Humorous Housemates

My housemate wrote this - it put a smile on my face and also gives an insight into the ding dynamic.... Pardon the formatting, HTML not a forte.

JOB HUNTING: A PRACTICAL USER GUIDE

Interviews

Case interview Series of thought experiments in which you pretend calculators were never invented

P Equity interview Mythical event, rarely seen, bit like the Loch Ness Monster

McKinsey You are in the presence of God: bring gold, frankincense and myrrh

interview

Goldman interview As above (but forget the gifts, they don’t need the money)

Feedback In the unlikely event that they remember who you were, they are likely to question either your “fit” or “commitment”…best avoided

Assessment centre A sort of MBA Big Brother event. Never believe that any part of the program is “informal” – someone, somewhere will be observing you with a clip board.

Dings

The basic ding You will experience in many forms: checking your email or hearing your phone ring may inspire panic

The stealth ding You only find out you’ve been dinged when you find your best friend is off for the final round interview in London

Back stab ding You are dinged after the formal job offer: was common during the dotcom meltdown; American Express are only recent practitioners

Google Ding After a process that is a cross between one of those Japanese endurance game shows and a Guantanomo Bay style interrogation…you are dinged unceremoniously

Reverse ding Pay back time…you finally get to ding someone…provided you have more than one job offer

Miscellaneous

Internship They pretend to pay you; you pretend to work

Career Service An INSEAD division intent on making you into a management consultant and gathering statistics to help attract applicants to INSEAD, best avoided

Career counsellors Overflow psychotherapy service used when professional psychiatrists on campus are over-booked.

Application analytics (we are MBAs after all!)

Primary ding rate No. dings for 1^st round/Total number of applications.

A good quick and dirty indicator of your application situation

Secondary rate No. 2^nd round acceptances/No. 1^st round interviews.

Used in addition to primary rate by any professional analyst

Conversion Ratio % 1^st round interviews converted to job offers…

the free cash flow holy grail of application analytics…

Job Multiples As in “Dunnett is trading at 5 times”: 5 job offers, but only one body to carry them out.

End of term

As ever, the end of term brings that inevitable feeling of "I must go somewhere else so that I can have a break". I'm convinced this is a feeling which is also a little bit of a crowd issue - as soon as term finishes, people scatter to the global winds quicker than one can say "It's the end of term". Myself, I had an interview scheduled in the middle of my break which I could only reschedule recently and hence I was left without an escape plan.

As the past week progressed I felt more and more the need to arrange something. Until the last minute yesterday the plan was to drive to Barcelona. And then I awoke this morning to 27C weather in a French village that is utterly picturesque with all the flowers in bloom. I asked myself what's wrong with a holiday here? And so Barcelona got postponed. Maybe by the middle of next week I would have had enough of idyllic French life, but for now the feeling of not having to go anywhere, do anything or any immediately looming deadlines is overwhelming.

I leave you with a poem - the grand finale of "Psychological Issues in Management". It's translated from Spanish, so please no critics.

Traveller,
There is no path,
You make the path as you walk
As you walk, you make the path.
And when you look back
You see the path
That you will never travel again
Traveller,
There is no path.
Only the wake of ships
Upon the Ocean.

CQW: Are you around for the break?

High Stakes and Dashed Hopes

Some events in life generate such a mixed bad of complex emotions, it's hard to know where to start writing a blog entry about them. But never fear - at the Career Casino all tastes are catered for and we shall attempt even this challenging feat.

Having adopted the high risk strategy of only having two jobs that I had applied to that I was genuinely interested in, imagine the situation I was placed in when one of them dinged me on Monday. I could try and write reams about the how's and the why's of the ding, but to be honest, I'm kind of looking at it as a black box. The employer in question has a specific policy of not providing any feedback. Given that I thought all my interviews went something like last time - great but not stellar, I can only assume that the standard required cuts somewhere between here and the stars. Alas it seems I do not meet it, and so attention must turn to alternative options.

But before we do that, perhaps it it worthwhile noting the immediate reaction yours truly had on the train back to Paris. Although gutted, a little space in my heart felt a wave of relief. Relief that after 6 years of work in down and dirty High Tech engineering I will be forced to do something a bit more left field after INSEAD. Being asked to write code in interviews really made me question what the point of the past 10 months has been. The sense of de ja vu I got between walking around said employers' office on Monday and experiencing bus loads of bright young things being hired to fill a posh half filled office full of the shiniest technology money can buy reminded me of my first job ever at Cisco Systems back in 2000. I stayed there for 6 months, before decamping to a startup. And although the de ja vu is most likely my mechanism for coping with the rejection, I'm glad it's there. It makes that bottomless pit I find myself staring at at the moment that more manageable.

