Snapshot From Hell - 3

I never imagined I would need three posts for these experiences, but then again, it’s close to my heart and lest I stretch this into four, I’ll delve straight into Stage 5 of my internship hunt.


With so much happening so fast, before I knew it, I was already in Stage 5, which I call ‘THE LAST STRAW’. February 6th – Last interview scheduled. No offers. No more companies listed to interview on campus in the near future. I was miserable, to say the least! The constant rejections had left me drained. I didn’t know if I was doing everything wrong or if it was just bad luck. I was asking myself – How can you possibly blow up almost 15 interviews in a row! Anyhow, with my self confidence at its lowest ebb, I decided to give one last strong shot. I researched the company like crazy – digging into the best and worst of archives. Got a call back after the first round interviews. Second rounds were the next day. I felt I had done well – but then, I felt the same after every single interview I had had. With nothing better to do, I sat back and started waiting for the result.


It finally happened on February 13th. The last stage – ‘BREATHING AGAIN’. It had been six days and still no results. As I walked to school in the snow, I saw a voicemail on my phone. I was almost expecting a ‘Thank you for interviewing with us.’ In recruitment circles, if a call starts with that, you’re better off hanging up right there. But this one was different. It was good news. Something I was not ready for! It might seem the obvious thing to say that I felt happy – fact is, I did not. As I look at it now, it wasn’t happiness – it was just relief.


If I had to look back, I can say I could have done things better. But it was a learning experience. Maybe, if I had got the first position I interviewed for, I wouldn’t have learnt this much. Then again, it’s all in hindsight. With lessons for the future. If there’s one takeaway – I realize that I worked hardest when I was pushed into a corner - with no interviews in the pipeline. I guess it’s all about how desperate you are to achieve something. As the saying goes, “When you want something badly enough, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

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….

Snapshots From Hell - 1

16 companies… 33 interviews…3 second rounds… 1 offer. That in essence was my MBA internship hunt – nerve-wracking in real time, fulfilling in retrospect. But as I look back, there was much more to it than just the interviews. It was also my excuse for not writing in for so long. But the whole experience was so enthralling, that I can’t help sharing it with anyone interested in pursuing a ‘Global MBA’. Long story, but interesting, nevertheless!

It all began way before January 16^th, 2007 – the date of my first internship interview. Actually, it began the day I stepped into the hallowed corridors of my business school. This stage I call ‘BEWILDERMENT’. The fall semester (August 26^th – December 19^th): Orientation, lectures, club meetings, corporate presentations – all had a 3-point agenda: “Network”, “Network” and “Network some more”. A million resume review sessions, case practice sessions, case competitions, 20-hour work days and networking events with aggregate consumption of over a gazillion pizzas and cans of soda were still not enough to prepare us for the monster called “internship interviews” that was supposed to “hit us even before we realized”.

What I loved about this stage was the utter state of commotion that surrounded us all. We were told to have a focus, and yet all of us wanted to work in consulting, i-banking, corporate finance and technology. We were told not to ask stupid questions of recruiters and yet we had that inquisitive classmate asking whether the company sponsored H1 visas or not! But the absolute winners were the resume review sessions – that’s when I realized what a genius one year of MBA can turn you into. No matter how many times I had got my resume reviewed, whenever I went to a second year student for a review, it was a bloodbath – remove headers, add numbers, change font, increase spacing – no wonder the pen is mightier than the sword!

The carnage ensued for four months and culminated before the Winter Break in December. The first part of the break was Stage 2 (December 20^th – January 5^th) – I’ll call it ‘CALM BEFORE THE STORM’. This, for me, was to be catch-up time. Time to practice the remaining 96 out of the 100 cases I had targeted for practice before my interviews. Time to write down stories for all 64 behavioral questions I had compiled from various sources. Time to research the companies recruiting on campus. To quantify, I think I achieved almost 20-25% of these targets, which is testimony to the overoptimistic planning that went into setting them in the first place!

Most importantly, this was time to submit resumes and cover letters – and boy, was it fun! I sat down every Sunday evening till midnight and let the creative juices flow as I copied, pasted and redrafted cover letters that I knew no one would ever care to read. But I learnt a lot from it – I suddenly realized that I had such a wealth of experience and ability that I couldn’t help asking myself – ‘Why the hell did I ever need to do an MBA?’

At this point, things were about to start getting serious. Stage 3 was slowly creeping in. But, coming back to the present, I just remembered that we were told not to write very long cover letters – the readers lose interest, they said. My question was whether they ever had anything to lose! Anyhow, I’ll apply the same principle to my posts and cut this one short. And if you have reached this far, I’m sure you’d like to know how I survived Stages 3 to 6. So, catch you at the next one….