Girl and City

Last Friday, I had two first-round interviews, both with firms I wanted to work for. The night before, I tossed and turned in my bed until 4am, finally fell asleep in front of the TV at around 6am, and woke up at 8am.

Even though I was functioning on two hours of sleep, I could not have been more awake. I did not have a drop of coffee the whole day.

After the two interviews, I spent the rest of the weekend worrying whether I would get a call for a second-round interview. On Friday night, I went out with some girls for Zee’s birthday. I hardly enjoyed myself as I was constantly checking my phone. Eventually, my friends made me take some shots with them so I would loosen up. By midnight, I was so drunk I couldn’t see straight, partly because I needed to shake off the stress of interview week and partly because I hadn’t drank in months and therefore my alcohol tolerance was nil. We picked up tons of guys that night, which is something I haven’t done since first-year. In first-year, I would have been flattered by the attention. It would have been a novelty to have a guy hit on me, buy me drinks, and want to dance with me all night. Now, I was indifferent to it. Even when I was dancing with a guy who looked like Justin Timberlake, all I could think about was my couch at home. I extracted myself soon thereafter and hopped in a cab, without even bothering to find my friends (I was sure they were each grinding some guy though).
On Saturday, I nursed my hangover while nervously waiting by the phone. On Sunday, I worked most of the day and wondered whether my phone was broken.

Today, I got a call saying I didn’t get a second-round interview. Fuckers.

—
EDIT: I just got a call from my second interview on Friday and I GOT A SECOND-ROUND INTERVIEW! In NEW YORK CITY!! Fuck yeah.
I had figured that since I hadn’t heard from them in so long (usually they get back to you within 10 hours of the interview), I was definitely not moving on to the final interview. The likelihood of a second-round decreases exponentially with the number of hours you have to wait. Well I waited FOUR AND A HALF DAYS but it all worked out. Three second-rounds out of six first-round interviews? That’s a pretty sweet ratio.

Things I have learned over the last four months:

• Do not sleep over at a guy’s place if he has a girlfriend. If anything happens, you’ll be “the other girl.” Even if you think that it’s okay, it’s never okay to be “the other girl.”
• Sometimes, douchebag bosses do need to be put in their place. Even if telling them off won’t accomplish anything, at least you’ll have the satisfaction of seeing the look on their faces when you let them have a piece of your mind. Otherwise, you will dream about having shouting matches with your boss, which is nowhere near as satisfying as the real thing.
• Following from the above, it’s okay to burn bridges. This summer, I burned two bridges (HB and MFL) and it was the best thing I could have done for me. If only I had burned the bridge with LawyerMan too…
• No one will love you like your parents love you. Although I’m proud that I have never been spoiled by my parents, after twenty years, I do want to be spoiled, just a little bit.
• At a recruiting event, don’t say things like “Even if Firm X gave me an offer, I wouldn’t take it” or “I’m only here for the food and open bar.” Especially when there’s a recruiter standing behind you.
• During a case interview, don’t say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” When they ask you why you want to work at their firm during a behavioural interview, don’t answer with any of the following: “Because that guy I met at the recruiting event was super cute!” “Because you guys fly to Germany to party over the weekend.” “Because I heard you can charge trips to Ibiza on your expense account.” All true by the way. But don’t say it.
• Your friends aren’t perfect either. Being the first to forgive and forget can go a long way.
• Holding a grudge just isn’t worth it.
• Don’t take everything too seriously, you’re too young for that.

The last few weeks have been insanely busy. As you have probably guessed by now, it’s recruiting season at The Business School, which means wearing a full suit to school, getting drunk at recruiting events (open bar) while ignoring recruiters, and no classes. Sounds like one big party, eh? Not quite.
The good news is that this time around, I have gotten a lot of interviews. I have six first-round interviews this week, with some of the top five consulting firms in the world. I only applied to global consulting firms because… well, I figured I’d apply to the best of the best, and if I didn’t walk away with any job offers, I would focus on law school.
I have had two interviews so far, which has resulted in one call-back for a final-round interview next week.

The thought of working for one of these swanky consulting firms still makes me feel a little bit like a fraud. After all, I’m a 21-year-old with no industry experience, and I’ll be working on projects for C-level executives of multimillion dollar companies. Go ahead, send me to client sites in Los Angeles, Dubai, Switzerland, Singapore. Go ahead, pay me $70 grand a year for coming up with a few Powerpoint slides.
I don’t know. But I’m sure all that money will appease my conscience. And help me pay for law school.

I’m sick.
This is the worst week to fall sick. I have recruiting events every night, job applications due every day, on top of a full course schedule, meetings in between class, and a mountain of casework.

So I have pulled out my dependable Super Bottle. The Super Bottle contains a mosaic of pills I have collected over the years from illnesses of varying degrees. I don’t remember what half the pills are for anymore. Some are antibiotics, some are sketchy pills from China, some are extra-strength prescription painkillers. Any time I get sick during the course of the school year, I just make myself a little cocktail of drugs from the Super Bottle and I can usually make it through the day. By then, I’m so drugged I wouldn’t feel pain if you stabbed a knife into my gut.

Anyway, as I was saying, this is just the perfect time to fall ill. My classes start at 8am and recruiting events end at 9:30pm, so by the time I get home, I’ve been up and about for 14 hours and I’m just ready to crash. But I still have cases to prepare for class. (I don’t do them of course, instead I make myself a large bowl of noodles and watch Scrubs.)

After a few days with a schedule like that, I’m just about ready to go ape shit on the recruiters. Love me, love me, say that you love me¹!

1. Lovefool by The Cardigans. [↩]

My life in the last four weeks can be summed up in one word: suckage.
Although I don’t think that’s actually a word, but you get the idea.

January at The Business School has been a crazed frenzy of info sessions, recruiters, and job applications. We were given no warning as to how crazy it would get, and I was sucked into this frenzy with no preparation, and thus no hope of getting a job for the summer.
Summer recruitment at The Business School is always taken very seriously because 1) the companies that come are the best in their industry, and 2) after the summer, you are almost guaranteed a full-time offer, so you won’t even have to worry about going through the job search process again in September.
Anyway, what this really means is that everyone is crazy competitive, and it’s so much worse this year because of the economy. There are fewer job openings and even more people competing, especially for my career path of choice: consulting.
In consulting, there are basically four big names: McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and Deloitte. My dream job would be at Bain, but with the competition this year, I did not even get a first-round interview.
Twenty job applications and fifty cups of coffee later, I managed only to get one interview with Deloitte’s strategy & operations department. Pretty sweet deal, if I could actually get through to the final round and get an offer, but this story does not end that way. I did not get to the final round, I did not get an offer.

This is all fine and dandy, but here’s the kicker. With my marks, extra-curriculars, and charming demeanor (*bats eyelashes*), I would have gotten interviews everywhere had it been any other year. But not this year. And the worst part is that I don’t even know what I could have done better. So instead of torturing myself with the what-ifs, I blame January.

January has always been a terrible month for me. My first January away from home was spent combating pneumonia and an allergy reaction to the antibiotics that my doctor gave me. On the first day of class that term, my laptop died and I had a midterm in a week.
The second January of my university life, my purse was stolen in class, and I was left without money, a phone, or keys, and nowhere to go. I also ended up paying for a spring break trip I didn’t go because I was, essentially, scammed by the tour company. Later that week, my laptop died. Seeing a trend here?
This January, not only has summer recruitment gone nowhere, but someone used my credit card and spent $700 with it before I noticed and called the credit card company.
So you can imagine why I was unsurprised that I did not get a single job offer. The fact that my laptop hasn’t died yet is already making it a better month than previous years.

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