Just what is at the bottom of this pit? Well, when you have 2 and you lose 1, you're typically left with just 1. In my case this is a job with a VC fund I'm interviewing for in a couple of weeks time. Somehow that seems highly interesting the more I think about it. Funny how a reduction in options focuses the mind. I am now busily trying to somehow hedge my position. In an industry that employs around 500 people Europe wide this is not an easy game to play. But I try. I'm off to have my first power dinner with an external speaker at the school. Please sir, can I have a job?

CQW: Are you finished with classes yet?

Coursework Fatigue

The MBA marketing brochure goes to great pains to stress how intense the INSEAD MBA program really is, and how even though it's only one year it actually covers 80% of the material covered on a two year program. Having done some Marketing courses I've learned to take it all with a pinch of salt - certainly I think the INSEAD positioning statement of "A year to change your life" leaves some important facts out such as that most (yes, OK. Not all) of the changes achieved involve consulting at one end or the other.

However, back to coursework. I'm fatigued. I've had enough of coursework. And I seem to have lost all ability to get the energy/stress levels necessary to do a remotely good job on any of it. Next week has a feeling not unlike the view from the window of a car broken down on a high speed train line. The tracks have started vibrating and you're debating whether the car might start or whether you're better off opening the door and running for your life. I think there's a minimum of 3 big pieces of work due. A big piece of work is something around 20 pages long. I don't even know what they are yet - and believe me, normally I'm the organised one. Interestingly, all of the people in my groups have similar approaches - someone is bound to blink first and start doing work at some point. Oh well. But for know, interview preparation is a higher priority. A certain employer plans to interview me for 10 hours on next Monday. I can't wait.

On a more refreshing note, I'm reading "Howards End" by EM Forster. It is one of the best books I have read in a long time. The writing zings and tingles with emotion that makes it quite exhausting to read. I am almost afraid to finish it - it is like an elixir. I leave you with a quote that I think is particularly apt for the job search period.

"Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who is prepared and is never taken."

CQW: What will be the first thing you buy once you get your dream job offer?

The end of the tunnel

Continuing the theme of the sunsetting MBA, things have moved another step closer to their natural conclusion. People have started getting job offers. And some are even getting offers for things they genuinely want to do. Imagine that. Not being one of the chosen few to have drunk from the fountain of the desirable job offer, I can only pontificate that the sense of relief must be immense. My flatmates are certainly showing it. Now they can really concentrate on the things you want to do rather than the things you have to do. Only do the studying you want rather than some wanton chase for class credits. Oh the life. A lethal cocktail I should imagine, when mixed with 3 parts perfect summer weather.....

Meanwhile those of us who remain jobless as yet are continuing unabashed with the Career counselling. Today we covered themes. By starting off on a blue sky walk around the things I've done recently and have enjoyed the counsellor distilled some themes. For me these are revolving around impacting people's lives with technology, learning and entrepreneurial control. I've now got to come up with a spectrum which represents each of these themes to various degrees. You may think this is easy, but each spectrum must consist of at least 10 points. Which is where it becomes complex. Do you create more impact by starting a venture or by growing it? These are the sorts of questions which keep circling around my head.

Meanwhile my New Business Ventures group seems to be disintegrating into chaos. Having been abysmally disappointed by the selection of ventures on offer at the start of the class, I decided I might as well pick one which would be fun. So I went for the crazy lemonade option - at least we'll have fun making lemonade. Sadly that's all we seem to have done - there's no business plan in sight. So I've just pulled my group out of the pitching session - we were scheduled to present to some investors in a days time, and frankly with the amount of work we have done we would have been laughed off the campus.

CQW: Do you know who got Bain London?

Light relief

If you're bored, have a listen to this. It is a song designed to inspire Shell (one of the on-campus recruiters) employees into delivering shareholder value. Yes. It really is for real.

My flatmate told me a Chinese proverb I like : "to consider someone a true friend, you must have eaten at least a kilo of salt together".

The conurbation of Fontainebleau and Avon (roughly 50-60,000 people) has precisely 18 taxis. They do not work on weekends, nor after 7PM on weekday evenings.

Overachievement

Sometimes you find something in life that really inspires you. And you feel like it would be a great thing to learn and you that you would really like to excel at it. Like for example, doing the Rogerian report for Psychological Issues in Management.

