Hella

I am DONE. And I can’t say I’ve had a better feeling of being done with something in a long time. The DIP process was really annoying, drawn out longer than I expected, and littered with frustrations. Having said that, I have emerged with a job offer and I am officially accepting it tomorrow (both over the phone and through an official offer letter that I FedExed on Friday afternoon).

I’ll quickly summarize my recruiting efforts during the Fall semester: I didn’t do much (relative to classmates going for similar jobs). I attended most of the firm-wide recruiting events and I made sure to stop by some more focused panel discussions, but I didn’t go to any day-on-the-jobs nor did I go up to New York specifically to visit firms (save the one diversity event back in October). This definitely limited the number of firms that selected me in the first round but didn’t really affect the decisions for firms to invite me back for the second round. For all intents and purposes, I got selected by three banks for first rounds, got invited back by two of those, and received one offer (though the other firm I interviewed with in the second round has never gotten back to me … and they were due to do so on Feb 2). In the end, I got the one offer I wanted most (in terms of function and company prestige) based on the interviews I received.

Surprises

• Not a single investment management firm picked me for a first round interview. It’s obvious that it takes prior experience to break into it. Hopefully after my summer I’ll ‘look better’ to these firms for full-time positions as I’m truly interested in this area.
• There are people who worked really hard through the Fall with many banks who still have no offer.
• Some firms don’t send ‘ding’ emails / calls. They just don’t follow up at all. I find this tacky and in poor taste, particularly when someone has gone through multiple rounds of interviews.
• Interviewers will convince themselves where you need to take your career and not consider your own explanation for wanting to pursue an area. Why was I ‘lectured’ for a good 3 minutes in an interview about how to go about the recruiting process differently? Ouch.

Things I’d do differently

• Pick a few firms earlier in the process and target them by attending all / as many of the events and networking with specific professionals.
• Not apply to firms which I have no interest in working for (I only had one such interview).
• State I am only interested in the area for which I’m interviewing. I got derailed / lectured (see above) when I mentioned that because I am switching careers, a couple of related areas are actually of interest to me. (I think the strategy for this issue varies by firm. Goldman allows candidates to select up to two areas of interest.)

So I’m headed to New York for the summer and I’ll be in fixed income research. I am excited about the opportunity and focusing on school is now much easier thanks to a clearer mind filled with much less uncertainty at this point.

Filed under: B-School