This Post Will Provide No More Than One Laugh

Every post on this blog starts out the same way, I really should save it somewhere to reuse it and save myself the trouble of the 'I know I haven't written a blog entry in a long time' paragraph.

Hey, that's kind of different.

So I know I haven't been writing as much as I'd like to. A bunch of stuff has happened since my last entry, none of which involve me finding a place to live in NYC for the summer. Don't worry though, I'm taking care of it. After blogging I'm going to google 'Relatively Clean NYC Bus Stations' and see what comes back. Hopefully something near the office with a nice selection of vending machines.

Anyway. I went on Spring Break. Vegas. Fun, but my stories stayed there.

I also just went back home for a bachelor party/Passover weekend, that's a good combo, although Yom Kippur would've been more appropriate to just put the sins right before the atonement. Spent a lot of time traveling up to NYC to see a game at Yankee Stadium and then to Boston for a game at Fenway.

Verdicts: I still don't like either of their fan bases, but Fenway is way better than Yankee stadium and it's not even close. Of course, neither will ever approach the old Philadelphia Vet for history, ambiance, and foul-smelling concrete.

So I've been jetting around a little bit, and starting wondering about this marketing phenomenon I've been noticing and I'm wondering if it happens far more often than I realize.

The act of underpromising and overdelivering. Maybe that's acts, because it's two things, but I view them as parts of a whole, so we'll go with act.

I fly Southwest when I go back to Philadelphia. I like Southwest because they reward people with foresight. If you want a good seat, all you have to do is check-in online early, and you'll be on the plane before all those suckers in the 'B' class (which gives you a great chance to secure overhead compartment space. That's actually my greatest flying-related fear, no room in the overhead. Number two is 'miraculously surviving a fiery crash into a mountain only to have to eat the dead to survive. Number three is no peanuts.)

Anyway, the pilots at Southwest, they always get on the intercom sometimes during the flight. And while the flight time for MDW-PHL is two hours, they always ALWAYS talk about how they'll probably be able to get us in 'ahead of schedule'.

That makes me think about the Seinfeld routine on air travel. Basically, no cops in the sky means the pilots should floor it.

He tells it better.

When I heard that for the first time, I thought, 'Finally, a pilot who gets the fact that being on a plane totally sucks' I really liked that they were trying to beat their expected time of arrival.

Then I heard it again, and again, and again.

I figured there were two possibilities at work. Either Southwest (and maybe the whole airline industry) schedule small delays into the flight plans. Or, they want their customers to think what I thought the firsts time I heard that (and not the cynical feeling I felt on subsequent hearings).

Underpromising and overdelivering, a hallmark of my personal work habits, might have a larger place in the broader commerical markets.

I thought about the Southwest pilot off-and-on, wondering if that happens anywhere else. I'm still waiting for the day I go into McDonald's, order a double quarter pounder, and have them come back saying, 'Actually, we were able to make this a triple'

But I did order shoes recently. And I observed the phenomenon again (which made it significant enough that I thought it was blog-worthy)

I needed a new pair of sneakers, considering my old pair of New Balances were both A) Old as heck and B) worthy of fashion emergency status according to the stylish people I know (meaning girls)

But I kept putting off going to a shoe store, and finally tried Zappos.com when my gross looking shoes outweighed my inertia.

Zappos.com, if you didn't know, sells shoes and other stuff on the internet. They offer free shipping, and after placing your order it will arrive in between 4 and 5 business days. I figured I could wait that long, and placed my order.

No more than a day later, I got an email from the good people at zappos.

"Good news!

Although you originally ordered Standard (4 to 5 business days)
shipping and handling, we have given your order special priority processing in
our warehouse and are upgrading the shipping and delivery time frame
for your order.

Your order will ship out Monday, April 14th 2008 and be given a special
priority shipping status so that you can receive your order even faster than we originally promised!"

Hmm, I thought, that's good news. But as with any good news, I was suspicious.


