Snapshots From Hell - 2

At this point, we are in the second week of the New Year, and I have been practicing cases, working on behavioral questions and, as I said earlier, most importantly, submitting applications. Stage 3 (January 6^th-15^th), which I’ll call ‘MERRY-GO-ROUND’ made me believe in the ‘Law of Averages’.

This is when the results of my applications started coming in. Every morning, as I woke up from sleep and fired up MS-Outlook on my laptop, there it was – the dreaded email with the subject ‘Resume not selected’. Why they chose to send it at 2:40am and why they could not have a more diplomatic subject line is one of the many unsolved mysteries of this era. Rejects after rejects led to frustration and 5 days prior to start of the interview season I had only one interview call. And just when I had lost the last bit of hope, the sun came out. Within 5 days, I got another six interview calls – and then they kept flowing (I got 22 of those in all – even had to refuse some of them!). Persistence paid off? Naa… I started believing in miracles!!!

And then came the D-day! January 16^th – My first interview. Networking dinner the night before. Overnight brush up on the ‘Why me?’s and the ‘Why our company?’s. Early morning walk down to school, all dressed up, in the snow. Long 10-minute wait in the career center lobby. Two 45 minute sessions that went away in a blip. Two day nervous wait before the dreaded ‘feedback’ call telling me that I was awesome but they had to select only 2 out of 25 - that I should do some good work over the summers and I’ll be a ‘perfect’ candidate for full-time recruitment in the fall. Welcome to Stage 4 – ‘WEATHERING THE STORM’.

The above cycle repeated itself over and over again between January 16^th and February 5^th. And with each rejection came frustration – and a bit of resolve, to do better in the next one. I always had a lot of ‘next ones’ – there was always light at the end of the tunnel – I kept hoping it wasn’t that of an incoming train! With assignments, case submissions in classes and flying around the country for second round interviews, the 21 days went away in a jiffy.

The part I loved most in this stage, obviously in retrospect – hated it back then, was the ‘feedback’. The best one was after 2 rounds involving 5 interviews when I was told that, as usual, all was ‘excellent’ with my profile, but only two years of work-experience were not enough. I absolutely loved that one, coz I had just been saved from working with a firm where it took 5 senior managers to see something that an HR intern could have read off my resume! Didn’t see it like that back then – I was angry like hell. But, as always, that’s the best I could do. Catch you at the third and final post….