Business school so far has been indescribable. I blog about it but as I try to think of one word to sum up the experience thus far, words fail. I'm reflective because Harper Center was full of round one admits the past few days for Admit Weekend, and the new admits were full of questions about what it's really like at Booth.
Talking with the new admits was great fun - one aspect of Chicago Booth that has absolutely blown me away is how deeply it's ingrained in the culture for one class to help the next. In the first quarter I had my resume reviewed by at least a dozen second years. I honestly couldn't count the number of conversations I've had with second years about classes, companies, recruiting and more. And that's not even including practice interviews and case prep. It's nothing special or extraordinary - that's just how Booth works. So I was excited to have the opportunity to begin doing my part to support the incoming class this weekend.
In that vein, I want to reflect on things I wish I'd known or done differently during the first quarter with respect to consulting recruiting. Current Boothies, please feel free to add your advice via comments!
Classes
You'll hear conflicting advice about what classes to take your first quarter. Some people will tell you how important it is to take strategy classes to prepare for case prep; others will tell you to focus on the fundamentals. You'll also hear a lot about taking three vs. four classes. Three was the right number of classes for me - recruiting takes up a LOT of time, and I don't know how I'd have done it all with four classes. Second quarter gets swallowed up almost completely by the interview process, so I'm looking forward to taking four classes in spring and actually having time to focus on academics.
I took footnote accounting, statistics and micro (with Topel) the first quarter. In retrospect, I wish I'd taken marketing strategy or operations during the first quarter, along with statistics and either accounting or micro. It's true that you don't NEED any particular classes for case prep. You can learn the material on your own but there's a lot to learn, especially if you come from a non-traditional background. Taking marketing strategy or operations in the first quarter would have positioned me more strongly for cases because there'd have been less new material to learn.
Emails
Your inbox will be flooded with emails. There's no getting around this. I strongly recommend putting events you have ANY interest in on your calendar immediately upon reading. Don't wait - you'll only have more emails to wade through later, and you can always decide not to go to something.
It can also be helpful to compare calendars with a buddy at the start of each week to check that you haven't missed anything. I did this and it was incredibly helpful, not to mention a fun way to get to know some of my classmates a bit more!
Track Your Contacts
You'll meet a ton of people during recruiting - consulting companies bring truckloads of consultants to campus to answer our questions. Keeping track of who you've met makes your life a lot easier through the recruiting process. These are the people who can tell you more about what life is actually like at a given firm, to help you determine where you'll fit best. If you're able to build a solid relationship they're also the people who might offer to run through a case with you as you prepare for interviews. Thinking beyond first year, if you get a ding or even if you don't interview with a particular organization for a summer internship, these are still valuable relationships heading into full-time recruiting in the fall of your second year.
The easiest way I've found to keep track of contacts is via an excel spreadsheet. I made a great one with columns for company, location, title, notes about when we met, contact since then, and notes about anything of interest discussed. I started off strong, updating my spreadsheet after each recruiting event, then life got really busy and I stopped. I wish I hadn't, and I encourage incoming first years to be more diligent than I was. You won't regret it!
as always love your posts!
ReplyDeleteTwo things to add:
ReplyDeleteIf you've never taken accounting, take accounting. You need the vocabulary. I took the pre-school week-long class (plus accounting first term) and was very happy I did. Jessica, who went straight into footnote accounting, was clearly not in this situation!
Career services tries very hard to give us one month before recruiting starts; it works pretty well for corporate positions. If you have that time, use it to figure out the rhythm of your classes, before recruiting events flood your week. I could always move a study group meeting, but having a regular time for meetings made me plan ahead even when all the pieces started moving at once.