Receiving honest feedback

One thing I have noticed about American society today is that very rarely do people offer valuable and honest feedback. There are several reasons for this. One is we live in a society where we value not offending someone. Another is that we place a high value on making people feel good or better about themselves. A third reason is fear of retribution. will give you a good example of how I have seen this in my MBA experience. When a recruiter comes to Kenan-Flagler to interview students, the recruiter is given the opportunity to provide the Career Management Center with feedback on how specific interviewees have done during the interview. Even though the recruiters know that students will not be penalized by the Career Management Center for any negative (or positive) feedback and such feedback can only be used to help the students become better interviewees, I have been told that very rarely do recruiters given such feedback.

 

Yesterday morning I was still getting over the euphoria of the interview the day before in Long Island City when I received an email from one of my interviewers. This was a reply to the “thank you” email I sent out an hour ago. The email reads (paraphrasing) as follows:

 

“Hello (my first name), it was very nice meeting you too. I hope this helps you with your interview but in an interview, it helps to hear the actual question that is asked and phrase your answer in response to that question. Best of luck on your job search.”

 

While I have never had any delusions of grandeur about my interviewing skills, I never expected an interviewer to be so blunt with me. Even though a friend who read the email commented that it was rude, I have no doubt her intentions were good because I got the impression during the interview that she liked me personally. She was probably disappointed at how poorly I phrased my answers.

 

Obviously this has significantly deflated the excitement that I felt coming out of the interview. It’s the political equivalent (there I go again with my political analogies) of the exit polls showing that the constituents in polling districts that are friendly to you are not turning out with as much enthusiasm as you had expected and your pollster changed the race from “tossup” to “leaning (political party you don’t like).” I am really curious as to whether she wrote that email before or after meeting with my other interviewers. If before, it could be that she just didn’t like my answers and maybe I did better with the other two. In addition, this interviewer was half an hour late to a one hour interview. If she wrote the email after having met with them, it’s likely that one other interviewer commented on the same thing and I am dead in the water.

 

After I have had the chance to further digest the information, it dawned on me that her email was shocking because it was the type feedback recruiters don’t give anymore. It’s the type of honesty that is rooted in good intentions and yet our society and its legal system today no longer allow. Where some recruiters resort to not sending out rejection letters in an attempt to avoid lawsuits (the logic being that if a candidate has not yet been rejected, he cannot sue for discrimination), this interviewer took risk to help me become a better interviewee and I appreciate the gesture.

 

I just wish it didn’t come at such expense.

Long Island City wrap up

My deepest apologies for keeping all of you in suspense about yesterday’s second round interview at the credit card division of a major financial firm. I usually try to update this blog as soon as possible while the information is still fresh in my head but oftentimes this proves difficult and I have to resort to blogging about it the next day which is not nearly as exciting as blogging about it while I am still “in the moment.”

 

I landed at LaGuardia Airport two hours early, met up with a classmate who was on the same flight and we took a cab together to the tallest building Queens. We got there at noon and met up with two other classmates and one student from Kellogg who were all interviewing on the same day. The afternoon’s program began with lunch being served in a conference room. This lunch was really a warm up for the three hours of behavioral interviews ahead. As the five of us chowed down on sandwiches and cookies, one of the three people from the management associate program began firing away by asking “so what do you folks do for fun?” As the five of us began to go around the table to give our answers, the question quickly became "how do you get people aboard a project you are working on?" When it got to my turn I tried my best to be suave and answer the question while holding a ham sandwich on my right hand. This reminded me of the dinner at the Sienna Hotel the night before the first round interview where the representatives from the company were totally trying to use the informal event as yet another opportunity to try to feel us out.

 

The three interviews went pretty well. Each interviewer was given sheets of paper, each sheet representing a different skill set the interviewer was to ask us about with two to three possible questions to use. The one surprise was that noneof the interviewers were either current or former participants of the management associate program for which we were applying for. One interviewer was a manager responsible for the web offerings and another worked in risk management responsible for mitigating the bank’s risk on the portfolio of outstanding balances held by its cards’ customers.

