The Naked MBA

The other day I had lunch and caught up with a good friend from business school. We talked about the paths we’ve taken in the nearly years since graduation. I first took a job in structured finance with a large investment bank. I hated it and switched jobs, but that’s another story. My friend, on the other hand, didn’t get any offers right away and was still looking for a job when we graduated. He landed at a financial services company where he has been working ever since. “You know,” he told me over lunch, “the job you had out of business school was my dream job.”

“Your dream job involved a cubicle and spreadsheets?” I asked.

“No, I mean it was the job I wrote my business school essays about—structured finance.”

It turns out that he did, indeed, write his essays about wanting to go to business school to get a job in structured finance. And he had a great case, because before school he worked for a mortgage company that was often on the other side of those deals. In contrast, I had no case for getting the job—I had no finance experience and before business school, having worked for an international non-profit where my most important job skill was knowing what time it was anywhere in the world. If companies hired people based on résumés alone he would have gotten the job. But since they do something called an interview, I got it. This is also why I got two other job offers and why I was called back to the final round of interviews for every job I applied for in business school. I interview well. I can talk to anyone about anything. I rarely get nervous, or if I do I don’t show it. My friend is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He made all the hard finance classes in school look easy. He is fun and interesting and has a great résumé. But I have a feeling he doesn’t interview well.

In business school you spend a lot of time working on your résumé and honing your technical expertise for interviews. An interview, though, is just a conversation—and sometimes we forget how to converse. We forget how to be engaging and interesting and how to connect with people. At the end of the day you have to make people want to hire you--not just because of your experience or your technical skills, but because when they imagine spending 10 hours a day with you every day for weeks on end, it’s not so bad. They have to like you to hire you--more than everyone else they interview. At top business schools it’s very competitive because everyone is smart and accomplished and has a great résumé. So the ones who get the jobs are not only smart and accomplished, but they’re the ones you want to take out for a beer later.

I’m not claiming to being Miss Popularity because I got a job, but when I was job hunting I knew what I was working with. I didn’t have the skills or experience that others had, but I knew how to connect with people. It’s a skill that shouldn’t be overlooked. So when you’re in the midst of trying to cram Porter’s Five Forces or a discounted cash flow model into your head for interviews, take a break and go have a beer and shoot the breeze with friends for a while. It could just get you a job.

With recruiting season in full swing your calendar is no doubt packed with corporate presentations. On top of that, you’re probably also squeezing in a whole bunch of other, company-sponsored events that pop up. There are “lunch-‘n’-learns”, happy hours and a series of informational interviews with different people. All of these events are designed as a forum for you to present yourself as a great hiring prospect and for the company to size you up. Unfortunately, none of them are designed as an opportunity for you to size up the company. Nowhere during the rehearsed Q&A of presentations and informational interviews do you get to ask your real questions.

It’s easy to feel like you are blindly charging forward through the recruitment process with your target companies, meeting all their expectations but not getting any closer to discovering if the company is really the right place for you. There aren’t any bschool-sanctioned venues for this--corporate presentations and informational interviews are not the appropriate venue to ask “So what do you really think of working at…?”

So how do you get behind a company's PR material and find out what it's really like to work there? How do you perform a cultural audit on the company to make sure it’s the right place to start your career?

First, although you often can’t ask the questions you want to ask, you can read between the lines and be alert to nonverbal signals. Good places to work are run by people who respect their employees. If you have an interview or other interaction with someone who treats you like an interchangeable part, or who acts like cogs in a wheel themself, think twice about working there. (Note: If you’re shooting for a job in investment banking you can disregard this tip and prepare yourself for years of cogdom.)

It’s uncomfortable to ask questions about how many hours you’ll be expected to work, but neutral questions such as, "What's a typical workday like?" can help uncover these expectations. You can also do some sleuthing in this area by asking about the department's proudest accomplishments. If people get choked up swapping war stories of all-nighters or working so hard they missed birthdays and anniversaries, take it as a sign. Do people talk about the jobs in terms of face time spent, or goals achieved?

