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FEBRUARY 1999 MBA JOURNAL: INTERNSHIP INTERVIEWS Alex Virtue: Navigating the Internship Interviewing Process
The nerve center of the OCRS (on-campus recruiting system) at Wharton is Fortune, an online computer resource that allows students to search for interviewing companies, get the pertinent contact names and addresses, bid for, and reserve interview slots. Since the interviewing season is staggered, a student need only meet the write-in deadline for a specific round of the companies he or she is interested in. While the interviewing season itself stretches till the end of March, most of the consulting and investment-banking schedules and write-in deadlines occur in the first or second round. This means that students are starting to submit their résumés and cover letters to these companies a couple of weeks before the end of the first semester and (as mentioned above) over the winter break. In addition to the companies participating in the OCRS, many prominent firms with large, formal recruiting efforts -- McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch to name a few -- choose to hold their interviews offsite in flashy Center City hotels such as the Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons, rather than at Wharton's interview facilities. While the mechanics of the write-in are the same for these companies as for the OCRS firms, keeping track of schedules gets progressively more difficult as students juggle back-to-back interviews between OCRS and the downtown hotels. It's a good thing there are plenty of taxis in Philadelphia! Friday, Jan. 29, was the first day of the interview season for first-year MBAs at Wharton. I had four interviews scheduled -- three in Center City hotels and one at the end of the day on campus. Four interviews in one day seemed like a substantial load to me, but there were aspiring I-bankers with as many as nine interviews on the same day! The following week (Feb.1 to Feb. 5) marked the "dedicated interviewing week," a respite from classes so we could all concentrate on interviewing without any academic distractions. While I've heard that some members of the faculty aren't too wild about the interruption that recruiting and interviewing thrusts upon the academic life at Wharton, I'm convinced that the dedicated interviewing week is a necessary evil. Like so many other things at B-school, getting a job and keeping up in the core classes is simply a juggling act: Both endeavors are critical and, given the time constraints, students naturally concentrate on landing a summer job at this critical juncture. Fortunately, most of our professors seem to take recruiting in stride, realizing the multiple demands that MBA students must accommodate. The interviewing and recruiting experience was unlike anything I've ever been exposed to in the past. Fear, anxiety, dread . . . all emotions that I felt leading up to Jan. 29. Like every other Wharton first-year, I had been practicing my interviewing skills with both first- and second-year students in "mock" interviews, basically coming as close to the real experience as possible. Since job seekers hoping to enter management consulting must prepare for a marathon onslaught of case interviews -- interviews based on an actual or hypothetical business scenario -- these folks seem to spend the most time preparing. Students looking to land jobs in banking or a related financial position could expect a more straightforward approach, although plenty of practice is warranted, nonetheless. Essentially, the worst thing about preparing for job interviews is that you simply don't know which direction your interrogator is going to go. He or she could fire a dreaded barrage of technical financial and accounting questions or conduct what is considered the more civilized "fit" interview. Since you don't know what to expect, you have to be prepared for the worst. Not having a financial or accounting background, I did my best to make sure that I'd fully absorbed the key elements of my introductory finance and accounting courses and that I could demonstrate my mastery of basic, key concepts in an interview. Additionally, being able to tell a convincing "story" as to why I made certain academic and professional decisions and, more importantly, why I wanted a specific job with a specific company were also key factors in my preparation. So, I navigated through four interviews on Friday, Jan. 29. By the end of the day, I already knew that I had one rejection and, despite my greatest fears of not landing a banking job, an offer! As crazy as it seems, the investment-banking interviews are run with such efficiency that most people seem to have job offers, second-round invitations, or rejections within 24 to 48 hours of their first interview. I was truly elated to get the call from my first choice, Merrill Lynch, and promptly canceled all remaining interviews I had with other firms. A week after my interview, Merrill invited me to their New York offices for a "sell day" -- a great chance to get a feel of the office and meet some of the people in the real-estate group that I'll be working with over the summer. In the end, I'd have to say that most of my classmates landed great jobs with companies that they really want to work for. Whether someone takes the quick route through the investment-banking/consulting interview process or a more drawn-out and self-directed approach in, say, private-equity finance or high-tech, nearly everyone who wants one has a summer job to look forward to (The Office of Career Development & Placement boasts a 99%+ placement rate for summer and full-time positions). So there you have it, a brief insight into Wharton's summer-recruiting process. For those of you following the core (oh yeah, those classes . . .), the third-quarter academic load includes Cost Accounting, Linear Programming (Operations), Finance/Macroeconomics, and the Legal Environment of Business. Additionally, everyone must also take the infamous "FAP" (Field Application Project) class in the third quarter, a consulting project in which Wharton learning teams match up with a corporate, municipal, or nonprofit organization and complete a full report with recommendations to be presented in the fourth quarter. But more on that later. Until next time . . . --Alex  Alex Virtue  | | [an error occurred while processing this directive] Learn about your online education options |
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