Recruiting Joys

Ah, the familiar feel of empty halls, half-filled classrooms, and scheduling blackouts. National Black has arrived this weekend, and many of my classmates have made the trek to Indianapolis to interview and recruit with the big firms there. Once again, I have opted out of attending since none of the companies I'm interested in are going to be there.

In fact, I have done very little recruiting this semester, which is a heightened contrast to many of my second year classmates. These two minis are devoted to full-time recruiting, and it's not unusual to see a cluster of second years spending their time in class composing cover letters. As one friend pointed out - this is the only time that companies are going to be doing MBA graduate recruiting. After this semester, it's on an as-needed basis. My career choices fall into the as-needed bucket, as many tech firms are notorious for not holding a position open for a year (too much changing in the industry). Google, I think, is an exception.

While I am not actively looking, I am aware that other companies are reading the resume books. I've had a couple reach out to me already, to see if I'm interested. One such company was one that had piqued my interest during the internship search, and while recent news-worthy events have made me cautious about the wisdom of pursuing any opportunities with them, I scheduled a screening phone call with them.

In the first 30 seconds of the call, I was reminded of the multitude of etiquette lessons that I researched over the summer on the best practices for interviewing project. The one the stood out most prominently in this situation was don't use speakerphone if there is only one person on the line. The recruiter did not know this lesson, as she used a speakerphone. I could not hear the recruiter, as the speaker picked up every echo. Even after we hung up and redialed to see if the connection was bad, I still got the awful echo effect. I mentioned it, but she decided to keep going. I couldn't hear her when she spoke quickly, which probably caused me to incorrectly answer the questions she was asking. It was a frustrating phonecall; a call that I was eager to end because it was so bad. Adding insult to injury, I got the feeling that she was fishing for more information on the "secret project" I worked on with Blizzard. I stayed away from any detail, and I could tell that was annoying her. I can't tell if she was just trying to actually ply me for that information, or just didn't realise that I was being vague intentionally since, clearly, I'm held to an NDA.

I know at this stage, we're supposed to be eager and willing to take on any job opportunity that comes our way. And maybe I should've also been more insistent that we talk on a connection that wasn't so bad. But I've had some issues with the etiquette of this company in my internship search, and this experience just added on to that bad perception. Do I want to work for a company that doesn't consider basic etiquette and politeness as part of their recruiting function? I think my interactions with this company has been very telling of what it would be like to work there, and I don't think I would care for the place.