Los libros del GMAT ya están vendidos

Disculpadme por no haber borrado el post anterior. Los libros del GMAT los vendí hace un mes o así. De todas formas lo más sencillo es buscarlos por Amazon y lo más fiable es ir directamente a por las guías oficiales.

Os garantizo que es una buena inversión, y si no tenéis mucho tiempo es bueno que los compréis lo antes posible antes del examen. Mientras más practiquéis mejor.

En internet también se encuentran algunos recursos interesantes.

We are alive

We said we were going to keep this blog alive but obviously we're struggling. Many things have happened in the last few months. Probably the one that is making the harder impact in our lives is the credit crunch, financial crisis, economic slowdown, recession or however you want to call it.

This crisis -that probably some MBA colleagues have contributed to create- has frustrated the expectations of many of my friends, my hopes too, and I guess is worrying some of the readers of this blog, people taking an MBA in Cambridge or somewhere else and MBA candidates around the world.

But the MBA is not the problem, the crisis is the problem, and without an MBA things will probably be even harder. Of course we all should lower our salary expectations, should forget about some companies -expecially about the ones that went bust-, but I believe I am better prepared to do any job after the MBA and if you are humble enough to take a job that you can do better than anyone else you'll be fine, you'll be promoted soon, you'll get a real MBA job soon.

Why do I say this? Well, I'm a live example of this. I had a low GMAT, not a quantitave background, little management experience, but was very much into entrepreneurship, diversity, internationalisation, marketing and communication, and about management. And somehow I managed to be admitted in Cambridge and that changed my life for life. I hope for the better.

I have a new job since the 1st of January. The 1st of September I returned to my previous employer in a sligthly different role, but first the mere fact of having a Cambridge University degree and second that, of course ;-) I'm a better manager, took me to a senior management position within three month and now I'm the youngest guy in that position ever. I'm still working in the same sector, almost the same employer, but in a compleletely different role and with plenty of opportunities ahead.

But I have to warn you about the upsides too. I have a better job, I got a 50% salary increase, but I work longer hours and as a consequence my quality of life is much worse. I like my job, I enjoy what I do, but I have to handle lots of pressure, fire people, say no, work long hours, and that affects your personal life, specially your family life. We are ok. Miriam is happy, I'm happy. I try to make the most of the time I spend with my kids. But to be honest I hardly can see them at all from monday to thursday. This is something to think about.

More news. I had a foot injury -a stress fracture in the second metatarsal head of my right foot- last december. Now I'm back but I'm out of shape and with the new job I hardly can train on weekdays.

Miriam is very well, working part time and spending time with the kids. Diego has switched to Spanish but can speak and understand English too. Leonardo is starting to say his first words.

This weekend Miriam and I went on holiday with friends for the first time without the kids. It's being fun. We are in the hills in Huelva -Sierra de Aracena- eating great food, drinking beer, wine and rhum, playing table games, playstation, karaoke, basketball and football. Tomorrow everyone awake at 9:30 to watch Nadal-Federer in Australia.

Let's keep it alive

We have decided to keep this blog alive. The MBA is over but I still have to graduate and above all the Cambridge MBA is one year that will last you a lifetime.

Also a blog is a great way to keep family and friends up to date and to keep a diary too.

I didn't want to lose the MBA archive, as I have received many messages of MBA candidates who find it useful. That's another motivation to keep posting. Current students and alumni were of much help during my pre-MBA and I'm happy to be useful for new candidates now.

As you can see I have changed the "theme" and title to adapt to our new reality. I always talk about "we" or "our" because I believe my MBA wouldn't have been possible without the support of my wife and the joy provided by my kids.

I still plan to publish a few "retrospective" posts to tell you about the end of the MBA, the IP, our holidays, readapting home, jobs and so on.

Also, and I hope sooner than later, I'll start here a series of posts about the MBAs who come to visit us in Sevilla. Who's going to be the first?

I'm an MBA

A few days ago I received the letter from the new MBA Director Jochen Runde, the statement from the Committee of Examiners and the Official Transcript confirming I'm an MBA.

I also received my grade for the Individual Project, which I wrote with the title "Innovative approaches to increase revenues for football clubs - Can good business sense make football better?". It was fun, and I got a good grade.

I haven't been writing in the blog for a long time. Partly because I was busy, partly because I don't want to accept the MBA is over. In fact I'm telling myself is not over yet, because Graduation is on the 16th of May 2009.

Now I'm back to work in Sevilla, Spain. I returned to my previous employer, in a different department and possition, but with the same boss. I left that door opened during the whole year and I'm happy to be back.

As you may know I funded my MBA with a Talentia Scholarship which requires you to return to Andalucía or to an Andalusian company abroad for 4 years after the program. Otherwise you have to return the scholarship, which in my case is worth €56k.

At some point I considered the possibility of finding a job in the UK and repay the scholarship, but given the current work market circumstances and my family responsibilities, that soon became an utopia, especially if I wanted to keep my pre-MBA standard of living in the short term.

The MBA is a long term investment, and I think there are at least two ways to ripe benefits from it.

If you are young, single, come from a relatively low income country and are ready to work like crazy for a few years it definitely makes sense to take any MBA job in London and build your career from it.

But if you have a family, your pre-MBA job was already about MBA level, and you don't want to start from scratch again, it also makes sense going back home, either to your old company or another, and use the Cambridge MBA to grow within your network.

I chose option two, and honestly I still don't know if I made the right decision.

Sometimes I think I should have been more ambitious and try a different job, a different company, a different industry. I can't really stand still, I'm an entrepreneur.

But it's not only about me, so when I go back home from work (sometimes as soon as 15.00) and I meet my wife and my kids in the playground near my riverside flat, I realise that -at least for now- I'm in the right place.

Vendo libros del GMAT

Business is business. 

Con mi regreso a casa me he dado cuenta de que tengo demasiados libros. Tantos que no tengo donde ponerlos. Y si hay 4 libros que estoy seguro que ya no necesito son los del GMAT. 

Así que he pensado que igual a alguno de los lectores de este blog les pueden interesar. Tengo 4, como podéis ver abajo. La guía oficial completa, los extras "verbal" y "quantitative" y el Cracking the GMAT de The Princeton Review. 

Vendo los 4 por 30 €, y de regalo Your MBA with Distinction, un libro fácil e interesante de leer antes del MBA.  Yo corro con los gastos de envío en España. 

Los libros están bien, prácticamente nuevos. Sólo tienen marcas a lápiz que se pueden borrar. 

En fin, si te interesa déjame un comentario.