Is it Friday yet?

2 more to go. I am going to enjoy my Friday afternoon to the fullest. At least the variety in the interviews keeps it interesting but one does get tired of repeating the old life story. Happily there was none of that stuff in today's interview - just discussion of economic outlook and investing - just my kind of interview. But I find I am running out of steam a bit. Having trouble preparing fully for tomorrow's rounds.

Interview update

So I've got 8 interviews this week. Two down so far. I never come out of an interview feeling very good - just my inner grinch. Happily none tomorrow but then 3 Wednesday, 1 Thursday and 2 Friday. Then that's pretty much it for on campus recruiting. Just a few more here and there plus any second rounds I may get. IM interviews are a mixed lot - each one has been so incredibly different from the others. And I think that will continue to be the case. I finally realized what all the IM folks meant when they told us how hard it is to see all the ibanking folk get offers in one week and to know you still had weeks/months of search and decision making ahead of you. But to you aspiring ibankers - congrats! Seems like a rough hiring season. A big sorry to those who came away disappointed. : ( That sucks.

On the other hand ...

As a second year pointed out, who gets what offer seems to sort of make sense in the end. In other words, if I bomb an interview, odds are that it's probably not the right firm for me. I'll probably do well in interviews where I'm a good fit and badly where I'm not. It's not just about being the smartest candidate/best investor but also approach and style which isn't something one changes in a week. Have to remember that.

Breathe ...

So I have to admit that despite my absolute best efforts to stay calm and take confidence in my preparations, I feel like a basket case. My stomach has been in knots for over a week now and it doesn't seem to be going away. My biggest concern is that my upcoming interviews, while all in the realm of IM, are very different from one another (fixed income/equities, hedge fund/long only/private placement, Boston/LA etc), leaving me feeling very thinly spread in my preparations. One of my biggest lessons from all of my mock interviews (four this week) is that I really need to give more time and attention to the soft questions (leadership/teamwork bah) but I feel compelled to improve my stock pitches instead (where I think it really counts personally). And then there's the question of coursework. While the advice (and the most sensible thing given the circumstances) is to put interviews before school, it completely goes against my nature to do so and it's very hard to know how best to minimize school without completely destroying my grades.

And then I think how many times I've felt like this before (dread, anxiety, too little time to prepare) and how it all turned out in the end. So I suppose this too will turn out (well, at least it will be over in a month). But in the interest of giving prospectives an honest perspective on life at the GSB - I figured I may as well share my true feelings of anxiety.

I've asked Y and my mom to take more than their fair share of child care and house work over the next month and hopefully I can get this over with and make up for it. But it's hard for me to ask for help. Focus is everything right now. (Man, I can't wait to exercise regularly again!)

The bad mommy

I have this dream that someday I won't feel like/be such a bad (absent) parent/partner. I feel guilty so much of the time about how my family gets neglected in the process of realizing my life ambitions. And they're about to get neglected a whole lot more, unfortunately. But hopefully I can get all this internship business over by the end of winter quarter and spend a wonderful spring with them ...before relocating to who knows where for summer. I'm trying my best but I still just feel bad a lot of the time. Either I'm a bad student/employee or I'm a bad parent/partner. Can't seem to get them both right at the same time. Bah.

Closed Lists

If only invitations to interview were an invitation for an internship. It's always great to make a closed list but the invitations also make me feel a bit sick to my stomach. The odds of being cut in the first round are so high - despite my best efforts to prepare, I must admit I feel a bit insecure about my prospects. Always the pessimist! (Fixed income here I come ;)

I have another mock interview tomorrow, this one in fixed income, back to the CFA texts I go to prepare ... my appetite for cover letter writing is quickly fading.

Mock Interviews

Are painful but good. Do not forgo them, o future GSBers. I hate pretending to interview but having done 2 today I can already see the improvement.

Have been struggling with insomnia lately - got only a couple hours of sleep last night so I'm off to bed now. But today was wInterview which I thought was a really really remarkable experience. I came away from the day exhausted but rejuvenated about my job hunting mission and how much I love the GSB. There was a session on bidding for on campus recruiting, a mock interview demo (yours truly having the pleasure to be a demonstrator), a recruiting panel of 2nd years (invaluable), and one on one mock interviews with 2nd years. For lunch, a 2005 graduate spoke who was so outstanding and turns all the stereotypes about the nerdy, socially incompetent GSBer completely on their head. He reminded us that interviews are just conversations, among other bits of wisdom. Sounds simple - but so easy to forget. I hope the class of 2010 has the pleasure of hearing him speak next year.

