My job hunting story - 2

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2 September 2001 and IT
I chose to study IT in 2001 after I got my first master in Economics, because I strongly believed the combination of Finance and IT would bring me to the Wall Street. Wall Street was my dream for my entire college life. I was shocked when I heard the news on September 11, but did not realize that it would have such a big impact on my personal life.

The one-year program was tough, especially for me from a Finance background. I was scheduled to take fifteen courses a year and work on two teaching assistant jobs per semester. The annual job fair was scheduled in October. Most of the banks on the Wall Street canceled their on-campus interviews. Instead, we found a box on their booths, reading “Sorry we can not come to the on-campus interviews. Please place your resume in the box.” People threw their resumes in the box, without hoping for anything. My dream to work on the Wall Street became dim….
3 To Fight or To Die
3.1 Pre-Selection for On-Campus Interview
For students on the campus, the single most important way to look for jobs is the on-campus interview sponsored by the career services center. That year, it was very difficult to get pre-selected for on-campus interviews, because so many people were competing for limited number of openings. Our program had almost 120 students and it was full of depressing atmosphere in the building. I don’t have to describe the tough situation. If you have experienced job hunting, you know it.

Just one year ago in 2000, candidates would land 1 interview every day during the busy season. I was determined to have at least one interview per week. I pretty much hit my goal. The tricks to get more pre-selections include:

1. Be very aggressive in the job fair. For those who are afraid of English public speaking, this might be a tough job. But in order to land a job, we have to overcome this obstacle. The earlier you get over it, the sooner you will land a job.
a. Research the companies that will come to the job fair, understand their business and the kind of people they are looking for, circle down the companies you are really interested in;
b. Prepare 60 seconds self introduction (concise and right-to-the-point);
c. If you realize that a position is a good fit for you, seize opportunity to sell yourself. Ask “could you please give me more information about the position” or “could you please let me know what kind of person you are looking for?” After their introduction, you could say, “I am exactly the type of person you are looking for. My training in … helped me build strong skills in… My project (working) experiences in … prepared me for…” Remember: be enthusiastic and be brave!
d. Ask for the business cards from the person and try to get more information regarding their rights in hiring. Keep the cards and follow up with emails or mails.
2. Tailor each resume according to the requirement of each job. I found this very effective. I especially paid attention to the skills required (the “key words”), and put as many key words as possible in the resume. Our campus job system allows each person to upload 10 resumes. Most of the people I know only uploaded 2 or 3. I had 2 at that time: one for IT, and one for IT and Finance combination. One day, my Indian friend showed me his 10 resumes. He told me he always had 10 for different positions and for different companies. It worked. He got interviews from all the major IT companies. Amazingly enough, he got almost all the interviews from the limited number of banks who offered on-campus interviews, even though he knew nothing about finance. I admit that his strong communication skills (he spoke with strong accent) contributed to his success, but without his efforts, so many interviews were just missions impossible.
3. Go to the information session and career center for the open slots for the interviews you are really interested in. How ironically that not a lot of people are doing that. I got three interviews with this technique for which I was not originally pre-selected, which led to three on-site interviews, and two internship positions. The two companies are Goldman Sachs in New York (I actually got three position in three different groups; they asked me to choose one among the three.) and Citadel Investment in Chicago.
4. Do not give up each opportunity, even though you think it is not possible. If you try it, you lose nothing; but if you don’t try, you lose the world.
3.2 Prepare for Interviews
After I started working at my current company, I got the opportunity to interview many candidates. Once the candidates pass the basic technical requirements, we would look at their personality and communication skills. The question we always asked was, “will the guy/girl be very nice to work with.” It took me a long time to understand this when I was doing my job hunting.

My first interview was in mid October with an equity firm, I failed. I failed all of my interviews for the fall semester. During those three months, I had interviews with Morgan Stanley, Salomon Smith Barney, Black Rock, The Hull Group, First Credit Suisse Boston, and Convergys (I could not remember those small firms that interviewed me.) I went back home in China during winter vacation hoping the Hull group will give a surprise. They gave me a NO on the day I returned to the United States. The semester was tough to me. I was glad I could go through it.

