You dropped your resume off at the campus career center, and you now receive notice that you're being invited to a first-round interview on campus. The first-round interview is the first in a series of hurdles that you'll need to jump in order to get a job at an investment bank or consulting firm. But take heart-your odds of getting a job have greatly improved since the resume screening stage. Your chance of progressing from the first round to the next round is close to one in five. This article covers how to prepare for the interview and explains the "soft" skills-communications, clothing, and etiquette-you will need to succeed in an interview.
Some things have changed since the 1980s, when Michael Lewis penned his memorable description of the Lehman Brothers interview. Consulting firms and investment banks now put on a kinder, gentler face toward students during recruiting. The stress interview is all but gone.
Of course, other "sealed windows" will stand between you and the job. Interviewers walk into interviews with a checklist of skills that they are looking for in a candidate, which we explore later in depth. Typically the interview will be organized into sections testing these different skills. The chart on the next page presents the basic structure of the interview.
Logistics
The company will notify you if you are being invited for a first-round interview. On-campus candidates typically receive a notice from their campus career centers, which manage the interviewing logistics on behalf of recruiting firms. Candidates outside the campus recruiting process will receive a phone call.
Generally, you are given several interview times to choose from. Don't take the first time slot mentioned to you! Your interview order can have a major impact on your chances of making it to the next round. Before you decide on a time, ask the recruiter whether there will be many other candidates interviewing at the firm that day or if you will be the only person seen that day. If you're being squeezed into a day of interviewing with other candidates, you will be competing for attention. One pattern holds true for most interviewers: They remember early candidates and later candidates best. Avoid choosing a slot in the middle of the day, especially since you might be close to an interviewer's lunch hour. Also, try not to get the very first interview of the day, since the interviewer will be the most critical at that point.
One more important scheduling point: If you are applying through an on-campus recruiting process, submit your resume to a firm or two that you consider less desirable than your top choice. If you are lucky enough to get interviews with several firms, you will then have a few "practice" interviews before your meeting with your top-choice firm. A practice run-through is valuable because interview responses will definitely be rusty the first time they come out of your mouth.
If you are traveling to the company's office, make sure to ask the recruiter for very specific directions, including parking, traffic, and travel time information. Plan on arriving at the office at least fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Being late for an interview is likely to get you rejected, unless a major disaster prevented you from being on time.
Acting Your Way Through
Succeeding in an interview requires a good acting performance. Recruiters like people who are similar to themselves: They look for a "pattern" of backgrounds that have been successful in the past at their company. And unfortunately, often they are misled by surface impressions, by the fact that some candidates look and act like themselves.
Acting is the operative word. To psych yourself up for an interview, picture a stereotype of a consultant or banker. If you have any doubt as to how a banker or consultant speaks or acts, attend a campus information session and watch the presenters carefully-their way of communicating, moving, and dressing. Now, try to adapt some of these characteristics. Avoid saying "like" and other speech patterns that give away how old you are. Carry yourself with maturity, and keep your emotions under control. Imagine that you are in a situation in which you must lead a meeting with senior executives. How would you act out this situation? Walk into your interview with this scenario in mind. You are managing your image to conform to the image the recruiters want. Of course, you still want your natural personality and warmth to shine through.
Headlining
Interviewers aren't perfect. They are fallible human beings, and often they make mistakes during the interview process. Put yourself in the recruiter's shoes: You spend eight hours in a row interviewing one student after another, asking the same questions all day. It's hard to even remember candidates' names and faces at the end of the day, not to mention what they said. Frankly, many interviewers find their minds wandering when they are especially tired or bored. Sometimes you literally can see their eyes glazing over. Events that are important to you, the candidate, aren't as important to the interviewer. Candidates magnify every event that happens in an interview, both positive and negative. In reality, the interviewer either didn't notice or didn't care.
Much of the interviewer's assessment, whether he admits it or not, is subjective. Interviewers quickly make up their minds whether they like you as a person and whether you have "presence," and this will make the difference between two candidates who are equally qualified.
The bottom line: You need to make a lasting impression on an interviewer so that all other applicants pale in comparison. To do this, don't approach the interview passively, taking whatever questions are thrown your way; approach it actively with a clear agenda for the interview.
What's your agenda? Come up with headlines-a few key points about yourself that will influence the interviewer. Prepare headlines in advance and back each headline up with a well-chosen anecdote that is interesting enough to help the interviewer understand and remember the headline.
Do you want the interviewer to know that you are exceptionally motivated and hardworking? Slip in an anecdote that mentions you worked your way through college. Want him to know that this is absolutely your top-choice firm? Say that you've been talking to friends at the firm for a year about what distinguishes that firm from others. It's up to you to choose which stories to tell about yourself. The key is to slip in points about yourself during appropriate moments, not to force them on the interviewer obviously or awkwardly.
It's hard for most people to know what tics they have, whether they say "umm" frequently or rock back and forth in their chair when they are nervous. The most important preparation you can do is to go through a dress rehearsal with a friend playing the role of interviewer. Make your real interview the second time you explain your thoughts out loud. The smoother you seem, the smarter you'll seem, and the appearance of confidence is critical to landing a job.
