Grant Allen: Trial By Interview

In keeping with the acronymic trend of my last posting, DIP stands for Designated Interview Period at Wharton. As many B-schools do, Penn gives first-year students (and, for the first time next year, second-year students) a week without classes so they can interview for summer jobs.

This allows the large companies, consulting firms, and I-banks with regimented summer needs to capitalize on some scale. A whole week may sound overboard, but you will thank, thank, thank, career management for giving you time to focus on interviews without the worry of classes and cases. And for those lucky enough to have sponsorships or internships already locked up, DIP equals February vacation.

Going into second semester, I was eyeing a job in a nontraditional area or at least someplace new to me. Areas I was targeting: VC and early-growth-stage private equity; IT product management and marketing; operating roles within start-up companies. I also wanted to demonstrate interest and talent to the "safer" consulting firms, deciding ultimately to apply to two strategy shops.

COFFEE CHATS.  Given the large net I was casting, I had my work cut out. In addition to over 40 cover letters and résumés submitted for DIP and subsequent recruiting weeks, I attended around 15 info sessions and coffee chats. This was a pittance, though, relative to the aspiring bankers. Combined with focused research using public online sources plus services like Venture Xpert Web; the High Tech Strategist newsletter put out by Fred Hickey; Pulver.com, and several other newswires and blogs, I had all the information I could handle.

I also recommend talking extensively to second-year students, a vast and surprisingly untapped resource, and checking out articles like (see BW Online, 3/15/04, "Pick a Plum Internship"). Going into recruiting season, I had a list of over 20 potential employers: 3 DIP companies -- Boston Consulting Group (BCG ), Bain, and Microsoft (MSFT ) -- 10 venture capital/private equity firms (mostly through family/friend contacts) and nearly 10 other interesting tech firms.

Another important point: don't panic if you don't get a job on campus (what we call OCR, or on-campus recruiting). As with the admissions process, this whole internship hunt can be a crapshoot. For some it's done in two or three interviews with a single company. For others, it can take months, sap much of your energy, and match the workload of all your classes combined.

PUTTIN' ON THE SCHVITZ. Internship recruiting is a long, cycling process with new companies coming onto campus throughout the spring months. Many of the "cooler" tech firms won't even get to campus till late March -- if at all -- and many PE shops prefer the Wharton Job Board (more ad hoc) over CareerTrak (Wharton's system for managing résumé drops, interview selection, and OCR offers). Many forgo formal résumé submissions altogether.

I love the word "schvitz." It's Yiddish for sweat. Growing up goy in Virginia I hadn't been to a Bar Mitzvah or a presumably better Bat Mitzvah, and terms like kvetching and schlepping fell on dumb ears till I was 19 at Duke.

But the schvitz is all too common. That first bead of sweat. Most interviewees have the yips at some point and all I was thinking about going into my first interview, a mock interview but with an uptight McKinseyite intent on breaking me like a precocious yearling, was not making a mockery of myself. MBA interviews. High stakes. (I guess.) No undergrad margin for error. Don't come off like Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting, stuttering Martin in Office Space, (Ross Perot running mate) Stockdale in '92...

PRACTICE PAYS.  Well, I'm not going to lie. I didn't get too many pluses on that first videotaped interview. My answer for "Why McKinsey?" was an inane and warbled, "You're big and confident?" I don't know if the interviewer thought I was talking instead about her, but a wronged scowl quickly repaid my solecism.

By the time I had my first real internship interview, however, this one with BCG, I was firing on most, let's say seven of eight rusty cylinders, and confident enough. Case interviews certainly aren't a walk in the park, but it helped tremendously that not only had I endured multiple cases in prior lives but I had given many consulting cases myself.

Thinking back to interviewing a fairly senior manager, also of McKinsey ilk, for a position at my old firm actually brought me ease. Picturing that cocky Frenchman fidgeting in his fancy Zegna fittings, crossing his arms, and refusing to work through some back-of-the-envelope math with me was like a "picture them in their underwear" vision: certainly ugly; certainly stress-relieving.

WINED AND DINED.  Eventually, I made it through final rounds with all three DIP companies. I actually got off lucky. Some buddies had up to seven interviews in a day. Banks are certainly the worst and not just for their scheduling. Both in interviews and once offers have been extended, banks tend to place pressure on you to commit to their particular firm and denounce all others as Satan's spawn. I was lucky my three were an iota nicer.

Consulting firms generally have well-oiled interview processes. There are slight variations on the same theme across all the top firms -- McKinsey, BCG, Bain, L.E.K., Monitor, Parthenon, Katzenbach, Mercer, et al. -- but generally you submit your résumé in December, get an interview invite in late January, have multiple dinners and good-to-meet-yous at fancy restaurants in the interim, and head in for usually two case interviews during first rounds.

One of Bain's two first-round interviews was a stated "pure fit" interview, much more conversational in style though there were two or three questions specific to prior consulting studies I had on my CV which lent themselves to case-style structuring. BCG was more cut and dried: two cases back to back with fairly young/fresh managers, both focused on profitability but one, concerning French contact lenses, with quite a twist and much more math.

NO RIGHT ANSWER.  If you've never had a case interview, lucky you. As gut-wrenching as they are for some, though, you have to embrace them, even enjoy them in order to get an offer. The trick is demonstrating a few things out of the gate -- the ability to structure your thinking, ask probing questions, communicate clearly and creatively, and have "mental horsepower" -- but then it's really just about fit and personality.

It's about the interviewer deciding whether she'd like working with you or, worse, being stuck in an airport with you after a delayed Thursday night flight back from the client. There is no right answer with case interviews and some folks obsess over memorizing Orvall frameworks and coming up with glib interpretations of falling market share or increasing variable costs.

Bottom line: Use the basics of the case to show that you're bright and energetic, not just about the fictional case at hand but about consulting in general and their firm in particular. If you can't dance with a case it's unlikely you'll be cut out for or enjoy the mental gymnastics required for a real-time debate over market dynamics with a client in a presentation/boardroom setting.

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