 

Me and my three classmates left shortly after 4 and took a quick subway ride across the East River into Manhattan where we proceeded to dine on fillet mignon before hopping into a cab back to LaGuardia. 

Hot date

I got a big day tomorrow. The credit card division of a major financial firm is flying me to New York for an interview in its Long Island City office. I am suppose to get there at noon for lunch followed by three one hour behavioral interviews. When I made my arrangements last week, the company was willing to fly me up the day before and pay for one night’s stay at a fine Manhattan hotel. But I turned it down because I had classes today until 8pm. Besides, there is no point in getting there the night before if I don’t have to get there until noon.

 

Hmm … come to think of it, the next time a potential suitor is offering to lavish hospitality upon me, I should not be so hesitant and just accept its offer. After all, I got a reputation to keep around here and I wouldn’t want the other fellas to think of me as a cheap date.

Giving thanks

This past Sunday, my church’s young adults group hosted a Thanksgiving dinner and each place setting had four kernels of corn, three white and one black. Our instructions were to use the kernels to discuss three things we are grateful for in our lives and one thing we are not so grateful for but will agree to trust God with.

 

The exercise reminded me of the post I wrote last Thanksgiving about the things in my life that I am grateful for. If I were to put together another list for this year, it would include items like the much easier pace of life during my second year in the program, the happy ending to the internship search last year, the Christian professors that I have become friends with, and the active job market that my mergers and acquisitions professor said is the best she’s seen in five years. But the one thing that I find most satisfying of all is that for the first time in my life, I now have male Christian friends that I can discuss certain issues with. and what a difference this has made in my life. I was talking to a friend two weeks ago - a friend who would kill me if he ever finds out I am blogging about our conversation but as he said to me many times “I stopped reading your blog ages ago because it sucks, you should delete the darn thing” - and he said “I have noticed you don’t talk about your women situation now as much as you did during your first year, why is that?” I didn’t know what to tell him, except that somehow the Lord has give me a sense of peace in the matter.

 

By the end of the dinner Sunday night, I had used the three white kernels and had to come up with something to use the black kernel. We went around the table sharing things about our lives that we wish weren’t the case and when it was my turn I said “I wish I didn’t have to leave Chapel Hill after I graduate in May” as I tossed the black kernel of corn into the dish.

Tags: Chapel Hill Bible Church

Return to Scott Stadium

What a fabulous weekend. I went up to UVA and attended the Miami game on Saturday. It’s been about three years since I have been to a home game and throughout the game, I saw several reminders of how the atmosphere at Scott Stadium has changed and yet still remained the same. The pep band is gone now, replaced by the new marching band. The team does not play as well as it did before, and this was reflected in the lower turnout than the one I was used to.

One thing I like about going to these games is that the athletic department always tries to keep things entertaining. Ever since 2000, the games would begin with an video intro showing an animated Cav Man mascot destroying the opposing team’s mascot before cutting away to a live shot of an actual rider (dressed in the Cav Man full body costume) riding out of the tunnel and into the field. This time around the athletic department outdone itself by having the Cav Man entered the field in a way that’s quite unexpected and dramatic (hint, watch the video).

The game ended as incredibly as it began with UVA beating Miami 17-7.

Milton Friedman, dead at 94

This came out just a few minutes ago. I was doing some reading just now for marketing class when I looked up at the refreshed WSJ.com front page and saw the news. I am going to write something quick before my carpool partner shows up.

Updated 4:14pm: To those familiar with his work, Milton Friedman espoused the classic free market idea, which is that in a free market, people (and companies) are free to choose. He wrote a book with the same name. What I like about the concept of freedom of choice is that it applies to every area of life, not just economics. For example, we are all free to choose when it comes to choices over our careers, friends, God, politics, right down to the companies and products we support with our consumer spending.

I find a striking parallel between this concept of free choice to the Christian concept of free will. Before I became a Christian, I once asked someone about God’s admonition to Adam and Eve at the Garden of Eden. I could not understand why He told them to not eat the apple when He had to know full well that they were going to do it anyway. The answer that came back was that He did it because He wanted them to exercise their free will; that instead of assuming they were going to eat the apple, He gave them not only the choice but also the information on that choice. Just yesterday I read Steve Forbes’ column in Forbes Magazine in which he recommended a book on how Christianity is responsible in no small part for the capitalistic societies we have in most of the Western world.