So now things really heat up. The first round of interview invitations went up on PBS tonight. Happily I got invited to interview with a firm that is one of my top picks. Most IM closed lists won't be finalized for a few weeks but this position is with a bank (on the asset management side) and banks like to move early and quickly. But this means at least I have one shot at a job. Last night, feverishly reworking my stock model, I felt like a complete failure. I felt there was no way I could ever get a position in IM and couldn't remember why I wanted to put myself through all this. The preparation process just felt hard and frustrating and demoralizing. And I felt completely inadequate. But today, sleep deprivation aside, I feel much better about things. I just have to hang on to that feeling.

But I do feel that enthusiasm and sincerity are key going through this process. I only applied to firms that I was really excited about and hopefully that will carry through in the interview. My mock interviews today renewed my self confidence that I could actually pitch a stock convincingly and field tricky macro questions with some aplomb even if I hadn't the faintest clue. I have lots lots lots to work on still but at least I know where I stand. And it's such a relief.

So the moral of the post is to embrace the mock interview and all the prep and just enjoy yourself. Don't let the stress of recruiting overshadow the excitement of the opportunity.

Good night.

My First Marketing Class

I find it funny that as my schedule becomes more busy - I become busier blogging. Isn't it always that way. It's a great stress reliever.

Today was my first Marketing class and ... I loved it! The professor (a mechanical engineer, of course) is so energetic and interesting. He bounded around the classroom and wasn't afraid to deliver honest feedback of responses on the spot and cold call. It occurred to me that part of why I was so ho hum last quarter was that virtually none of the coursework was new news. It was all review. This quarter is going to be so much more fun. I wish I had had this schedule last quarter. I hope interviewing doesn't ruin my enjoyment of the material. I still hate accounting but at least the topic of 30117 is less familiar than 30116.

I thought I would come to the GSB to do all the hardest, quantiest courses I could but it may be that my best classes are the basic, non finance/accounting courses. The fellow who interviewed me (awarded a distinguished alumni award most recently) said he took lots of advanced finance etc courses and regrets not taking a broader view. I have taken his advice to heart.

Anyhow, I should get back to modelling (stocks, that is). Baby Y just fell asleep on his own for maybe the second time in his life. Yay!!!! What a treat. Often it takes me a good hour to get him to fall asleep. I think that's the hardest thing about doing school with a baby - I have absolutely no room to procrastinate or cram because I can never count on being able to work when it suits me. Everything takes much much longer than expected.

So what's coming up in the week ahead?

• Potential corporate conversation and lunch tomorrow and an evening event. Lunch on Friday with a firm that I'm reaaally interested in.
• Potentially seeing Taleb speak on Friday afternoon which would mean missing the first LPF of the year and GBC slate debates or something like that.
• Saturday - all day interview fun ala the GSB wInterview.
• Trip to firm on Monday (not in Chicago)
• Two additional mock interviews next week.
• More lunch and learns.
• Random Google networking event (rsvp'd in a moment of weakness)

The Joy of Job Hunting

I just read a PBS listing for a hedge fund that specified only applicants with 2-3 years at a top tier investment bank or hedge fund/private equity would be considered. Yay. That's one more cover letter I don't need to waste my time on. On the other hand, give me a fucking break. This is rare but I've run into it before. While this is obviously the company's prerogative, I have to admit it irks me a bit. I can understand wanting experience, virtually all hedge funds do and I don't blame them, but the top tier bit is annoying. Perhaps you can tell I'm not of a "top tier" firm ... laugh.

Today was the first meeting of my Managing the Workforce class which I am looking forward to even more now. I love that Chicago makes their "HR" class a Economics course. It's especially interesting to have a course dedicated to the world of recruiting and managing labor while in the throes of my own internship hunt. Anyhow, one of the points mentioned in the lecture today was about how firms use credentials to help them sort out candidates - as demonstrated explicitly by the posting mentioned above. The other idea mentioned, which is much harder to wrap my mind around, is that it actually makes better financial sense for a firm to hire a risky candidate than a safe candidate if the expected average return on the two candidates is the same. (Yep, this is HR ala GSB.) This would be the opposite tactic of said hedge fund above but a tactic that warms my upstart heart.

I find that the single most characteristic I'm looking for, aside from geography, is niceness. I just want to work with nice people. I just don't have the ability I had when I was young and "hungry" to put up with all the bullshit - the hazing that goes on in some of these security firms, the chest beating, the yelling, the cursing, the jokes about porn and outings to strip clubs. I've worked with some lovely people but I've worked plenty of not so well behaved people. And I'm just not in the mood for it. If they ask you if you have a thick skin in the interview ... that's not a good sign. I can have a thick skin but I'd prefer that it not be a job requirement.