So far this has most likely been the highlight of the academic experience offered at INSEAD. The Rogerian report is basically practicing the Rogerian technique for listening. You pick an unsuspecting soul, foist a tape recorder on them and spend 45 minutes practicing active listening whilst they talk about something they have feelings about. So far so good.

But then you have to write a report about it all. Having gotten really enthused about the whole thing, clearly I want to do a good report. And so I start. And I realise it's blooming difficult. And after I don't know how many hours (at least 16) on the report, I think I have finally come to the realisation that success at writing reports on Rogerian interviews is not something which will adorn my tombstone once I depart this life.

I must admit I feel a slight sense of frustration at this realisation, but there we are. The report is done, and it is sadly disappointing. I wish I could improve it, but I just don't know how to. Certainly, I think I am far beyond the point where diminishing marginal utility of time spent kicks in.

I guess part of me also feels like I'm letting the professor down with this - he's the kind of granddad professor you want to impress with good grades. Or at least I do. And I know my report is a stinking pile of poo. Never mind. In business you learn to try hard, but once you realise a bird ain't flying to cut your losses and run. So there we are. The report submit button is pressed. Let's hope there's a surprise blog entry in the future on the grade I receive, but honestly, you're better off putting your money on a three legged horse.

Industry and Competitive Analysis

I sometimes wonder just how much in step I am with the whole campus opinion on various courses. Take for example Industry and Competitive Analysis. This is a course which professes to give you an idea of how to evaluate industries and find sources of competitive advantage. It is one of the P4 "blockbuster" courses. That's a course which gets above 4.5/5 on the professor evaluation. Once a course achieves this, people pick it just for the hell of it - the general opinion is that it is better to have a crap course taught by an excellent professor than vice versa.

So, diligently, I thought something that pulls a 4.93/5 would be worthwhile. What a stinker it has been. In a lot of ways it reeks of consulting to me. The readings are superbly academic. And yet they cover what are fundamentally fairly basic concepts. Like for example you need to know where exactly it is that your company adds value - e.g. production, marketing or distribution. And quite often people don't so they go off and invest in the wrong thing. Hardly rocket science. You'd think. Except this simple concept is couched in academic papers written in the 60s when the English was even more flowery than this blog.

And a lot of the class material, seems to me anyway, is of the sort where the 20/20 hindsight has added wonderful perspective to it. Time and time again things get explained along the lines of "This is the correct answer and is what the company should have done. Only a stupid person would do something else". Consultant speak once again.

Another gripe is the handouts. The professor has been doing this course since the beginning of time. And yet, the handouts have a feel that is very much "My first handout" feel to it. I am pretty certain that at some point in the handout generation process Clippy popped up and said "Looks like you're trying to write a handout. Would you like some help?". At which point the professor said "Do you know who I am????" and vanished old Clippy into a puff of smoke. With a shockingly bad handout being the direct result.

Moan over. It's my birthday. I am definitely older, but the question is, am I wiser?

CQW: What electives are you doing for P5?

Becalmed

These past few days I feel becalmed. The eye of the storm that was first round interview passed last week. MBA students were scattered like straws through the forest of dings, rejections and 2nd round invitations. And then the sun struck. Not a "Maybe I'll show my face" strike, but a strongwilled, "I'm here to stay for 5 days and there will not be a single cloud in the sky" kind of strike.

And so you try and carry on as before. You try and get the willpower to do the latest Industry and Competitive Analysis reading (it's drier than a cheese cracker if you ask me, but I seem to be in a minority). You feel obliged to run on the MBA treadmill arranging group meetings and case studies and job applications. But you just can't as it is too nice outside. And so you pop out outside, just for 5 minutes of course. And you breathe in the fresh spring air and remember that there's a world outside the MBA. And for the first time you feel almost ready to leave the protective wrappings of the bubble and re-enter it. Fitter, stronger and ready for the next challenge. But just before we start that, maybe a few more minutes in the sun won't hurt.

It's the end of consulting inteview week

Finally. It's over. The week of consulting interviews. The whole campus has been running around like a headless chicken trying to get jobs with consultancies. And people get dinged and people get depressed. And there's hundreds of uncomfortable conversations. They all go along the lines of

A: Have you heard from company X?
B: Yes. I'm interviewing next week.
A: Ah. I haven't heard.
B: (realises A's just been stealth dinged and gets uncomfortable. That's when they a company doesn't have the decency to tell you they've dinged you and instead stay quiet)
A: Oh well. Never mind. There will be another one.
B: Yeah. I'm sure.

