Outsmarted

One of the more useful soft skills you learn in an MBA program is the ability to keep a straight face and calmly react to whatever unusual circumstance unfolds in front of you.  I needed this skill pretty desperately earlier tonight at a company presentation.

 

Two recruiters came down today from a telecom equipment manufacturer to talk to us about summer and full time opportunities available in its New Jersey office. During the presentation, I was trying to come up with an intelligent, witty, and memorable question to differentiate myself from the roomful of students who were present. I noticed that one of the presenters was wearing a Carolina blue (Carolina blue is a term we use when describing the light shade of blue that is the school’s color) tie. I had planned to ask a question about how that company was facing the latest challenge from the world’s largest software company, which plans to roll out telephones combined with its internet messaging service. I had scripted my question, I was going to begin by saying “Hi (name of recruiter), first of all, I want to thank you for wearing that color on your tie” pause to gauge the reaction, and then proceed with my question. I was going to come across as so smart, or so I thought.

 

When the presentation ended and it was time for questions, I decided to do something I don’t normally do. I decided to hold off my query and reconsider. I hesitated because I didn’t want to come across as too eager in trying to impress the recruiter, even though the implied purposes of these events is to do just that. The recruiter proceeded to field the first question from a first year student sitting in the center of the room.

 

The student opened his mouth and said “Hi (name of recruiter), first of all, I want to thank you for …” I thought “oh this smart aleck is going to point out the Carolina blue tie and steal my thunder.” But boy was I wrong. The student pointed at my direction, proceeded to say “thank you for inviting the actor who appeared on the video to this presentation tonight,” as every eye in my field of vision stared right at me. Some people in the room immediately realized that he was pointing out that I looked like the main character in one of the videos, which was about a bald guy in sunglasses conducting his business using the company’s VOIP telephone.

 

A couple of people got the joke and laughed, some didn’t. This all unfolded so fast that I didn’t know what to do. I jokingly turned around as though I didn’t know who he was pointing at and when faced the front of the room the eyes were still me. As the awkwardness continued to mount, I decided to say something, “ah yea, hopefully this will help me get on the closed list for the interview.” It wasn’t until after I said those words that I realized just how unfunny that was. I looked at the recruiter and his Carolina blue tie and said “by the way (name of recruiter), thanks for wearing that color on your tie today.” He then picked up from there and talked about his tie.

 

I don’t remember what this student’s question was, or whether he even got around to asking it. Later on during the question and answer session I decided to not ask the question for I had received enough attention for one night and wrote the words “kill (name of student)” on my notepad, right between “send resume” and “thank you emails.”