Special priority processing??? Or maybe they just saw it was my first order and they want to convince me they actually treat their customers well! I can see their plan clearly now, they envision me living my life, wearing my new shoes at cocktail parties...

"Nice shoes, where did you get them?"

"I got them on Zappos.com It actually worked really well and they ended up shipping them to me EARLY!"

"Wow, I should give them ALL my shoe-ordering money!!!"

"If you didn't, you'd be a damned fool. They sure treat you great at Zappos.com!"


But I'm on to them. And it makes me wonder if there are other firms/industries out there that might try to do the same stuff regularly. In that they'll set some initial expectation of service, and then exceed it with what's actually their normal level of service.

One thing's for sure, I'm not going to be telling all my friends about Zappos. I'm not going to tell them about the expedited shipping, I won't bring it up in conversation, and I won't post the details of my experience on a widely viewed medium like the Internet.

Crap.

Signed and Sealed

Ok so we’ve established that recruiting is pretty much over…and now that I’ve officially signed my offer letter…it’s most definitely totally over.

Now that the FedEx is shipped off, I have to start getting ready for my first professional experience as a management consultant in New York City.

That faint cheer you just heard was all the AT&T diaspora living in the area, as well as the family, who are excited that I’ll be closer to home.

It was a pretty difficult decision, but I think I made the right one. And since I’m sure everyone wants to know how I made the decision, I thought I’d write up the breakdown I put together.

I had three choices, all in consulting. So I listed out all the critical attributes and compared them. I focused on the pros and cons of the most critical factors…

1 The city for the office – Because if I’m going to be spending three days a week there, it should at least have a nice skyline or something

2 The respective toys each company gave me – because nothing persuades me more than a $0.05 piece of plastic from the Corporate Oriental Trading Company…except maybe TWO $0.05 pieces of plastic

3 The relative finery of their respective pitch events – Short of finding a nice Chicago cougar, I’m probably not going to get very many free nice dinners for the rest of my life

LOCATION

Firm 1 - Philadelphia

Pros: Free Rent!!! Plus use of the pool when the parents are out of town, and unlimited TV watching after 10pm

Cons: Hard to persuade women that I actually own a five bedroom house and rent it out to a weird family that superimposed me into all their vacation photos

Firm 2 - New York

Pros: One of the media capitals of the world…hard to beat for someone who wants to consult in that industry

Cons: If paying two rents weren’t excited enough, one of them gets to be in NYC. What is especially ridiculous is that my offers for all three locations were nearly identical in terms of salary. What sense does that make given the ridiculous disparity in costs of living? The interns I know in Cleveland have already put down payments on mansions.

Firm 3 - Suburban Detroit

Pros: Umm….they offered me a free rental car and $800/month for rent assistance. I think that might be enough to be mayor

Cons: Aversion to street violence, and allergies to Kevlar would mean the occasional rash

COMPANY TOYS

Firm 1:

Company Water bottle, pens, one of those small drawstring mini-backpack things

Analysis:
Decent, although for some reason, the firm’s water bottle is roughly 1/3 the size of all other consulting firm water bottles, raising issues of size inadequacy. I also tend to drink a lot of water, so maybe they aren’t the right fit???

Firm 2:

At first, didn’t get anything, not even the ubiquitous water bottle. What gives??? Am I supposed to accept their offer tchotchke-less??? (Note to self, Word doesn’t recognize tchotchke…remember to raise issue with Yiddish authorities)

Analysis:
I came home last week to find a surprise package waiting for me. Turns out I get a tchotchke after all. It came in a nice little blue box (which will be excellent for re-gifting!). I had no idea what it could be, but it turned out to be a pretty sweet money clip (I guess because the firm appreciates irony?) Regardless, once I get some money, I might use it. I may also go get $50 in ones so it doesn’t feel unwanted.

Firm 3:

Nothing really, a round tin of curiously strong mints

Analysis:
Surprisingly good mints, they really came in handy in ensuring decent breath for other interviews.