Free Market

<> no rules. (grrr)

This is one of my number one gripes when I hear folks talk about economics and capitalism - that the "free" in free markets means there are no rules or regulations, an impossibility. (Just heard it repeated in an NPR interview which inspired me to post.) It has been very surprising how many people upon hearing that I was planning to attend the University of Chicago for business school would give me an earful about Milton Friedman, or how conservative (??) the school was. It's hard not to have an opinion about economics or capitalism but too often these opinions are formed on anecdotes and misinterpretations, not a rigorous study of the philosophy and the evidence. Leads to so many frustrating conversations ... to be continued ... potentially.

On to the next quarter ...

Classes begin tomorrow. I have 8:30 classes Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday which is how I like it. Forces me to get out of bed and do something with my life ;) and leaves my Thursday and Friday free which is preferable, especially if I have to travel this quarter.

This quarter I am taking:

• 30117 "M&A Accounting" is how I think of it. I think this is not commonly taken for IM folk but it was a subject that I'm curious about and don't feel well versed in. I am taking it with Bens, a visiting professor from Eller (e will be flying in every week to teach the course), rather than the super popular (and therefore expensive) Sapras. I'm cheap.
• 33032 Managing the Workplace with Stacey Kole. It fulfills the HR requirement and hopefully will have a manageable work load. I'm looking forward to it though since it's not something I really know anything about. Closest would be my Labor Econ class in undergrad.
• 37000 Marketing is the first course at the GSB that I had to pay points for (grrr). I'm excited about the class though because, unlike my first quarter, it's completely out of my current realm of knowledge. Marketing baffles me. I'm very curious to see what it's all about.

Next weekend is wInterview - an all day "workshop" to get us prepped for interviews. By the end of the month on campus IM interviews will be in full swing. It feels so soon.

Truth be told I am quite anxious about the recruiting process. On the other hand, I know that it will all work out one way or the other and I'm not hell bent on getting a job with one employer in particular. Part of me secretly doesn't want to do an internship at all this summer - I just want a break - that part of me would be thrilled if I didn't make it on any closed lists, or get any internship at all. Silver lining in every cloud or something like that .... in the grand scheme this is all so irrelevant. I'm very fortunate. I have such an easy, comfortable life in comparison to the challenges that the bulk of the world population faces every day. I have nothing worth worrying about. (I needed to say that, it's so easy to forget.)

Back to my stock pitch prep.

First Quarter in Review

Ok, so a bit belated. Really I should not be blogging but it's such a wonderful way to procrastinate. I wish I could just fast forward this winter quarter. I thought I would post a little in the way of unsolicited advice about how to use your first quarter at the GSB / lessons learned. (Remember all of this is from an IM recruiting perspective which does not apply to all career paths.)

• Use your summer wisely: Yes, I know that it's a great chance to quit your job and travel and do exciting things but the first quarter is a blur and if you're going to layer baby duty on top of it, the more you can do to prepare yourself for the job search the better. But that's just the worrywart, perfectionist in me speaking. I'm sure you can completely slack this whole experience and still turn out ok. (And I also would not recommend arriving in Chicago the weekend before LOE - give yourself a little more breathing room if possible.)
• Check out firms even if you think you're not interested and take good notes: I'm glad that I took the time to attend events for firms that I wasn't that interested in, even though I didn't attend them all. In hindsight I might have even gone to few more (easy to say now though). I'm also glad I took pretty detailed notes - they turned out to be very helpful when doing cover letters in terms of customization. I wish I had gotten more business cards and been even more detailed with the note taking.
• Utilize career resources: The career resources center here is amazing, don't forget to use their services and understand all that is available to you. I was surprised how lightly attended their weekly sessions in the fall were. If you keep up with the programming, it really helps you stay on track.
• The grading system is baffling: I got my best grade in a class that I did literally no work for and my worst grade in a class I worked my arse off for and do know the material. Huh? Who knows. Be forewarned. (Best class goes to Seru for Corporate Finance 35200.)
• Don't be afraid to join more student groups than seem necessary: The more information the better. You never know which way your interests will evolve. By hesitating on joining the IM group, I missed out on some important initial opportunities. Just write the check already.
• Bidding for classes is baffling but it seems to work out: They're changing the bidding system, hopefully for the better. I was so worried when I failed to get a schedule in the first round of bidding. But it turned out ok.

Ok. That's what I can remember of it. On to the next quarter.