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MARCH 2000 MBA JOURNAL: INTERNSHIP INTERVIEWS Priti Patel: Navigating the Process
Cover letters were due that week. Some companies had even requested that they be in before break. Most allowed us to submit cover letters and resumes via e-mail. While this definitely made the process much easier, cover letter and resume tweaking still took a great deal of time. I spent the first two weeks of school scouring interview-schedule information, deciding where I wanted to interview. I felt like a kid in a candy store. Everyone -- from really big companies to tiny startups -- was on the schedule. Many companies had presentations sometime during the first three weeks of classes. This was helpful in giving you a feel for the company before you had to decide whether you wanted to bid on an interview. Many times, there were multiple presentations on the same day, so balancing school work and recruiting became more and more challenging. I felt that I had to attend these presentations to be taken seriously for closed lists. I'm still not sure to what extent this is true. As I mentioned, there are closed-list and open-slot bidding deadlines. This means that after reviewing cover letters and resumes, companies guarantee a few students interview times while those not selected are able to bid on the remaining ("open") interview times. All students are allocated a fixed number of points for the entire recruiting season, which consists of four different rounds. Different companies interview at different times in the year. Investment banking and consulting interviews happen first, then brand management, and later, tech. Thus far, most banking, consulting, and brand-management companies have completed their summer-internship selection process. The first interviews were scheduled for early February. The process is pretty efficient. Callbacks are generally anywhere from a day to a week after the initial interview, so it's possible to have a first-round interview on a Monday and an offer in hand by Tuesday night. Most first-round interviews are held on campus. I have mostly interviewed with consulting firms. For the summer, I want to do something different from my previous sales and marketing work in consumer products. This makes the interviewing process much broader and more rigorous, but I figure I won't have the opportunity to explore other industries this freely again. I've managed to narrow down my choices by talking to second-years about their summer experiences. For example, if I was interested in a marketing opportunity with a particular company, I'd find out who in the second-year class interned for them and would set up a meeting. The second-years have been unbelievably helpful. Everyone offered to meet with me in person rather than just talk over the phone. My questions tended to focus on the interview process, the nature of the internship, and company culture. In addition to being physically draining, the interview process can take its toll emotionally. Even though you know everyone gets "dinged," or rejected, by at least a few companies, you still feel bad when it happens to you. The interviews themselves can be tough, especially for consulting and banking. Interviewers definitely test students and you can end up feeling poked and prodded as a result. On the flip side, there are other companies that primarily focus on "fit," because, given the caliber of students at Kellogg, they are already confident in people's capabilities. Throughout the process, I've been especially impressed with the support of my classmates. This has been the nicest part of the whole quarter. During the first quarter, people struggled to get know their classmates, but now you actually get to enjoy the people you've met.  Priti Patel  | | Learn about your online education options |
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