Smith School Launches MBA Super Days

New “super-sized” programming will help MBA students explore career tracks at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. Through a partnership with the school’s Office of Development and Alumni Relations, the Office of Career Services now offers panel discussions, keynote speakers, mock interviews and networking during Smith Super Days.

“It’s like one-stop shopping packed into a single day,” says Jeffrey Kudisch, assistant dean of corporate relations and managing director of the Office of Career Services. “We want to provide students with a super-sized opportunity to network with each other and alumni in the metro D.C. area.”

Like the so-called super days that many investment banks host to allow prospective job candidates to interview with multiple people, Smith School Super Days are designed with two main objectives in mind. They provide an inside look at specific industries, and they unite the school’s various populations from the full-time, part-time, online and executive MBA programs.

“The goal is to build a sense of community that bridges all of our programs,” Kudisch says. The inaugural event in December 2015 focused on marketing and finance careers, and a follow-up event in January 2016 focused on business consulting.

About 75 students across all Smith MBA programs participated in the Consulting Super Day. The event kicked off with a case interview training by Terps Helping Terps award winner and longtime OCS supporter Jason Mollica, PTMBA ’02. The training was followed by three rounds of soft case mock interviews, where more than 20 students had the opportunity to participate and observe soft cases in small groups facilitated by alumni practitioners.

“It was a fabulous way to get soft case interview experience,” says Megan Allums, a part-time MBA student from the D.C. campus scheduled to graduate in May 2016. “I really liked the setup that you were able to observe others in a small group setting because we were able to learn from each other.”

Two panels were held concurrently in the afternoon — a general consulting panel and a Deloitte specific panel. The general consulting panel, moderated by Smith School professor Protiti Dastidar, featured two alumni working in federal consulting, Paul Lee, PTMBA ’09, from BRMi and Kristi Zobel, MBA ’09, from Morgan Borszcz Consulting. Additional panelists included internal consultant for Marriott Todd Scherr, MBA ’05,and two commercial consultants, James Watts ’06 from First Annapolis Consulting and Kent Ledgerwood from Navigator Management Partners.

Panelists emphasized the importance of being comfortable with ambiguity, having intellectual curiosity, a strong work ethic and interest in problem solving.

Given the significance of Smith’s recruiting relationship with Deloitte, the Consulting Super Day also included a Deloitte specific panel moderated by Smith School professor Paulo Prochno and featuring alumnus Jason Mollica, PTMBA ’02, current part-time MBA students Reggie Dorsainvil and Sam Kim, who assists with the firm’s recruiting efforts at Smith.

Following the panel discussions, Michael Burchell, client services lead for McKinsey’s Washington office, delivered a keynote on “Big Data Meets Human Capital,” and Srini Raghavan, PTMBA ’00, associate partner with the CIO advisory practice at IBM, spoke on “Truths and Myths of Management Consulting.”

The event culminated with a networking reception. “The Super Days are great learning opportunities that leave me feeling so inspired and excited,” says Scott Graham of Part-time MBA Association Board. “I made some great connections with students in the other Smith MBA programs, as well as alumni and consulting professionals.”