Internship Season

I've been bad and not keeping up with my one-post-a-week lately. The reason? Internship recruiting.

If I was to say what the hardest thing about business school in general would be, it would be this. Internships are scarce and therefore very competitive. There are about three ways that people approach internship recruiting:

1) Shotgun approach, or the "I don't know what I want so I'm getting out there as much as possible." While on the surface this may seem like it won't work too well, but it's the really intelligent, super duper uber background people that do this - because there's a plethora of opportunity out there, I guess. What this means is, there are people in the class who collect offers. Not satisfied with one or two, they go all out there and grab as much as they can. Since they're the most desirable applicants, it's not actually hard for them to do. The flipside is, however, that since they have the offers, the people who really wanted to work at their dream company miss out. I'm in that situation right now.

2) Only apply to Plan A: I saw this with the consulting folks. A bunch of people didn't get first rounds. A number didn't make it to second rounds. And a few of those (not many) didn't get offers. But they put all the efforts into the top-tier consulting and therefore didn't plan for what might happen if they didn't get it. So there are some people out there aimless; others are madly scrambling for something.

3) Thoughtful application, or what you would probably expect a reasonable person to do: only apply for the jobs that they want or wouldn't mind having for the summer. This is me.

The problem here as to why I think it's the most difficult thing about school: seeing your classmates get offers. Either multiple offers, or offers for firms you interviewed with and wanted but didn't get through. Facebook is littered with people saying "congrats". It really does put your self-esteem on the line. Sucks even more when you're in competition with one of those hugely-desirable candidates who is engaging in approach 1. above.


I know it's early in the game, but that realisation still doesn't make bitter pills easier to swallow.