My disadvantages in job interviews include two aspects. 1) communication kills. One day, I had mock interviews with my Indian friend. He asked me some basic questions. I was so embarrassed. I sort of knew the answers, but really did not know how to answer them nicely. 2) not enough technical IT knowledge. I was never an IT person. I started my program in May and hardly learned enough for the interviews, but I had to get ready for the fall job fair.

Some of the stories during my interviews in the first semester:
 Interview with Morgan Stanly. “Humiliated” is the word I want to use. It was in October 2001. In order to impress the interviewers, I prepared PowerPoint presentation of all the projects I worked on. I drew graphs explaining the background and technology employed in those projects. The Vice President first asked me several basic questions, and then he turned to the projects I worked on. He asked me some details regarding the implementation, I was so nervous that I could not remember what it was. My heart was pounding and racing. He asked, “did you work on the projects by yourself?” I replied, “yes. But I am so nervous….@#&%” Thirty minutes later, I fled from the interview room. I cried; I could not help it. I know the opportunity with Morgan Stanley was gone.

Lessen: know you stuff. Every line on your resume could be a story. If you could not explain something, it means you are not technically strong or you are not honest.

 Interview with Salomon Smith Barney (SSB). It was with the capital markets group – my dream job. The interview went well (I thought, because nothing went wrong). I was waiting for the feedback. My Indian friend also participated the interview. He told me that he got the notice for on-site interview the second day after the on-campus one. He was from a chemical engineering major, which has nothing to do with finance. I have so many years’ experiences in finance. What went wrong? When he was packing for the on-site interview, I got an email from the human resource representative at SSB. I got rejected. As always, the reason for rejection was that they had found better candidates. I was so confused and I could not help calling the vice president who interviewed me. He said, “you are definitely a strong candidate, but you might not have strong computer programming skills as required. We need people to do some computer modeling work.” I was so emotional. I told him, “I have very strong skills in programming. I used to develop financial models overcoming the deficiencies of the Black-Sholes model using C++, MATLAB, Guass…….” He was probably convinced and told me he would discuss with the HR people. I sent him a follow-up email, with a copy of the abstract of my master thesis in financial modeling. Several days later, I got rejected again. I doubted whether he ever discussed with HR people, because if he made a decision to bring me back, it means he made a mistake of not brining me in the first time.

Lesson: I did not truly understand what he was looking for, so I was not able to sell my skills within the 30 minutes interview.

 Interview with Black Rock. First of all, I really liked that position. The interviewer asked me why I was interested in Black Rock. I had my one-minute introduction. I mentioned I had strong skills in IT, good personality, and strong interest in IT type of jobs in the banking environment. Then he said, “well, I am a VP in the marketing and accounting department. I can refer you to the IT department.” Oh, my God. I wanted to cry, but I did not have tears. Apparently, I did not get the second round. I was too eager to sell myself and express my interest, but it was the wrong target.

Lessen: If you are not sure what kind of persons they are looking for, ask them. The question I always ask is “could you please tell me what kind of people are you looking for?” After they answered, I would say, “I am exactly the type of person.” Then I would sell myself from three perspectives: technical, personality, strong enthusiasm toward the company and industry and even the group.”

 Interviews with the Hull Group. As time went on, my interview skills increased a lot, as well as my technical skills. The Hull Group was also my dream job. It is an equity-trading firm based in Chicago and became a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs in late 1990s. I had two round on-campus interviews with two different groups. The equity-trading group selected me for the on-site interview. I was so scared; it was my first on-site interview and it was already December 2001. Due to some miscommunication with the HR people, my interview was postponed. One day The Hull Group gave me a phone call, telling me that they had to give me another round of phone interview before they could bring me in for the on-site interview. We did it. It was not bad, although I was scared to death, as always. A lot of technical and behavior questions.

