The Unspoken Skills We Develop at Kellogg
- Cathy Campo
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
By: Fabiana Guajardo
As VP of Laughs of the Kellogg Comedy Club, it is my solemn duty to tell you things no one else will.
Like the fact that we are all adding internship accomplishments to our resumes that would make our managers raise an eyebrow.
“Drove $15M in revenue from a single email campaign”—you know who you are.
“Identified $40M in operational efficiencies across three business units.” Also you.
But looking around at my classmates, I’ve realized: some of our most impressive skills will never appear on LinkedIn or on our resumes.
Which is a shame.
Because during our time at Kellogg, we’ve quietly mastered an extraordinary set of abilities that make us uniquely qualified for the modern workplace. So, in the interest of full transparency for recruiters everywhere, here’s a peek at the real skills Kellogg MBAs quietly master inside the Global Hub.
Skill #1: Rationing
If life gives you lemons, it’s not a bad idea to get a Kellogg MBA. We know how to turn our lemons—finite hours, limited energy, and 3,000 course bidding points (our academic currency)—into lemonade. Freshly squeezed, of course.
We split our hours between classes, coffee chats, and small group dinners—small group dinners that will routinely have someone cancel 10 minutes before due to “sickness.” Every time. As if it were a sport.
We will listen to the daily news, or a NotebookLM-generated podcast, on our walk to the Hub.
We will make sure we bid just enough to get into a class so as not to overpay.
And we will ensure there are no leftovers from lunch and learn events, even when the only thing left is gluten-free Papa John’s cheese pizza.
No one manages their resources better than Kellogg students. Except those who made the questionable decision to spend all their bidding points on a single coveted class: “Launching and Scaling Startups” by Professor Carter Cast.
Some students diversify their course bids. Others go all in on Carter Cast and accept that the rest of their schedule will involve 8:30 AM courses they’ve never even heard of. I still wonder whether these students were paying attention in Finance I when we learned how to weigh risk vs. return. I guess I’ll leave it to their future employers to find out.
Skill #2: Time Creation
The real strategic challenge of business school isn’t the coursework.
It’s finding a meeting time.
Finding a time when no one is:
Skiing
Recruiting for Bain
Or “traveling for a cousin’s wedding”—for the fourth weekend in a row
But guess what? Kellogg students make it work. We will find that one 45-minute window where no one is skiing, recruiting, or allegedly attending a family event, and send that Outlook invite instantly before anyone changes their mind.
Oh, but if you’re in a night class with both Evening & Weekend students and full-time students—good freaking luck.
Evening & Weekend students can only meet… you guessed it: on evenings and weekends. Meanwhile, the only time full-time students do NOT want to meet... is evenings and weekends.
Yet still, we make it work. Of course we do.
Whether it’s to coordinate a pickleball match, schedule a speaker event, or dress up as The Tin Man for a Tuesday night Wizard-of-Oz-themed party only to have to wake up at 8 AM the next day to meet with our case team—we will create the time.
Skill #3: Selling Ourselves and Our Ideas
No, I am not including this skill because I am the Graduate Assistant for Suzanne Muchin’s “Selling Yourself and Your Ideas” course, which I am…
But we truly are great influencers at Kellogg. After all, they say we are a “marketing school.”
While I’m not confirming we are, no one provokes an audience quite like a Kelloggian posting on the #hot_takes Slack channel.
Here are some of the hottest takes from this quarter:
No.
Can’t disagree.
The replies speak for themselves.
You may be somewhat convinced of our ability to influence and sell our ideas by now. That’s only because I spared you from the avalanche of weather-related hot takes we had to endure this winter quarter.
Winter weather observations belong in your Instagram story, not the comedic battlefield of #hot_takes.
Yes, Cooper.
But by the time we graduate Kellogg, most of us will have also mastered the ability to sound confident while being cold called and still figuring out what the question was; and explain why three completely different industries have always been our long-term passion.
If that’s not some sort of selling expertise, I don’t know what is.
Skill #4: Involuntary Networking
If there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s emotional intelligence. We don’t just attend class and call it a day like other business schools in the Chicago area cough cough.
The Kellogg Global Hub is literally designed for socialization. Can you think of a good hiding spot in Gies Plaza? Have you ever successfully completed work in the Hub without being interrupted?
The 30-minute breaks between classes are too short to concentrate on homework. Trying to send that one thank you email to a recruiter? Impossible. Replying to a Slack message without getting pulled into a 20-minute conversation? Incredibly challenging. Submitting your weekly MORS case assignment? Good luck.
And yet, the 30 minutes are also too long for small talk not to turn into meaningful banter with someone you've never met.
No one says yes to “let’s grab coffee soon” faster than a Kelloggian, whether it’s for friendship, networking, or… romantic exploration. You just never know.
But of course, occasionally, we do run into the classic question while trying to enjoy an honest beer on a Friday afternoon at TG: “So… do you already know where you’ll be working this summer?”
Resilience is what’s built here.
Resilience to smile, nod, and pretend we’ve always had a very clear career plan.
Skill #5: Applied Creativity
On Feb. 24, the Kellogg Comedy Club hosted Soup Tank: a Shark Tank parody for the worst business idea. Participants competed for a 1st place prize of $100 and a 2nd place prize of $200.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The winners: Protein Cigarettes in 1st place—the name speaks for itself—and Traumatyze in 2nd place, a service providing traumatizing experiences for the privileged 1% who need a struggle to write about in their college essays.
While Protein Cigarettes deserved its victory, the only thing making them the worst business idea is that they aren’t made of fiber. Or creatine. Or GLP-1s.
It’s 2026.
Someone should probably let Marlboro know that Fiber Cigarettes will be the next big thing. The best part is that they probably wouldn’t even have to change anything in the formula to name them that—and wellness influencers will be running off to buy them.
So yes, while people don’t usually expect business school students to be creative, Kelloggians disagree.
Skill #6: AI Tool Agnosticism
The last skill is the one we’re most proud of and least willing to admit: we will use AI for absolutely anything.
I’ve seen students photograph their fridge to ask ChatGPT what to make for dinner, use Claude as a therapist, and build automated agents with n8n to monitor job postings so they never have to manually browse LinkedIn Jobs again.
Word on the street is someone even received an AI girlfriend as a birthday gift this month.
And my personal favorite: someone built a Slack bot to track sports bets, that now automatically roasts everyone losing them. Yes, someone spent actual hours engineering that.
Credit where it’s due: we’re learning from the best. Professor Sebastien Martin, who literally designed Lyft’s dispatch algorithm, is revolutionizing how we use AI at Kellogg—and in higher education overall.
We’re just hoping OpenAI doesn’t poach him before we graduate.
But we at Kellogg know ChatGPT is so 2025. Claude Code is what’s in now. At least until next quarter…
And the real skill isn’t knowing which tool to use. It’s knowing how to use eight of them simultaneously—like a full-on octopus—and still submit before midnight.
None of these skills will ever make it onto our resume. But somehow, they make us better at everything else that does.
Maybe that’s what you’re actually paying for when you hire a Kelloggian.
And if that’s not an ROI worth talking about, I don’t know what is.
Read More by the Kellogg Comedy Club: An Anthropological Study of Kellogg Singles December at Kellogg: What Really Happens Inside the Global Hub Winning KWEST Decided for 2025 Season