PITCH EVENTS

Firm 1 – Dinner at French/Vietnamese Fusion restaurant

Analysis:
Really good food, plus Tsingtao, which was a nice change of pace from my typical Miller Lite

Firm 2 – Bulls/Cavs game

Analysis:
Got to see LeBron, he’s pretty good. Also confirmed the universal law that all stadium luxury boxes MUST have chicken fingers at ALL TIMES. Good thing chicken fingers are awesome

Firm 3 – Two dinners at different steakhouses

Analysis:
I don’t want to see another cow as long as I live.

So when I broke it all down, LeBron and the money clip won out over the breath mints and water bottle. (Note: everything contained within this post is purely recreational and meant in jest…all firm names have been expunged to protect my employability)

Get ready New York…here I come.

Glad That's Over

I finally can have my life back, now that recruiting is essentially over.

To eliminate any suspense, my trip to LA didn’t go very well. It was a three-interview day, with case interviews with three different people. The first two went pretty well. Then I got in a room with this British guy named Simon and he basically made me feel like a complete idiot.

The American Idol parallels are eerie

But as 50 Cent so wisely reminds me,

‘They ain’t nothing they can do to stop my shine’

My shine will just be in New York, that’s all.

Shortly before I left for Los Angeles, I got a call from one of the firms where I’d done a second round, they made me an offer to work in their NYC office for the summer.

I applied for New York because that’s where much of their media work is based. A few days after my initial offer call, I got a call from one of the firm’s partners, who apparently is my point of contact, or advocate, or buddy, or some other officialish title.

Anyway, he works exclusively in media and entertainment, so it was good to talk to him and get the chance to make that preference as clear as possible.

I was also really excited to attend the NYC office’s ‘celebration event,’ which consisted of some nice meals and activities designed to help you meet people at the firm and ideally sign on their dotted line.

But the wonderful weather gods apparently had other ideas.

I was scheduled for a 7am flight out of O’Hare into NYC to make it well in time for the noon lunch kickoff. I even skipped the regular Thursday night drinking event to go to bed early to make sure I could wake up in time.

So I woke up at 4am, which was surprisingly easy.

I got to O’Hare and the gate by 5:30, which made me contemplate my obsessive need to be early for everything and whether it was ever really a good thing.

And there I sat, waiting for the plane to arrive for the 7am departure.

Only it didn’t come. They announced it would be delayed until 10:30.

I soon realized my plane entertainment survival kit, which for flights less than 2.5 hours consisted of just my MP3 player and a pen to do the in-flight crossword and Sudoku, wasn’t going to cut it.

So I bought a book and settled in at the gate, disappointed at not only the delay but also at the fact that I was the only GSB’er there (which to me indicates I’ll be the only Chicago intern there this summer).

And then the book turned out to suck, and then my flight got cancelled.

I called the travel agent to see what options I had, only to find that all later flights into NYC were either already cancelled or booked up.

No celebration event for me.

I’m really kind of bummed out about that. I really wanted to meet people at the office before jumping right into the internship pool. I also wanted to know what the heck I should do for summer living arrangements.

But the office is near Grand Central, and I think I can always sleep there.

The more important aspect of this whole story is that with that trip now out of the picture, I think I’m officially done recruiting. I have a dinner here on Tuesday for a different firm, but I don’t think that really counts. Barring some complete apocalyptical disaster (at which point I think I’d stop thinking about internship prospects), I’ll be in New York for the summer.

So yay, I’m sure you’re all interested to hear that, but maybe you’re wondering what else has been going on in my life?

- Tonight’s our GSB formal event, featuring business students in all their finery getting hammered. I had to go out and buy a mask today for this masquerade thing. There were lots of choices, but I ultimately settled on one that would leave my lower face largely unencumbered to make drinking as efficient as possible. The location looks pretty swanky, and I’ve heard the phrase ‘top-shelf liquor,’ which at $80 a ticket, I’m pretty sure I’m owed. Should be a good time.