I also like to ask what happens when people make mistakes. This gives a good window into the company’s culture and management style. The key is to pose the question without sounding like someone who is planning to make a lot of mistakes. Another of my favorite questions is about the attrition rate of new hires within one year, three years or 5 years, and why people leave.

Beyond the company representatives that you meet during recruiting event, use your network to find people who will tell you the truth about what it’s like to work there. Go through your contacts to find employees, former employees or their relatives or friends. You can also use established social networks to do this research. LinkedIn, for example, let’s you do blind, “reverse”, and company reference checks. You can do this by searching for the job title and company, (be sure to uncheck “Current titles only”). Getting in touch people who used to hold the position can give you the inside scoop on the job, manager and growth potential.

Business school gives you two years to find a job—a lot more time than you have for the average job hunt. Use this to your advantage to thoroughly do your research and make sure what you’re getting into is where you want to be.

They say the hardest thing about business school is getting in. This is a total lie. The whole point of coming to business school is to leave with a job. Everything you do for two years culminates in this goal. The classes you take are based on gaining the knowledge you will have to demonstrate in interviews. The newspapers you read are those of the industry in which you’re trying to get a foothold. Most importantly, the summer internship you choose is seen as the key for securing a place with the company of your choice upon graduation. For career switchers, the internship puts them on track to pursue a brand new career–making it even more crucial to land the right position. Graduating from a top business school affords you a competitive edge; it also serves to ratchet up the competition. You are competing against the best and the brightest from your school and other top schools. Faced with this Intense competition, students are driven to spend hours preparing for interviews and perfecting résumés. Interviewing is the hardest thing about business school.

As an intense 6-8 weeks of corporate presentations wraps up you barely have time to take a breath before it’s time for résumé drops. For summer internships most deadlines (for the traditional, on-campus recruiting process) are in late November. I remember spending the entire Thanksgiving weekend ignoring my boyfriend, my family and that second helping of pumpkin pie in order to perfect ten different cover letters and versions of my résumé. Most career services offices provide a list of companies that are coming to campus to interview and application deadlines. Strategies for getting interview invitations range from the blanket approach--the more résumés you drop the higher the probability of being invited to interview--to the more discerning approach of applying for a handful of internships you truly want and putting more work into each application. I was somewhere in between, targeting a core group of companies and slaving over those applications, then tossing in a few “why not” choices at the last minute for good measure.

During the application process you start to see all the time spent in corporate presentations and informational interviews pay off. By flipping through the stack of business cards you have accumulated, you can casually drop names into your cover letters, such as “Through my conversations with Kitty Bingham, Brand Manager for Yummy Bonbons, I was able to get a sense of the collaborative atmosphere of Company X and feel confidant that I would be a good fit.” Just be sure to let people know that you are applying for the internship and dropping their name so that when HR phones them to ask about you they don’t say “Who?”.

After dropping your résumés the waiting begins. In my case we received interview invitations the last week of classes and most interview dates were mid-January, perfectly timed to ruin any relaxation we had planned for the holiday break. Invitations to interview implied that we were on the closed-list schedule, meaning that the company had selected us. For some companies there was also an open list schedule, with slots that could be bidded for through the online system of the career office.

Interviews are generally a two-round process. For the first round the company generally comes to campus to spend a day interviewing candidates in 30 or 45 minute slots. Interviews vary widely from industry to industry, and your career office will be able to provide more guidance as so what types of questions to expect. Still, you should be prepared for anything, whether it’s 30 minutes of relating your strengths and weakness or a nonstop barrage of technical questions. Above and beyond, the most important thing to any company or industry is the cohesiveness of your story. It’s up to you to make them believe that consulting is the natural progression for you coming from your science background, or that marketing is a perfect fit after spending four years as an engineer.

