Hella

The second-year recruiting process is nearing its end after about a week and a half. The last several days I’ve been attending a Super Day event outside Philadelphia. I caught a flight out on Thursday afternoon, had dinner that evening, then had a series of interviews on Friday. This morning I went on a relocation tour given by a couple of realtors in the area. The firm was very nice and covered hotel for the extra night for those wanting to go on the tour. Seeing a new city for the first time and having a realtor talk about properties reminds me how different life is now than when I began the whole business school process. Back then I was looking at apartments and rentals and now I’m finally to the point where I can look at buying something (ok, that says a lot about where I *won’t* be moving to after Wharton).

This year’s process has been very different than last year. Firstly, I managed to get more interviews this year than last. In the beginning I was wondering if I’d either over-focused last year or under-focused (dropped too many resumes) this time around. Now that I’m towards the end, I can say I probably had the right amount of focus last year. This year, I might have saved some time by not interviewing with firms that I felt I didn’t know well. I’ve sacrificed too many classes, particularly on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and it will be great to get back into the swing of things on Monday. At least I survived midterms (well, I still am awaiting results for one, but I think it went alright).

But back to recruiting … this afternoon, as I was in the security line at the airport about to go through the metal detector, my phone rang. I saw the Caller ID and wasn’t sure who it might be (the area code threw me for a loop). As soon as I answered, my heart started racing because I immediately knew that on the other end of the line, one of my final decisions was about to be delivered. How frustrating it is to have to end the call to go through security! After I got to the other side, I returned the call, but the person trying to reach me was on the other line. More waiting. The wait seemed like forever. I paced. Finally the call came in and good news was delivered. The really nice thing is that this was a BIG one and I’m most likely to end up accepting. Given that I’m still going through the processes with other firms, I felt it would be inappropriate to express my decision right away. So I’ve got some sorting out to do this week, but this is definitely the type of stuff I can put up with sorting out :-) !

Filed under: B-School