- I’m currently in the process of applying/waiting to hear from various leadership positions across the school community. Not exactly sure how it’s all going to shake out, but I’m going to have an interview for a graduate assistant position in the next week or so. What is a graduate assistant you ask? They’re the ones who get to read applications and interview prospective students. I’ve got a whole bunch of reasons why I want to spend my time doing it (and they don’t include ‘obsessive need for power’). I’m sure you get to see some complete off-the-wall stuff, some of which can go into my new compilation idea, ‘MBA Applicants Say the Darndest Things’

- I’m still going to class, so that’s good

- The official ‘visit me in Chicago’ floodgates are now open with recruiting over. Several discussions have already commenced, act fast and book your weekends now before its too late!

- With that said, consider when exactly you want to come out here. It’s still ridiculously cold here most of the time.

So That's Where I've Been

The last two weeks have been relatively insane and have included constant rollercoaster type swings in my mood and mental state.

Looking around the apartment, I see that there’s still a ton of wintry slush outside, my cable bill is still sitting on the table unpaid, and my textbooks and school stuff are still scattered all over like the UofC bookstore stumbled back after a hard night of partying and vomited all over my living room.

So the material aspects of this apartment are the same, it’s just me that’s been flipping out and turning and twisting in all kinds of ways (including but not specifically limited to waking up at all parts of the night).

That’s what we know, or rather, what I knew, and what you now know.

And now it’s pretty close to being over, or if not completely over, at least approaching its final destination.

With that, I wanted to make sure I blogged about a couple business school truisms that have come to light.

1 – Recruiting completely sucks

2 – Hmm…I don’t have another universal truth right now, so just go back and re-read #1, that’s a big one

Just to give you a sense of how the process has been for one MBA student (me), here’s a basic timeline of my recruiting activities over the last couple weeks. And a point of clarification, each one of these interviews generally include 45 minutes of discussion focused on prior experience and business problem evaluations.

Tuesday – Two first-round interviews with Firm A, where I analyze a grocery store company, followed by the fictional nation of Elderstan (which is apparently not nearly as funny as the Borat version of Kazakhstan). Hit a rough patch in the first interview when interviewer responds to my first answer with, ‘would it help to think of another example?’

Wednesday – Two first-round interviews with Firm B, where I analyze a Women’s Products Catalog company, followed by a fictional city called Contrivedville. Turns out I know something about Women’s Products.

Wednesday Night – Reception for Firm C, who’s interviewing tomorrow. They don’t have food, so I just drink a good amount…seemed like a good strategy

Thursday – Two first round interviews with Firm C, where I analyze a food products manufacturer, followed by a chemical distribution company. Did you ever think that a $5 billion market segment with 10% CAGR would be an industry where you DON’T want to spend more marketing dollars? I never would have guessed.

Thursday Night – Reception for Firm D, they interview next week, but since I know almost nothing about them, I really think I should go. They also don’t have food, so we simply re-apply the strategy from last night.

Thursday Night – Voice mail from Firm A, ‘Thanks for playing! But kindly get the hell away from us.’ My soul hurts

Thursday Night (20 minutes later) – Call from Firm B, ‘We’re intrigued…come tell us more.’ Soul rebounds

Friday Morning – Two first round interviews with Firm E, only one of which requires me to analyze an airline business situation. Unfortunately the other one focuses on me. Drag.

Friday Afternoon – Suspicious voice mail from Firm C that doesn’t ding me. Could be good news right? I return the call. Nope, turns out they want to make sure to ding you directly. I also would have accepted an exploding telegram.

Friday Night – One first round interview with Firm F, where I analyze an insurance company. Interviewer’s hobbies include quilting and horses, so lots of common ground with me.

Saturday – Phone call (wait, consultants work weekends???) Firm F appreciated my interest, and if there was one problem, it’s that I was too good with numbers. I debate complimenting them on the quick turnaround, but am generally too distracted by the sound of my internship dreams bursting into flames

Monday morning – Two interviews with Firm G, where I analyze a tractor company followed by a cable company and their potential wireless strategy. Given my background in the industry, I’m instructed to forget what I know about the area. Surprisingly, this is not difficult.