The on-site interview started at 9:00 am and finished at 6:00 pm with a one-hour lunch. I met almost 10 people in the morning. They threw all kinds of questions to me – technical, personal, case study, and anything they could think of. In the afternoon, they wanted to test my C++ programming skills. Tell you the truth, I never took a course in C++; I studied chapters in “How to programming in C++” before I came to the interview. Thank God, all the questions were multiple choices, so at least I could guess. It took me almost 2 hours in the exam. I guess I did well, because I got to meet the head of the group after all the scheduled interviews. The guy looked very nice. He said I did very well. He asked me several simple questions such as “what is the most unforgettable experience in the United States?”, “how do you like the job?” I answered and I thought I did well. Several days later, I got a call from the Hull Group telling me that they could not decided and had to give me a phone interview again. “My God.” I though, “Just tell me, yes or not – why are you torturing me?” Several days later, I had a phone interview with four people from the group – all scenario questions. I waited for a long time for the final decision. It was a “NO.”

Later in the spring semester, the head came to the campus for summer intern interviews. I waited for almost an hour to get the chance to talk with him. He still remembered me. He told me, “The job market is really tough. It if were last year, we would definitely give you the offer. A lot of people want to go to New York, so they reject the offers from our group, but this year, none of them. You did very well, but you had to be yourself. From your answers, I could no tell what kind of person you are. You gave me the impression of memorizing what you have prepared.” At that time, I was already an expert in interviews. I talked with him and he agreed to give me a chance to interview with the technology group at Goldman in New York. It was already March 2002. I did very well in the interview and got the internship opportunities from three groups within Goldman.

Lessen: Be yourself. Never neglect the important the behavior questions! They could kill you just because simple questions like “what was the most unforgettable experience.”

 Indian friends taught me how to stand out during interviews. I have to tell you that this Indian guy is very smart. Although a lot of Chinese classmates did not like him, he was one of the strongest. He knew a lot of tricks on how to draw people’s attention and how to lead an interview. He said before each interview, he would search the Internet for latest news related to that company. He succeeded the on-campus interview with Citi Group because he asked questions that distinguished him from other candidates. (Isn’t it amazing that he knew nothing about Finance, but always got pre-selection, and always got on-site interviews?) He asked the woman who interviewed him, “I got to know that there was a big merger and acquisition between Company A and Group B in your company, which has a big impact in the … market. Could you please give some comments…?” The woman said, “wow, I even do not know that, so I can not give any comments. I need to go back and check. But this is very good.” He got the on-site interview, but another classmate from Singapore who had three years’ experiences in banking industry did not. I once had an interview at a big consulting firm. I was scheduled to meet 15 people the whole day. After the morning session, I felt that they had a lot of concerns about my writing and communication skills. In the afternoon, my first interview with the partner went well. I mentioned an articled he published on the company’s website and showed strong interests. He smiled and gave me some comments. As always, I asked him what kind of people they were looking for. He smiled and said, “we are looking for people just like yourself who are smart, intelligent, and enthusiastic.” I think it is probably because of him that the company did not kill me in the first round.

Lessen: Small things make you stand out among candidates. Small conversations with key people make a lot of difference. Talk with people who are experts in interviews and learn from them. Don’t complain or just simply admire other people. Try to understand what the hell makes difference between you and them.If it is communication, learn English; if it is technical, do your homework. Remember, we are smart Chinese.

There are so many stories I could share. Most important things: to be proactive, be enthusiastic, be technically strong, and to make sure they like you when you answer behavior questions. At the end of the semester, although I did not land any jobs, I already prepared almost 20 pages of interview questions. I wrote the answers to each question, rewrote them for each interview. I started to understand what my Indian friends meant when he said, “you have to learn how to lead the interviewer.” It is an art. If you can master the art of interviews, you will land any jobs.