{balki Blog}
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I recently wrote the GMAT (Graduate Management Aptitude Test) and scored a respectable 720 (95-percentile among the 100K or annual test takers).  A few other friends also want to take the exam to get into some of the prestigious business schools in the country.  There is an abundance of online, offline, printed, free, non-free material available to help prepare for the exam. 

A common discussion topic is what are the top 3 resources/books that one should leverage to get a decent score on the exam? (especially important for us old blokes because we pride ourselves in multi-tasking and prioritizing!).  I prepared from 6-8 books and probably did not do a lot of advance research to pick the optimal resources.  Here’s my research and experience results posthumously!

In chronological order, culminating to the exam date:
1.

The book has great elaborate test strategies for all verbal and quantitative sections of the exam and that should smooth out any fears the unprepared might have.  The book has nearly 600 pages but you can breeze through most of the strategies and exercises relatively quickly.  I made high-level strategy notes in MS OneNote as I came across in the book so I didn’t have to keep referring back.  Send an email to bkodarapu at hotmail.com if you need those OneNote strategies.
Suggested % of time to allocate: 40

2.

The one-and-only, official, globally-respected book for GMAT preparation, period!  The Official Guide has several advantages:

• only resource with actual questions from past exams
• questions ordered in the increasing order of difficulty
• fairly good solution strategies

If you have time to review one book only, this should be it!
Suggested % of time to allocate: 40

3.

Not for the faint-hearted; use at your own risk!  I like the book because it focuses on the toughest possible questions at the risk of making you look dumb.  I probably answered only half the exercise questions right no matter how hard I prepared.  If you are consistently getting 75% or more questions right during practice, you’ll probably score 750+ (99 percentile).

So, use your judgment, decide for yourself if you need to use the book based on your results from the first two.
Suggested % of time to allocate: 20

Happy preparing… next time, “Online resources”.

Man goes to Project Management training at PSU. The instructor administers Myers Briggs Personality Type test to everybody in the class.
At the end of the evaluation, everybody is branded with a personality type.
Some examples of Myers Briggs personality types: ESTJ (Extroversion-Sensing-Thinking-Judging), INTP (Introversion-iNtuition-Thinking-Perceiving), INFP etc. (16 personality types in all)

Instructor and class start discussing how these personality types play into a project team dynamics, and what are the significant features of some of these personality types.

Instructor asks “Who are good listeners?”
Answer 1: INFP personality types.
Instructor: Excellent!

Answer 2: ISFJ types.
Instructor: Very Good!

Man: “Men”
Instructor (a woman) high-fives the man in humble acknowledgment.

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After a somewhat grueling and highly speculative 6 weeks, our department finally wrapped up this year’s performance reviews! Most of us (hopefully) were satisfied with the review and the accompanying remuneration. Our manager even took us out to lunch as way of saying “Thank You!” and hanging in there, while she and the other management team members meticulously worked on the reviews.

A few friends, within and outside of Corillian, quizzed me on what the process entailed and how I prepared mine. Here’s a layman’s attempt at summarizing the process along with my tips:

The process (at Corillian) involves the following steps:

• With a 2-3 weeks deadline, our manager sends us the performance review template (I like the way the HR and management teams work together every year to optimize this form)
• During this same 2-3 week time-frame, my manager also sends out 360-degree review forms to my colleagues, clients and other managers requesting feedback about me and my interaction with them.
• I submit my completed performance self-review to my manager on or before the deadline.
• My manager schedules a 1 to 1.5 hours meeting to discuss her review along with the 360-degree review feedback.
• At Corillian, this is the moment of truth when I get to know what my raise is going to be for the following year. Some would consider this as the most anticipatory hour of the entire year!

Now coming to the cream of the topic: how do I prepare myself for this emotional yet fulfilling task?

• First of all, I consider the performance review process a career-long, continuous feedback loop to help me grow professionally and personally (and ultimately financially).
• One of the key things I do is maintain a Task in Outlook called “Accomplishments for the Week”. I set this task to recur weekly, on Friday around PM. Within this task, I add brief bullet-pointed notes about whatever I accomplished that week. By accomplishments I simply mean anything that made me feel good! A few examples: helping out somebody with a high-priority task, working late, working on a process (this is not my main job responsibility at Corillian), conducting/attending a training session, developing a tool, automating a process etc.
• I generally end up adding around 4-5 items to this task every week.
• By the end of the performance review year, this task transforms into an awesome list of accomplishments that almost makes me want to hug myself and break out into a spontaneous snake dance.
• More often than not, I can categorize the 250 odd items on this list into 4-6 main categories.
• I pick 2-3 categories and use those as the primary focus for my performance review.
• My manager is also very particular about maintaining a Personal Development Plan (this is the document we as employees maintain to record the various training courses we plan to take up during the calendar year along with the specific goals/objectives achieved via each training course). This document helps me tremendously to come up with goals for the upcoming performance review year.
• I also preserve soft copies of all previous performance reviews (pretty obvious) and use them as a basis while completing the current year’s review.

If you follow these simple tips, there is no reason you will be disappointed with your next performance review.

Here’s links to my most favorite pod-casters (Michael Auzenne and Mark Horstman) talking about performance reviews:

• Preparing for YOUR Review (Part 1 of 2)
• Preparing for YOUR Review (Part 2 of 2)
• Get Going on Performance Reviews (Part 1)
• Performance Reviews - Part 2
• Preparing for your Review Documents

Enjoy your hefty raises and spend the extra cash responsibly

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In order to gain more exposure to project management, I signed up for this 5-week Project Planning & Organization training course offered by Portland State University’s Professional Development Center. By the end of the first class last Monday, we were supposed to nominate, vote and select 4 real-world projects. Over the next 4 weeks, we will use these projects to implement various project management tools and techniques.

Here’s a short list of projects the class came up with:

• Train a couch potato to be a marathon runner [SELECTED]
• Build a time machine [SELECTED]
• Grow a Japanese garden in my barren backyard [SELECTED]
• Build a better operating system [0 votes]
• Flip a house [SELECTED]
• Develop an incentive program to help minimize automobile use

I decided to join the couch-potato-to-marathon-runner team just so I could learn some ahteletic tricks and implement them in my otherwise sedantary life. I am looking forward to the next 4 sessions of this course and learn the insider tips and trips on project planning.

NOTE: Yes, you guessed it right. I nominated the “Build a better operating system” project, which was the only nomination to receive zero votes.

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