Monday afternoon – Two interviews with Firm D, remember them??? Just one business problem, this time it’s an appliance manufacturer. Biggest takeaway: if you call and complain about a damaged product, the company will probably pay you to shut up and keep it. I am now eagerly awaiting my first refrigerator so that I can scratch the hell out of it.

Monday afternoon – One interview with Firm H, where we manage to discuss no business issues. Part of the session actually focuses on me explaining what Jeopardy is and as a follow-up, how I know so much stuff (the answer: complete luck, or I’ve just got some kind of random fact gene, which I guess would be luck too). Anyway, interview ends with an invitation to a final round interview. That was unexpected.

Monday afternoon – Phone call from Firm G. Recruiter sounds upbeat, maybe she enjoys crushing MBA students? Put another ding on the board.

Monday Night – I’m on the other line and ignore call waiting. Good instincts, it’s a ding call from Firm E. Almost forgot you were even there Firm E, now you’ve ensured I’ll do everything I can to truly forget you.

Tuesday Morning – Very enthusiastic phone call from Firm G, almost like she was looking forward to dinging me. Why would that make an HR person happy??? A great mystery.

Tuesday-Wednesday – No interviews, I actually go to class and stuff. So I’m taking marketing this quarter? Really???

Thursday Morning – One interview with Firm I. This is actually a large corporation looking for a strategy analyst. A nice change of pace, until it turns out the interviewer just joined from Firm C. Would I mind a consulting-style interview??? Funny you should ask…

Thursday Afternoon – Two interviews with Firm J, one focused on analyzing a lubricant manufacturer, and one focused on me. Much of the first interview centers around me battling giggles regarding the lube company.

Thursday Night – Phone call from Firm J. ‘That didn’t totally suck, come in tomorrow.’ I didn’t want to have any free time on Friday anyway.

Friday Morning – One interview with Firm J, with two senior consultants, about a media company. Did I mention I was in the Media & Entertainment Group??? An opportune time to put my ‘passion for media’ money where my mouth is.

Friday Afternoon – One interview with Firm K, another corporation focused in a pretty cool industry. Did I say I didn’t like the routine nature of my historical corporate finance roles? I meant I loved it. I would marry process-oriented corporate finance roles if I could, that’s the world I want to live in.

Friday Afternoon – One phone interview with Firm L. Take everything I said in every other interview and reverse it. ‘It’s a pretty weird situation, but yes I did come back to business school to get a job doing EXACTLY what I was doing before school.’ One bonus, tap-dancing doesn’t show over a phone interview, or so I hope.

Friday Afternoon – Two interviews with Firm M. Can’t figure out if the first interviewer likes what I have to say or if he just thinks I’m cute. Could be both? Second case, focused on car battery technologies, goes better, without any semblance of homoeroticism. I am much more comfortable in the second interview.

Friday Night – Phone Call, it’s Firm J, do you want a summer job??? Partner informs me that I was on the bubble, then they saw the Jeopardy thing on my resume, and that pushed me over the top. Ha-ha, is he joking? Half-joking? Frankly, I couldn’t care less. I use the opportunity to bust out my ‘Got a Job Dance.’ Thank god the blinds are drawn.

Saturday Morning – Phone call from Firm M…are you free to come back in on Monday? When it rains, it pours.

Saturday Afternoon – Try to remember everything for a blog post.

So that’s where I’ve been over the last couple weeks. It’s been a long strange trip, and one that’s not over for another week. I still have the big Firm B opportunity, which has been my focus since day 1. Firm H might force me to rethink any aversions I’d have towards the city of Troy. Who knows what Firm M is thinking. But what’s struck me about the whole process is how much of it is dependent on complete random luck.

Two identical candidates could interview with the same firm, and because of different interviewers, time slots, case questions, what they had for breakfast, or any other such thing, could get dinged or passed through. No rhyme, no reason. And yes, certain people who are more well prepared are significantly more likely to do better on average. But really, it all comes down to whether you click with them or not.

