National Black

It's 3pm on a Wednesday and the Master's Lounge is nearly empty. While one could claim it's because class is still in session, it's actually because a vast amount of my fellow 1st years have departed to head to the airport to go to Atlanta for the next couple of days.

What's in Atlanta? National Black MBA Association annual conference. Or, more specifically, the career fair is on over the next two days. NBMBAA has a gigantic career fair with over hundreds of employers manning booths, eager to entice smart MBA students to their opportunities, and thousands of said eager MBAs willing to sell their mothers for a chance to talk to a recruiter for five minutes of the day.

Way back before even BaseCamp started, we were told that there are two main career fairs that we should attend: NBMBAA and NSHMBA (National Society of Hispanic MBAs). It was advised that one out of the two should be attended, preferably Black because NSHMBA was held over the same time as our finals. The Early Bird registration cut-off was August 1st, so August 1st, without even questioning the validity of this decision, I signed up for the career fair.

As time went on, BaseCamp happened, career options were slowly being eliminated or focused on, I began to wonder if Black was a good idea. I also had signed up for the Net Impact conference that is to be held at the end of October, for a good deal more money admittedly, and I was facing the prospect of spending too much money on something that may not hold much value.

I spoke to my career counselor during my mandatory resume review session and she confirmed my suspicions - since I am interested in consulting and operations, there isn't as strong a representation of companies for those areas at Black than for companies looking for Marketing, Finance, or specific industries that don't usually come by Tepper, such as biopharma.

So I sold my ticket to a fellow student who hadn't booked her trip yet. A couple of others had done the same thing, so it's going to be a very quiet couple of days in class!