Fontainebleau, 20 October 2004

Dear all,

Hope you all had a nice summer. Nice to see so many of you in Copenhagen in August.  

I have just finished the fourth period with only one more to go. No exams this time and reasonably relaxed throughout. Many of my fellow students were pretty busy drafting motivation letters and interviewing with the companies recruiting on Campus, in particular all the consultancies (last year, McKinsey alone recruited 90 students on campus, of which half were new employees!). Unfortunately there have not been any telecom operators here yet, which is what I would like to do after INSEAD.

This gave me some extra time to spend on the (quite extraordinary) golf courses, but also means that I have to spend more time looking for a job off-campus in November-December. Fortunately, Vodafone (a mobile operator) is coming in two weeks. So that is pretty exiting. Would clearly be one of preferred employers. I just forwarded them my application and am waiting for them to get back to me.

Most of the other students seem to be shooting off applications to everything that moves and often end up with multiple interviews every week. And if they then make it to the second round, they typically have to go for interviews abroad, which makes it pretty time consuming. I have been surprised to see how often students apply to companies they are not really interested in, just to have a back-up. And even though they don't really wanted the job in the first place, they still get hurt when they are rejected (or "dinged" as we call it). Most people are used to always being among the selected ones, but here the competition is pretty stiff, so someone needs to be rejected. For many that experience was quite stressful.

My courses this period were:

• Psychological issues in management  
• Applied corporate finance
• Making strategy happen
• Market driving strategies
• Managerial negotiation
• Management Decision Making

The most interesting was the psychology course. It had nothing to do with management, but was quit fascinating, dealing with emotions, listening, private vs. professional life, values, relationships, stress and even children. It was one of those rare courses that may actually change the life of many of the participants, first of all by making them pay more attention to other people's feelings and making people think twice before letting their children down because of work. Unfortunately, there is a little to few of these unique courses and extraordinary professors here, most of the stuff is pretty mainstream.   

Let me finally recommend you, once again, to download the internet telephony service: skype at www.skype.com. It is truly amazing. Quality is great and now you can also call regular phones at a world rate of 1.7 Euro cents a minute (calling other users is free).

All the best wishes from Fontainebleau. Look forward to see some of you in London next weekend.

Jonas