Читать книгу The Way of the Wall Street Warrior - Dave Liu - Страница 44

Before you get a formal interview, try for a pre-meet. An informal opportunity allows you to continue gathering intelligence and learn about your audience. Although this may not seem like a lot of time, fifteen minutes can feel like fifteen hours if you're a bore.

The first-round interview is the most straightforward, but riskiest, stage. Typically, it's done with a single interviewer, so if someone peed in your interviewer's Cheerios, you're screwed. On the flipside, if their favorite NFL team won the night before, or if they closed a deal they've been working on for months, chances are they'll be in a great mood! Regardless, don't forget to strut like a peacock and stand out.

Your first interview will likely occur at your school. As an alumnus working at Jefferies, I was part of the Wharton team of about a half-dozen interrogators. We'd travel to Philadelphia and interview approximately 300 hopefuls on campus. After a few days of interviewing, we'd eliminate most of them immediately.

Imagine yourself in the place of your interviewer: in a windowless room listening to a succession of naive undergraduates or MBA bores drone on about how challenged they were in some meaningless school project. You, too, would be watching the clock waiting for cocktail hour. Keep telling yourself to be memorable, because your competition is breathing down your neck. Since you're being interrogated to sniff out any BS on your resume, recite unique behavioral factoids that show why you'd be perfect for the job. Remember, you are the pitch. Tell stories that illustrate how you'll crank out whatever is needed—budgets, business plans, financial models, laundry lists—until your laptop explodes. Feel free to embellish to the ethical speed limit. It'll show you have the potential to be a senior executive one day.