are officially part of the FS/LF team. We spend most of our time helping our Analysts/Associates on the deals we get assigned to.

These include among other things, making Debt Comps (a "Comparable Companies" analysis - focusing on debt ratios of the company like Total Debt/EBITDA), which are useful when pitching a company's characteristics against their competitors to potential investors. We've also been building "Quick & Dirty" models (starting at the Income Statement and working down to a projection of EBITDA and Free Cash Flows over the next 5 - 10 years) in preparation for building the financial projection models we use to price and justify the bank lending/originating $XYZ Million of leveraged loan/bonds to/for a company or Financial sponsor. When people say banking gives you "modeling experience" -- this is actually what they are talking about.

Phew.... that was a lot of information condensed into a very quick breakdown. It is actually amazing to think back to less than a month ago when all this felt like a foreign language - working through it day-in-day-out is starting to make this second nature. If any of this is unclear or you are interested in learning a little more, feel free to reach out to me and I'll be happy to share more.

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July,

Jay Kapoor

Hey Everybody!

I hope everyone is having a great summer. I am certainly having a very busy one. In case you guys don't remember, I am interning at Accenture as part of the Business Process Outsourcing group. I have to admit I had no idea what my project was about and what kinds of topics that I will be dealing with. I am just starting to get an idea of what my role is and how I can fit into the group. I think this is what everybody goes through in the beginning; you just feel overwhelmed and lost. You are not sure what you are supposed to be doing and you don't know what is expected of you. But I learned the best way to deal with that is to go out and reach out to people around you and ask for help. There are plenty of people willing to help and walk you through the process and help you successfully fit into the organization. I've already met somebody besides my supervisor who is willing to mentor and guide me during and beyond the internship period. So, when you are starting your internship, make sure to reach out to people and meet people who are willing to teach and nurture you.

In terms of the project, my boss wants me to experience different steps of procurement from finding clients to finding suppliers. He sends me a lot of materials to read over and takes me to different meetings so I can be acquainted with what actually happens in the 'Procurement' world. Also, he recently gave me a semester long project for which I have to give a presentation to about 40 people upon completion. I hope all the presentation skills I learned at Tepper will pay off, haha.

In the next post, I will try to share something more specific about the project I am doing and about my daily tasks. Until then, PZ!

BK

Meet the Team

Welcome back students, friends, faculty and everyone else. After another great year at Carnegie Mellon, the Business Opportunities Conference Committee, in conjunction with the CMU Career Center and Tepper Undergraduate Department has assembled a crack team of interns who are currently applying the skills they have acquired at Tepper to roles ranging from Investment Banking to IT work. While this is not the whole team quite yet, we wanted to give you an opportunity to get to know the individuals who will be sharing their experiences, anecdotes, and advice:

Hey Fellow Tepper students,

Let me introduce myself first to you all before I start writing about my internship experience. My name is Byungwoo Ko; I usually go by BK. I am double majoring in Business Administration (Track: Manufacturing Management and Consulting) and International Relations and Politics and I am graduating this coming December. Hooray!

I am doing my summer internship at Accenture as part of its Business Process Procurement Outsourcing group. I am not quite sure what part of the procurement process I will be dealing with, but I know I will be working mostly with subcontracts and labor supply chains.

Right now, I am going through the orientation program and online training modules to get familiar with the company. I hope to start on my real project soon and I will update you guys on it when I do.

Cheers,

BK

Hey guys,

My name is Jay Kapoor and I am going to be a Senior next year. I am a Finance Major in the Tepper School of Business. This past Monday, I started my internship with a bulge bracket investment bank in New York City (I can tell you which one when HR lets me know it's okay). Within the bank, I will be interning in the Investment Banking Department (IBD) in the Financial Sponsor/Leveraged Finance (FSLF) group. Currently, I am going through training with all the other interns in IBD but soon we get to join our groups and get staffed on projects.

Living in NYC has been really interesting so far. I am currently living on Lafayette Street (between Chinatown and the Financial District, i.e. downtown) whereas my office is in Midtown so I have a 30 minute commute door-to-door. On that, I have a word to the wise: Secure summer housing in New York City IMMEDIATELY after you get your internship. It is really easy to put it off but take it from someone who wishes he had that extra hour of sleep a day and book your housing. Sleep in the IBD is especially scarce so we (the interns) are taking full advantage of the shortened training hours in the evening to explore NYC.

Hope that gives you a brief insight into me and interning in NYC. In my next post I'll tell you a bit more about my group and what the IBD does. I'll be sure to update you guys on what kind of projects I work on (after clearing all confidentiality issues of course) and more about how the IBD operates for those of you that are interested in Investment Banking as a career choice.

-Jay-

Hello everyone!

My name is Kim. I'm a rising Senior at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business with tracks in Marketing and Computing/Information Technology. This summer, I will be working at Johnson & Johnson as an IT Intern in their Global Services Commercial Marketing department! I originally was skeptical of taking this IT internship opportunity because I am not a techy person. However, this summer I will be tackling IT in more of a marketing/innovation direction. My team is responsible for not only being reactive to marketing problems, but proactive in creating new innovations in the marketing realm with technology. Most of it revolves around digital marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), mobile applications, external websites, social media, etc. I'm really excited to learn more about J&J and what I can contribute to the team!

-Kim