By Amelia Torgerson, MBA Class of 2020
This fall, five of us from the MBA Class 2020 had an amazing opportunity of traveling to New York and exploring careers with Pfizer. Strengthening the strong connection Penn State has with Pfizer, we represented Penn State at Pfizer’s flagship career information event, “A Day at Pfizer,” on November 20th. From internal consulting, to finance and marketing, we learned about various career paths that Pfizer offers MBA students. For example, we learned how the company is expanding its worldwide operations by adjusting for dynamics in political scenarios and international policy changes. In addition to the Pfizer employees and higher management, we also had an opportunity to network with talented MBA students from premier institutions such as Cornell, NYU, Yale, Dartmouth, and more.
Our day started with a warm welcome and a continental breakfast which allowed us to network with other MBA candidates prior to gearing up for an intense informative session that followed. The first half of the day was a general session with top management from the Analytics, Finance, Marketing and Research Departments, who talked about Pfizer’s inclusive culture, shared their journey to the company and discussed reasons for their long-lasting careers. We learned about the dependency of Pfizer’s operations and marketing on advanced analytics, and about the amount of research spent on current and pipeline R&D projects, patents, etc. Later, we had a networking lunch with current employees who were a part of the rotational program at Pfizer, before getting into three different breakout sessions that focused on internal consulting, finance, and marketing career opportunities within the company.
The Finance panel, held later in the day, consisted of senior executives explaining the two-year rotational program within Finance, such as Manufacturing Operations, Treasury, and Product Life Cycle. We learned about the flexibility Pfizer offers in choosing career paths, cross-functional growth opportunities, and the journey of a typical finance executive in terms of career progression and involvement in business decision making. The internal consulting session kicked off with a sample case question, which depicted the analytical and logical business skill sets that are tested every day in this role. This session comprised of the 5 MBA candidate groups in tackling a problem of inefficient meetings. The exercise painted a vivid picture on the type of brainstorming involved for Pfizer consultants and what drives their success – from making branches or subsets of issues that may be the main cause of the business problem, to understanding the importance of the problem, and determining the order in which the problem may be derived from. Furthermore, from the experiences of current employees in the department, we got to know the challenges involved in making decisions due to the inter-dependency of various business functions. Lastly, the Marketing breakout gave us the opportunity to sit in small groups with marketing executives and employees in the rotational program. They shared projects they had the opportunity to work on, and everyone spoke highly to the culture, flexibility and opportunity to be a part of different teams and projects.
In addition to A Day at Pfizer, the trip offered us the opportunity to get to know each other on a personal level. Starting with an amazing ride to New York, we also had a good time exploring the busy streets and spicy Indian food of New York City. We would like to thank team 220 for this opportunity and would encourage future MBA students interested in careers with this pharma conglomerate to attend “A Day at Pfizer.” Please reach out to us for any information regarding this and each one of us are more than happy to help.