So if an interviewer ever makes eyes at you…I say go for it

Inside the Recruiting Machine

I have a couple minutes to breathe, so I thought I'd post a blog before I get swallowed up by this giant recruiting tide. It's incredible how efficient it is, devouring just about every first year MBA student.

We all want summer internships, and if there's a hoop we need to jump through, just tell us how high (and then maybe light it on fire for some extra style points)

Let's take me as an example...how has the recruiting scene been treating me???

Well....I'm pursuing a lot of really good opportunities (thanks to the GSB and it's pretty decent pull)

My first choice, as just about everyone knows, is to join a leading management consulting firm. I have a lot of good reasons for this, which I will not detail here. But suffice it to say, I've cast quite a few nets in that industry's general direction. Beyond that, there are a number of intriguing potential opportunities in various corporate functions.

So I'm applying for a lot of jobs, but there's two subsequent elements to this story, actually getting an interview, and doing well in that interview.

Getting the interview can happen in one of two ways. You can be pre-selected by a particular firm for one of their 'closed list' spots...which means you applied and they definitely want to talk to you. If for some reason they don't realize how awesome you are, you can bid for an 'open list' slot. Open list slots are fewer in number, obviously, and each student only has a fixed pool of 1000 points to work with for the entire internship recruiting cycle.

Many of the top firms interview a lot of students. The three biggest names in consulting are close listing 70-100 people a piece, and many of the other major firms are close listing between 30 and 60. Now you might be saying, 'then just get on the close list and don't worry about bidding'

Not so fast. Remember when you wanted to go to a top-tier business school and surround yourself with really intelligent and accomplished people. Well, some of them want jobs too. It's totally unfair.

So you craft the best resume you can, and you try to build relationships with members of the firms you want at networking events. Etc. Etc. And then you apply (which we did over break), and you wait.

Oh, and if you thought it was just the 125-150 students who were interested in consulting that were applying against you, you were wrong. I forgot to mention that tons of bankers, investment managers, marketers, private equity privateers, and god knows who else threw their respective hats in the consulting ring. Lord knows why, I think the guy at the security desk got a McKinsey interview slot. Maybe they think consulting seems cool, maybe they think it makes a great backup for banking, who the hell knows...but there are more applicants than you expect.

With that said, the first week of consulting interview invitations have come out, and I'm fortunate to have done alright. Of the five firms interviewing, I got close listed for three of them. Then, this morning I got an email that another firm has bumped me up off their alternate list to a closed list spot. So I'm four for five, and remain on the wait list for the last firm (so if you're a banker and reading this, and you have a consulting interview that you insist on keeping because you can...just remember that I will definitely know exactly who you are...and I'm not one for threats, and I can't say what I'll do, but it's going to be ugly)

Anyway, I'm really pretty happy with how things have worked so far...but there's still the little problem of getting ready to not completely freeze up in the interview. In that regard, the school has a pretty robust support system for making sure their students don't come off like total tools (or so they try, I'm sure some bad apples still squirt through)

I've had two school sponsored mock interviews, both specific for my intended field, both recorded on DVD for my viewing pleasure. That's in addition to all the students helping each other.

In particular, the consulting interview is its own class of awkward interaction. There's still some room for standard questions like, 'why do you want to work here?' and 'walk me through your resume' which isn't really a question, but you know what I mean.

Then they have this thing called the 'case portion'

For those not in an MBA program, the case portion is basically challenging the interviewee to answer a general and usually open-ended business question.

A typical prompt might be...

"Our client is a large national chain of coffee houses. It's revenues were $1 billion last year, but it has not matched the growth of its competitors. The CEO wants to know what the problem is, and how it can be fixed"

Then you just kind of go for a half hour or so, asking questions, trying to gather evidence (which the interviewer usually has in their notes or in their head).

There's a whole process to it, and honestly, I think it's pretty interesting to do...definitely more fun than telling leadership story after teamwork story after accomplishment story.

Anyway, the vast majority of my life is now spent either preparing for generic interview questions, case questions, or worrying about getting interviews.

