Industry Colloquium INFORMS National Meeting Atlanta, October 2003

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Industry ColloquiumINFORMS National
MeetingAtlanta, October 2003

• Industry Careers

Sanjay Saigal (ssaigal_at_ilog.com) Manager,
Optimization Consulting Practice
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Topics

• Opportunities
• Getting on board
• Prospering

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Speaker Background

• Education
• Applied math PhD (91)
• Integer programming
• Professional
• Consultant (91-95)
• Start-up technical lead (95-99)
• Technical engineer (99-01)
• Business unit manager (01-03)
• Consulting manager (now)

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Opportunities

• Consulting
• In-house OR specialist
• Consulting firm
• Software
• Vertical solutions SCM, logistics,
• OR software optimization, simulation, scientific
  computation,
• R D labs

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Getting on Board

• Network
• Thesis advisor
• Departmental resources
• Cold calling
• Professional peers

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Prospering Whats Relevant?

• Technical and academic skills
• Professional skills
• Soft skills
• Sheer luck

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Technical Academic Skills

• Quantitative maturity
• Statistics
• Facility with Excel
• Elementary finance
• Thesis area
• LP/MIP/NLP/QP/SP
• Embedded generalized bi-quadratic pseudo-convex
  multi-digraphs

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Professional Skills

• Coherent writing
• Persuasive speaking
• Critical ability

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Soft Skills

• Comfort with inter-dependence
• Ability to sell your agenda
• Ability to leverage radically different agendas
• Interpersonal sensitivity
• Self-recognition

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Closing Thoughts

• Depth-first works better in research than in the
  corporate environment
• Most of your colleagues work for more than just a
  pay-check
• Were judged by our value to the business
  enterprise
• Building a career is a continuous process