Four MEM Industry Night Lessons: Good intern talent, lessons from CEOs, and ChatGPT
Last night, Northwestern’s MEM program held its annual Industry Night.
I always enjoy the networking with the students, faculty, alums, and business partners.
Here is what I learned last night.
One, there are a lot of talented students with previous work experience looking for summer internships.
Many are looking for roles in product management. If you have such an opportunity, now is a great time. You can find more information here, or feel free to drop me a note.
Many of these students are international students. My advice is not to be scared by sponsorship requirements. First, internships are covered under student visas. So, take the talent now. Second, when I was an employer, we were happy to sponsor H1b visas. There are plenty of law firms that can help you with this. It gives you a much larger talent pool to recruit.
Two roles in Customer Success can lead to the CEO’s office.
Our keynote speaker was Christina Crawford Kosmowski, CEO of LogicMonitor, and Northwestern University Industrial Engineering (IEMS) Alumna.
She led Customer Success at Salesforce early on through their rapid growth. Then, she moved to Slack in its early days to do the same. Customer Success is a new career path. Christina had a role in shaping this path.
Customer Success is critical for SaaS (Software as a Service) companies. Successful customers will renew and buy more.
She stressed how these roles prepared her to be a CEO. She worked with the customers, the product team, the sales team, and the executives. In other words, it was a great role to see the whole organization.
This is a great non-traditional role that people should consider.
Three, CEOs need to know when to make room for the next generation of talent.
Dr. Donald McNeeley, CEO of Chicago Tube and Iron and MEM adjunct professor, gave the dinner talk. He stressed the importance of leadership and how it is a rare talent.
His most interesting point was that good leaders also need to know when to step down and let the next generation take over.
I just listened to a podcast on the breakup of Standard Oil. The original Standard Oil leadership team had likely grown stagnant and less innovative. When the company was broken up, many new leaders were given opportunities. This led to a big wave of innovation across the industry.
Four, ChatGPT is a hot topic.
We had a lot of conversations about ChatGPT during the cocktail hour. Then, Christina mentioned it in her talk. I still don’t know what to make of it, but I’ll dive in much deeper and figure out what it means.