Recruiting is like dating
I have friends who love dating. They love the first-date flurries, the anticipation of the unknown, and the excitement of the chase. I am not one of those people. The reality is that occasionally you have a great date and it results in a second one, and maybe even a relationship. But more often than not you bid adieu at the end of the night, exchange “Don’t call me I’ll call you” cheek kisses and head home wishing that’s where you had been all along. Or worse, you have a great time and think you’ve finally met someone perfect and then you never hear from them again. And you start all over.
Recruiting, to me, was like dating. Except that it was easier to decide what to wear and I never had to pick the restaurant or worry about whether to split the check at the end of the night. For me it began around the fifth week of first semester when the Career Development office started sending out a weekly bulletin of companies that were coming to campus for corporate presentations. Corporate presentations generally all follow a similar format: there is a Power Point presentation with some rosy information about the company and a list of reasons why you should be honored to work for them. Then there is time for Q&A. The best advice I can give you in this scenario is to keep your mouth shut. Corporate presentations are not for making a good impression. They are to avoid making a bad impression. If you absolutely must draw attention to yourself in this scenario, at least avoid the following list of I’ve (real-life, actually happened) questions:
- How much do you make? (Rude)
- What are your hours like? (Lazy)
- I know your company is currently facing a nasty sexual harassment suit from a former employee. How is that affecting moral? (Only if you’re looking to completely silence a room)
Next there is an hour or so of mingling with the people from the company who have the jobs you want. There are hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, not because you might be hungry or thirsty, but to separate the talkers from the eaters. You can distinguish between them because as the Q&A session is wrapping up, the talkers become agitated in their seats, poised to rocket out of them towards the nearest (and most senior) person from the company, ready to pull out the big networking guns. The eaters hang back, fortifying themselves with crudités and shrimp cocktail, telling themselves that they are just waiting for the right moment to make their entrance into one of the tight little circles that are forming around the company representatives. In the beginning I was among the crudités crowd, terrified of approaching someone to ask “So what is it exactly that you do?” and getting an answer so foreign and confusing that any follow-up question I could think up would surely show how clueless I was. To get over this I practiced attending presentations for companies lower down on my target list so that if, as I feared, I made a fool of myself, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal. I forced myself to approach someone immediately after the presentation, thereby bypassing the safety and camouflage of the hors d’oeurves table entirely.
It’s not easy to make your way into a circle, and there is a good way and a bad way to do it. Throwing a few elbows and interrupting the flow of the conversation is not the good way. Stand at the edge and listen to the conversation so you can make an appropriate comment or ask a question when there is a pause. If you don’t get a chance to introduce yourself when you enter the conversation you can always do it later on when you’re leaving the group.
Once in the circle, you may end up talking to someone who works in a job function that you’re not interested in. While you don’t want to waste the entire presentation chatting with someone in sales and trading if you really want to work in banking, you also don’t want to be rude. When there is a pause in the conversation it’s fine to politely say “It’s been very interesting to hear about your experience, however I’m actually more interested ______. Are you able to point me in the direction of anyone who works in that area?”
Don’t monopolize the conversation. Be concise and give other people the chance to talk. Prepare your story ahead of time so that you can answer commonly asked questions like “What did you do before business school?” or “Why do you want to go into _____?” in one or two sentences. Short answers also keep the conversation moving so that you can cycle back out more quickly and meet someone else.
Don’t try to impress anyone with your deep knowledge of the industry. I guarantee you that everyone in the room from the company knows more than you do so you’ll just look silly. Keep questions general, along the lines of “It sounds like you’ve been with the company for quite some time—what is it that keeps you here?” and “What do you think is important for someone in my position to know coming into this job?” Don’t be afraid to ask questions if you don’t understand what someone is talking about. People tend to fall back on industry jargon that you would never be expected to understand, and admitting that you’re not familiar with something they’ve said can often make you look like you’re listening and trying to understand.
In recruiting, as in dating, at the end of the night you either hope for a second date (called an informational interview) or you decide you’re not interested in pursuing things further. If you decide it’s worth pursuing, getting someone’s business card is the best way to set up your second date. With a business card in hand you can send an email thanking them for their time and asking if you might be able to follow-up sometime to ask some additional questions about the company or their position. You carefully write this email, hold your breath and hit send. And if you’re lucky and they had a nice time with you, too, you just might get that second date.
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