I should probably follow-up from a previous post and mention that, no, I didn’t actually get rejected from every interview on campus. (Although, when you’re getting rejection notices daily, it certainly feels like it!) The last few invites trickled out this weekend and it actually turned out surprisingly well. Here’s what the breakdown looked like for me:
- Consulting: 4 of 8
- Tech: 1 of 7
- Biotech: 3 of 4
- Finance: 1 of 4
- Industry: 0 of 2
All told, that gives me a hit rate of 9 of 25 (or 36%). In my target industries (ie, the top three groups above where I thought there was a reasonable chance of an invitations), it’s even a little better: 8 of 19 (or 42%). I’m pretty excited about this… from the little I’ve heard from my colleagues, this was a difficult year for interview invitations. Many people walked away with only 1 or 2 when they were expecting far more.
I was a little shocked that I failed so miserably in the technology area! While I don’t have any direct industry experience, I do have some functional expertise and (at least, I thought), a pretty “why I’m interested and would be amazing” cover letter. I think those jobs just must be incredibly oversubscribed at HBS. It sounds like a lot of the “career consultants” (the kids who plan on going back to consulting) applied to these jobs. Spending the summer in San Francisco working for Google is fairly attractive regardless of where you’d ultimately like to end up!
Anyway, it’s going to be a busy two weeks prepping for interviews! Wish me luck!