But now?  Feeling a bit melancholy, actually.  Not sure why… Is that it?  All this anticipation and preparation and it’s over within a week?  Maybe I’m just tired. 

Big decision coming up.  I think I’ve decided on consulting (at least for the summer).  That leaves me with two very strong options.  At first glance, I’m torn.  I think I have a split personality, and both firms represent one side!  Maybe I’ll learn more over the “sell weekends” where both firms flip-the-tables and try to wine-and-dine you.  Will keep you posted…

BCG: I was pretty impressed with BCG.  Their second round consisted of two interviews, both on-campus (thankfully).  The first interview was kind of intimidating… the interviewer had a deck of about 50 slides in front of him from a recent project he’d been on.  As I worked through the case and asked for information, he would take a second, dig through the deck, and pull out a chart answering the question.  It was a bit nerve-racking because I wasn’t sure how many of the slides I was supposed to hit!  1?  5?  10?  All 50?  In the end, I only felt like I revealed a small portion of the slides, so I hope that wasn’t too far off what he was looking for. 

The second interview was easily the most impressive across all the firms.  Instead of the normal interview format (formally sitting opposite a small hotel table and pouring over charts of manufactured data), we sat side-by-side and the interviewer sketched out charts on the back of a piece of napkin.  Casual and friendly, yet still probing and insightful.  If I ever conduct case interviews, I’ll definitely try to replicate this approach. 

Bain: I have mixed feelings about the Bain interview.  They chose to hold their interview off-campus (in the city I was interviewing for).  During dedicated interview week at HBS, this is strictly against the rules.  I was kind of surprised such a big firm would try this, particularly given the way HBS career services dictates policy to firms and penalizes noncompliance with dire consequences.  Nonetheless, my dozen or so e-mails to/from Bain and career services never worked out a reasonable alternative.  As such, I missed two other interviews on-campus.  I don’t mind making that trade-off, but it would’ve been nice if the rules had been followed. 

That said, Bain had one of the more interesting case interviews I experienced.  They had two normal interviews, followed by an hour alone to read through a deck of 60 slides.  After reading through the deck, they asked you to summarize all that data and discuss it as if at a meeting with the client’s CEO.  Very interesting process.  I think the idea is to offer a chance for those whose analytical skills don’t shine through within the truncated dialogue-based case interview format.  I think it’s a good idea… the truth is, most of the actual work of consulting feels much more like this type of analyze offline / discuss online structure than the typical case interview.

Results forthcoming!

All of the interviews were in hotels (either the Doubletree or the Charles).  It’s kind of strange – a recruiting person leads you to a chair outside of a room, then the Partner / Manager comes out and leads you into (his/her?) hotel room!  You sit around the little hotel desk and conduct the interview.  The Doubletree is particularly odd with its large open atrium.  You can look across the center of the hotel and see 50+ HBS students sitting in suits in chairs outside of each hotel door.  Quite the bizarre picture:

Interviews at Doubletree

Consulting firms are after brains, not people.  Consistent across all the firms (even the boutique one I interviewed with) was a very quick jump into the case interview.  I’d say about half of the interviewers didn’t even ask me a typical “behavioral” question!  Part of me agrees with this process – after all, most behavioral responses are so polished and refined that they say very little about the person.  On the other hand, it does make it feel a touch impersonal. 

Just a quick rundown on each of the firms:

1. BCG (Mon): Friendly and open, surprisingly diverse.
2.  Bain (Tues): Very friendly, managing partner was one of the interviewers.
3. McKinsey (Weds): Abrupt and obviously reading a script.

 I was impressed with BCG and Bain, but a bit disappointed with the McKinsey one.  It’s always hard to tell, but I doubt I’ll get a callback.  The first interview went OK (although it was very scripted).  The second one was more fluid, but had this odd bar chart that we talked about for a while (too long).  The interviewer was obviously waiting for me to see the insight, but I don’t think we were talking about the same issues.  It’s discouraging because I’m actually a bit of a chartophile, and I love well-designed, Tuftian data presentation.  This did not fall close to that category. 

Ahhh well, you take some and you leave some.  I’m probably hopelessly biased now, but I don’t think the McKinsey interview would’ve left me with a great impression regardless of outcome.

I’ve spent most of this weekend trying to catch up on case interview prep.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve only taken the time to do about 4 mock case interviews.  The first one was an absolute catastrophe.  The second one was only a mild disaster.  During the last two I started to feel vaguely competent.  I was probably able to run through another few this weekend, building the total up to around 10 (of varying quality).  Nothing spectacular, but I feel modestly prepared.  I would feel a lot better if I were like some of my classmates… some have done 30-40!  That’s incredible. 

Although, I do wonder if some of the preparation that goes on defeats the entire purpose of the interview.  At what point does it become more of a memorized response to typical business scenarios rather than a measure of cognitive speed and clarity?  Hard to say…

I didn’t discuss it much before, but I did receive one of the relatively rare investment banking interviews this year.  Towards the end of application panic a few weeks ago, I had a couple extra hours and decided to fire off my resume to some of the banks.  After all, why not?  Minimal time investment for a potential hedge in case my consulting + industry focus was completely misplaced.  It’s a good news / bad news thing: do I take the interview (and invest time in preparing / networking?) or do I turn it down (and kick myself when I’m jobless this summer?)

At the moment, I’m leaning towards the latter — there’s just too much going on with the whole consulting case interview thing, and I think my chances are pretty low going in.  Someone from the company called me the other day and asked me which executives I had talked with at the recruiting presentation – I had to awkwardly say that I was “out of town” during their presentation.  “…but, honestly, I’m VERY interested in banking!”  Yeah, I don’t think that will go over so well in the interview, either. 

Investment Banking

I actually think I wouldn’t mind banking work (deal making, quant analysis, and fast decisions), but I have ZERO desire to work banking hours.  Seriously, 90hr weeks?  Midnight every night and on the weekends?  That’s just not worth it – especially when you consider the limitations on upside due to current market conditions.  Maybe, MAYBE if it were offering compensation in the $MM+ range, but as it is, it seems like the $ / hr payout just isn’t as high as other industries.  Sure, you may make more money than your friends, but if an excel spreadsheet becomes permanently burned into your corneas, is it worth it?

Anyway, just finished the Training The Street seminar on Investment Banking Interviews and I give it a 3 / 10.  I was super-impressed with their Financial Modeling course, but this one just seemed drawn-out and mostly obvious.