The last article Friedman wrote for the WSJ in October sums up his views on people and government very nicely:

“It had to happen. Hong Kong's policy of "positive noninterventionism" was too good to last. It went against all the instincts of government officials, paid to spend other people's money and meddle in other people's affairs. That's why it was sadly unsurprising to see Hong Kong's current leader, Donald Tsang, last month declare the death of the policy on which the territory's prosperity was built.”

Thanks Milton, for showing millions around the world that we are all free to choose.

A new countdown begins

With James Bond returning to the big screen on Friday and Jack Bauer (I suggest it is not a coincidence that both characters have the same initials) returning to once again save our country in January, the next two months will be almost too much to bear.

I just viewed the trailer to 24’s sixth season. The identity of the new President is revealed and you get to see which of your favorite (and one not so favorite) government employees from the Counter Terrorist Unit will return.

Interviews galore

Just a few moments ago, I walked into the Career Management Library and a classmate said he almost didn’t recognize me without my suit on. I have had an interview in school every week for the past four weeks. Yesterday I had one with a computer hardware manufacturer that is in the process of moving its company to the Research Triangle Park area. I struggle a lot through these behavioral interviews and oftentimes I find myself walking out of one with the feeling as though I have just been beaten up. Yesterday was no different.

 

I mentioned last week that I am going to tell you about the two types of people you will meet in an interview. When a company sends representatives to Kenan-Flagler for an interview, the people they send will be either from human resources or from the actual department the company is hiring for. It is to your utmost advantage to find out before hand who your interviewer will be because your strategy will vary depending. Someone from human resources will ask you only behavioral questions while someone from the department may ask you questions pertaining to the actual position or the industry. Usually I prefer someone form the department because I can attempt to impress the interviewer by asking questions to show that I have done research on the industry and have thought about some of the issues the company has to deal with.

 

Last week when I interviewed with the credit cards division of a major financial firm, the firm divided the interviewees into two interview schedules, one was with someone from a vice president of the department and the other with someone from human resources. The night before, both representatives hosted the interviewees for a reception and dinner at the Sienna Hotel. The meal was fabulous but I found the conversation to be a bit intimidating. When I got to the hotel fifteen minutes into the reception, all the interviewees andthe two representatives were standing in the giant circle in the hotel lobby. It looked and felt like a mass interview where the representatives would ask questions such as “what do you do for fun” and “who did Carolina play last week in football?” During the dinner, there were two tables and I sat at the table with the vice president  and during the entire meal I felt as though I was under the gun, being interviewed. The most bizarre moment hadto have been five minutes into the dinner when he asked me to talk about my summer internship and I noticed that as I prepared to launch into my schpeel about online marketing and minimizing our clients’ cost per click, I folded my hands on the table in front as though I was going through an actual interview. I had this great question that I wanted to ask about which electronic network was used to process the credit card transactions incurred by that company’s private label credit cards but I decided to hold off and save the question for the actual interview.

 

The next day was the interview and it went well. I was interviewed by the woman from human resources. When I asked my question about the electronic network that processes the transactions, she gave exactly the answer I had expected, which was to email the vice president and ask him. That’s another thing, by the way, asking someone from human resources a question about the company’s business will sometimes result in the interviewer not giving you an answer.

 

The end of the interview season is nowhere in sight. I have been invited to a second round interview with the credit cards division of the major financial firm. I will have three one-hour interviews back to back, all behavioral.

Class imitating life or vice versa

I was McColl the entire day on Friday’s for negotiations class. It meets for an entire day on Friday and for three Fridays. The class consists mainly of lecture and negotiations exercises. On Friday’s afternoon exercise, we were divided into teams of three, each team consisted of a buyer, a seller, and an observer. The buyer was to approach the seller with an offer to purchase his ranch. Unknown to the seller, the buyer was purchasing on behalf of an oil company which had determined that the land was sitting on an oil field and had already purchased three other ranches adjacent to the location. The seller had similar information about his land that was unknown to the buyer and affected his reservation price. It was the job of the buyer and the seller to spend forty five minutes questioning one another and negotiate a mutually agreed upon price in front of the observer, who had access to information on both sides and whose job it was to take notes and critique the players. The only rule governing the players was that we were not allowed to lie, but were encouraged to be creative in answering any question that would weaken our positions.