It's a fun life here in Chicago, where the temperature is supposed to feel like its below zero this weekend.

Apparently that's what they meant when they said it got cold in Chicago

Cover Letters and the Human Response

I officially hate cover letters. I don’t care if they’re a necessary evil, I can still hate them. At its core, the average cover letter always says the same thing.

“Dear firm X,

It’s been my lifelong dream to work at firm X, ever since I found out you hire at my school and everyone else wants to work for you. Wisdom of crowds right? I’m not sure exactly what your company does, management banking? investment consulting? whatever, as long as it completely both satisfies me personally and pays me a shitload of money. Oh, and gives me a good work-life balance, so maybe like 40 hours a week? I know that your firm will do this, because you’re totally awesome, probably for reasons you posted on your web site or mentioned in your job posting.

Did I mention that I am the most awesome person ever? In case you were totally oblivious, I go to business school, which is like a really big deal. Yeah, we can’t tell you what our grades are, but trust me, I’ve learned a lot and could probably run your company in like 2 weeks. I know I don’t exactly have direct experience doing what your firm does, but I totally have tons of transferable skills. I beat Minesweeper advanced in less than 2 minutes and can keep like 5 internet explorer windows going at once.

In conclusion, I’m sure that if you hire me, I would be the single greatest business addition since that cheese that goes inside the pizza crust. If you need your paradigms shifted, then look no further. In fact, if you don’t hire me, I guarantee that you will suffer tremendously, and then cease to exist, because I will have joined a competitor, and vanquished you mightily. Keep that in mind.

Sincerely,

the most awesomest candidate ever”

Break

It’s been a while since my last post, and I figured that since I’m on winter break, I really had no excuse for not writing anything.

Finals ended about a week and a half ago, although I spent the next week in the San Francisco and LA areas visiting companies to explore potential internship opportunities. Now with all that done, I’m visiting back home and looking for ways to keep busy.

It’s weird, given how busy I was during the first three months of the school year. Now I’ve got no readings to do or tests to study for, and I don’t have any recruiting events either, so I’m kind of just sitting around.

The west coast trip was really good by the way. Got a chance to visit a bunch of very interesting companies (some of which may actually hire MBAs this summer). One of the high points had to be hearing from the director of new business development at a major gaming company. A guy with the responsibility of finding and acquiring new video games. Talk about a sweet job.

It was good to see, and a lot of the companies were definitely interesting, but I’m still pretty dead set on consulting as my primary recruiting target.

Given that, I guess I could start prepping for potential interviews.

For those who don’t know, the consulting firms that recruit on campus put their candidates through what is known as a ‘case interview.’

The interview will have its share of normal questions (walk me through your resume, tell me about a time when you were awesome, tell me about a time when you were on a team that wasn’t awesome, etc.), but there’s also this case portion.

Basically, you’re given an open-ended business-related problem and generally allowed to go through it and analyze the situation. Essentially, through the process of laying out your internal thought process and asking the interviewer good questions, a candidate will display whether or not he/she has the capabilities to be a good consultant.

It seems relatively straight-forward. Although I think so many people get worked up about it that they completely forget about the more traditional part of the interview and are left stammering when they ask why you chose to go to business school.

Anyway I have that to work on. Thus far I’ve just read over a couple cases and tried to see what kinds of questions I should be asking and how responses should be structured.

Of course, I can’t do that all day…interviews don’t even start until mid-january, so it’s not like I’ve got a deadline coming up. And this all assumes I get invited to interview with some of these firms, which is certainly not a given.

The way that works, is that each firm has a certain number of interview slots for GSB students when they visit campus. A majority of these slots are ‘invitational’ slots, which means exactly what you think. The firms go through applications and resumes and invite students to interview. A smaller portion of slots are ‘open’ slots, and are available to all non-invited students to bid on. But you only get 1000 points to bid for the entire year, so you need to carefully consider what you’re willing to spend.

I really don’t want to have to bid for interviews, at least with the firms I really want to interview with.

But there are only so many slots, and so many great resumes out there.

We’ll see what happens…