Whatever you say in an interview, say it with confidence. In one interview I had for a banking position, two grumpy bankers could not to get past the fact that I had been a French major in undergrad. None of my accomplishments in the last six months at business school, or the fact that my current résumé had landed me a spot on their interview list seemed to matter. Finally, after the third remark about how unqualified I was, I responded, “Look, I get it that I don’t seem like a good fit for banking. But because of that I’ve had to work twice as hard as everyone else to get into business school and to succeed while I’m here, and I will also succeed at your bank. I’m smart, capable and I’m a fast learner. I can do this job better than anyone else you’ll meet today.” As I said it I felt anything but confidant but it got the interview back on track. At the end, one of the bankers informed me, “You are by far the least qualified person for this job that I have met today, but somehow you seem convinced that you can do it. We’re sending you to the final round where you’ll get the chance to convince everyone else. Congratulations.” I ultimately decided I didn’t want to work for such crabby people but at least being confident gave me the option!

The informational interview has the most misleading name I’ve ever encountered. It would have you believe that the purpose is, well, “informational”—that you’ll be asking someone about their job, in order to decide if it’s something you might want to do someday. Wrong on all accounts. The informational interview is really your first interview, so be prepared.

When you ask someone for an informational it’s best not to come right out and say “I’d like an information an interview”. I prefer to frame it as something more casual, along the lines of a cup of coffee, a brief chat, or simply “I’m wondering if you have time sometime soon to answer a few more questions for me about your job/the company, etc.” If it sounds like a minimal time commitment, people are more inclined to respond positively. When setting up an informational here are some things to keep in mind:

- You may be asked to send them your résumé so they have some idea of who they are dealing with. Send a clean copy, one you would be comfortable submitting for an actual job opening. Take the time to tailor it to the industry of the person with whom you’ll be speaking. If you’re interested in consulting and banking, for example, you’ll want to have a version for each industry you’re pursuing.

- Be flexible. Yes you are busy, and it’s often tough to squeeze yet another meeting or appointment into your day, but as a student you probably have more flexibility than they do in your schedule. Often people will only have time for a phone conversation with you, so be open to scheduling it “sometime in the afternoon the end of next week”.

- Be prompt if you have scheduled an exact time, especially if you’re meeting face-to-face with someone. And also be prepared to wait a little while if you are on time, and not to take this personally. They are doing you a favor by squeezing you into their day.

- Be prepared to talk about the company. Do some background research. There is no need to read a fifty page research report on the company but you should know the basic organizational structure, who the head officers are (CEO, CFO and anyone else important), recent market trends and who the main competitors are. Also do a quick scan of recent headlines so you’re up-to-date on anything important that might be happening with them.

- Be prepared to talk about yourself. While I expected to be asking most of the questions, I found that most of the informationals I had felt more like actual interviews. People would ask me to walk them through my résumé and talk about why I thought I wanted their job. They will want to hear your story so have a good one and know it cold.

- Show up dressed for an official interview. Although they may have invited you just to swing by their office to meet for a quick cup of coffee, this is a professional networking opportunity to dress accordingly . They may end up introducing you to other people in the company and you don’t want to meet the head of the department in your jeans and your favorite band’s t-shirt.

If all goes well hopefully you will have learned something more about the company and set yourself apart by showing your interviewer how interested you are in the opportunity. They will become a point of contact at the company for you and if you’ve established a good rapport with them you can periodically touch base during the recruitment cycle to let them know that you’ve decided to apply, that you have an official interview, etc. The payoff comes when if you actually apply for a job at their company; then you can include in your cover letter that you’ve learned more about the company through conversations with ____. Just make sure drop them a line when you submit your résumé to let them you you’ve mentioned them. This also reminds them to put in a good word for you if you’ve made a good impression!

There are cases when an informational interview will be purely informational and on a truly informal, off-the-record level. In this case you may be comfortable being more candid about what you are looking for in a job in order to get their feedback on whether you would be a good fit for the kind of work they do. But this doesn’t happen often so you should be prepared for something more official and rigorous--it’s always safer to treat it like an official interview and prepare accordingly.