 

My role on Friday was that of a buyer and spent the first ten minutes answering the seller’s questions as to why I was approaching him out of the blue to buy his ranch. But I managed to turn the tables when I started negotiating and began by low balling my seller with a very low offer of $950 an acre. We eventually agreed upon a price of $2999, which later turned out to be the lowest price among all the negotiators in my class.

 

So imagine my shock I got home that evening and read an article in the Wall Street Journal about a scenario almost identical to the one we acted out in class that afternoon. A millionaire sent his representatives to a small town in Texas to discreetly purchase large tracts of land. Only in this scenario it is not an oil company interested in building an oil field but the founder of the world’s largest online retailer wanting to build a landing strip for space flights.

Halloween on Franklin Street

I will be in negotiations class the entire day today and will not have the opportunity to blog. So I am going to keep you kids entertained (I have a confession to make .. sometimes I feel like a babysitter writing this blog … I can’t leave my audience alone for too long and have to give them attention periodically so they don’t go do something drastic like stick a fork into a socket … or in you case .. stop reading) with some pictures from last Tuesday night’s festivities on Franklin Street.

Theology and dogma while you eat

One of the things I really like about UNC is how the main campus comes to life on a nice day like today. I really think Kenan-Flagler got screwed when it decided to move out of Carroll Hall and the powers that be decided to build the new facilities on south campus by the Dean Dome instead of on the more centrally located location near the Bell Tower.

Since I have no classes today, I woke up, packed up a day’s worth of reading, and took the bus to main campus where I took a position (now why did I just say that, “took a position” as though I am Bud Fox buying up blocks of stocks for Gordon Gekko?) at the House Undergraduate Library.

On my way to Lenoir for lunch earlier I walked by the Pit where I saw a preacher debating with a group of students who were sitting and standing in front of him. After I got my lunch, I returned to the Pit and sat on the steps to listen to this guy while I digested my shrimp lo mein and two cans of Coke. The main theme of the day is science and there was a lot of back and forth between him and the students on topics such as creationism versus evolution, how God created the universe in seven days, the big bang, etc. When I was at UVA, we would get a couple of these preachers every semester who would show up and start talking at the amphitheater while waiting for an audience to gather. I used to really enjoy hearing those guys before I became a Christian. While I recognize that some of them purposely come across as sensational, “over the top,” and even hateful, I think their work for the most part is virtuous for it gets students thinking about topics they otherwise would not think about. I am not sure where these preachers come from, whether they are from a local church, out of town, or how they decide what campus to go to, but I am certainly glad this guy came to UNC today .

Putting my best foot forward

Oops. I almost went an entire day without blogging. Since nothing interesting has happened in the last 24 hours (no, I don’t want to talk about the election results), I think I will give everyone an update on my interviews.

I had an interview with a major oil company on Thursday. The interview didn’t go very well. I didn’t particularly feel articulate and I didn’t get the impression that the interviewer was interested in interviewing me. It was almost as though she had decided before the interview whether I was going to get a second round or not and seeing me in person was just a formality. Where I really messed up was when she asked about my least favorite class. In finance parlance, this is one of those questions that has very limited upside and unlimited downside. In other words, there are very few good answers and way too many bad answers that can take you out of the running. In response, I talked about a particular class where the professor had stringent rules and made students feel as though we were treated like undergrads rather than students in a professional school. After the interview, it took me a total of ten minutes to realize I had given a very bad answer. I got an email Monday night telling me to not expect a second interview.

There were two companies I interviewed with yesterday. The one in the morning was with a tire company. I always get to the waiting room about ten minutes early, double check my name, and if possible find out the name of the interviewer. I thought I was being quite clever when the interviewer came in, called out my name, and during the handshake I addressed her by her first name before she had the chance to give it. But the interview that followed didn’t go as well. I just didn’t feel from her response that I was getting through to her or that she was impressed with me.