And on and on. I must say I'm quite pleased to not have gone through the whole consulting melee. On my end I'm through to the final Google round. Which I think means I'm taking the foot off the madman application process. I'm pleased to have the confidence of knowing that a "Shell Downstream Process Manager" will not be something seen on a business card with my name on it at any point in the near future. There's just not much point applying for random things in the hope I get something. I seem to have two leads in the hand which are quite exciting. If something really exciting comes along then I'll apply for it, but for now I hope one of my leads goes somewhere. Which probably means I may even have to start thinking about things like hobbies to fill my time again - people are not readily accessible at the moment what with all the interview malarkey running about at the moment. Crikey. It's almost like I'll be a normal person again as opposed to an MBA student on steroids.

A Melange

I keep meaning to try and have meaningful, well structured entries to this blog - most likely to satisfy one of the primary reasons I'm writing it - in order to learn how to write better.

But sometimes, I guess life doesn't come in useful bite size chunks that have a well structured beginning, middle and end. Sometimes the chunks are too small, and sometimes so vague you can't even be sure if they exist. So in order to meet the dear reader's insatiable appetite for content, they shall have to put up with a melange of an entry. This is where structure is abandoned for the sake of information.

The days are longer. You have no idea how much joy this brings to my life. I can now officially pull off a 12 hour day at school and still be home before dark. This allows me plenty of time to go for a walk and look at the ducks by the river - an important aspect to the sanity maintenance process necessary in P4.

I am writing my Rogerian report for Psychological issues in management. The process is mind numbingly difficult. I am supposed to describe the person I interviewed as they see themselves. So far so good. I am then supposed to describe them as I see them. I tried this and then I realised, the two are exactly the same. Which leads me to conclude that I've achieved absolutely nothing in terms of putting myself in their shoes - if I had I can't imagine there would be no difference between how I see them and how they really are. Oh well. Maybe listening skills is not my forte.

I went into an interview today. After 5 minutes, I said "Look, I'll be honest with you, and after the presentation I saw last night I feel there's very little chance I'm a good fit for you company's culture". The guy agreed and said I would most likely be bored there. So we parted in good company and spirits. When was the last time you were so honest?

I am invited back for 2nd round VC interview. Unfortunately they scheduled this right in the middle of the break. The dilemma of going to an interview for a position I really want, and having a holiday (I really, really need it) is a bit of a pain. I've asked to see if they can move the interview - a collective fingers crossed from the audience may not go amiss here.

Google is great, though my performance could have been better. Should know by Friday whether there is any progress there.

I have completed my Work and Life stars in my career counselling. My counsellor proudly informed me that I'm one of the lucky bunch who seem to have compatible demands from their Personal and Work lives. I inquired what happens to people who don't and she said "Well, they either are the sensible sort and sit down and decide which one is more important and focus on that, or if they're unlucky spend the rest of their life chasing an impossible balance". I gulped and thanked myself for having compatible desires.

CQW: What are you doing for the P4/P5 break?

Onwards and Upwards

Some days I think INSEAD is like a video game. There's a kind of tempo to every week. After this long into the program, you become used to it. But every now and again, just like a video game, you progress up a level and all of a sudden the tune starts going that little bit quicker. The end of level boss draws nearer and nearer.

For me, things stepped up a notch on Friday, with the commencement of real interviews. Completely failing to realise the wonderful advice of "do some interviews you don't care about for practice", I somehow seem to have managed with the ones I want the most being the first in my schedule. The first one was with a UK VC fund that invests in high-tech early stage companies. It certainly sounds very exciting, and definitely something I'm interested in. Pity I only had about 18 hours notice to prepare for it. It went OK though nothing more. In reality I think that likely means failure - the fund itself has 15 investment partners (read: tiny) and they're interviewing about 30 people for positions. So I think anything less than "That was absolutely stellar" is probably not good enough. Never mind. Tomorrow is Google day.

I have done a lot of retrospection last week, and come to a certain conclusions. One of the major ones is that I've been giving myself an inordinately hard time over the past year. About not being sure I know what I want to do. About not really meeting the ridiculous expectations I had set myself for this year. About just how badly I cope with uncertainty in reality. It's almost like there's a part of me I've left out in the cold for the past year. So I opened the door last week and brought in the almost gangrening part of my personality in from the cold. It felt nice and warm, and I think I'm getting that tingling sensation when blood flows to bits that have been too cold for too long.

So for now, I shall float on the sea of possibilities that opens up and not stress about where it all ends. I am giving things the best shot I can, and at some point the dice will land with certain numbers on them. I hope tomorrow they land with sixes, but as we all know, anything can happen in the Career Casino, and that's why people come to play here!

CQW: You're looking sharp in your suit. Who is it for?