After this interview, I had some time to gather my thoughts for my afternoon interview with the credit card division of major bank. I had purposely arranged the more important interview for the afternoon so that I could use the morning interview as preparation and it worked. Even though both interview asked me behavioral questions, I did substantially better in the afternoon interview than in the morning interview.

Later this week I will blog about the two type of people who come to campus to conduct interviews and how you can get a leg up in the process by finding out ahead of time what type your interviewer falls into.

Getting out the vote (updated)

I am one of these civics fanatics who thinks there is something very exciting and uniquely American about election day. One time when I was in high school I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on election day and he ended his radio program by saying, “by tomorrow we will know whether the country will become more conservative or more commie lib.” You may disagree with his characterization of the two sides but he sums up the point that in America, the people get to decide.

 

On most election days, I normally go to the polls the first thing in the morning. I didn’t do that today because it was raining and I had to prepare for my morning interview. But I fully plan on stopping by my polling place to vote later this afternoon when hopefully the rain would have stopped. There are no closely contested elections in North Carolina this year. My choices for Congress consist of the incumbent and the older brother of the pastor of my church. Mike Nifong, the Durham County district attorney who prosecuted the Duke lacrosse players, is in my district and on the ballot. Not sure if I will vote for him, his opponent (who wants you to vote for him even though he will not serve if elected), write in the name of the candidate endorsed by the Republicans, or write in something clever like Colin Finnerty. I am peeved that my home state is having the most exciting Senatorial election since Ollie North ran in 1994 and I am not there to participate (damn … if I had only gotten in to Dard … nevermind). This race has really been a big surprise. If you had gone to Las Vegas (or an online political futures web site) a year ago and made a bet that Senator George Allen would lose today, you’d make a five to tenfold return on your money.

 

Most of my classmates at Kenan-Flagler are either unaware or apathetic about today’s election. This morning I reminded a couple of my classmates that they had until 7pm to vote. One classmate jokingly said that if I was only going to encourage those who agree with me to vote perhaps I should send an email to the MBA Finance Club. Not a bad idea. And while I am at it, I should email Net Impact suggesting that its members stay home today and vote tomorrow when the weather will be much nicer.

 

Update: Oops ... I almost forgot to include my predictions. Comes January 1, I believe the makeup of the Congress will be 51-52 Republicans in the Senate and the Democrats will control the House by no more than 4-5 seats. And Buckyhoo will still not have accepted a full time employment offer.

The business of online obituaries

Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about online obituaries. Specifically, it talks about the enormous effort by Legacy.com to screen out certain not nice things people may write on its web sites about the dead.

 

“Legacy is paid by more than 300 newspapers, including The New York Times, to publish their death notices and obituaries, and mourners can pay a fee to keep the guest books up longer. By attaching a publicly accessible guest book to most of the obituaries, the site has provided a new way to grieve, and in the process has all but cornered the market.

 

The company dedicates at least 30 percent of its budget, and 45 of its 75 employees, to catching the personal attacks and other inappropriate comments, nearly 200,000 in all, submitted each year.”

 

Personally I don’t know what all this uproar is. The purpose of these web sites is to give the living an outlet for their grief. And someone writing something like “you were a jerk in business school and your blog sucks” is his way of expressing his grief and he should be allowed to do that. After reading the article, I went onto the web page and typed in the names of a couple of a couple of deans, professors, and administrators I knew at UVA whom I suspect are close to their expiration dates. I was unable to find them listed but it gave me an excellent idea. Legacy.com should offer a subscription service where for a fee, I can create an account and enter the names of a number of people I want to keep a “watch” on and be alerted via email when an entry for them shows up. Better yet, I should be able to keep a “watch” on people with certain last names.

 

This reminds me of something. When I was at UVA I knew someone – I wasn’t friends with him but friends with his apartment mates – who once read in the paper about a student dying in a fire and sent her an email saying “I am glad you are where you are right now.” He didn’t know her but did it for the thrill of it. On another occasion, I was in the apartment and when the topic came up about another student who committed suicide, he sarcastically asked “what’s his email address?” I don’t know if he was joking or if he had gotten into the habit of emailing dead students.

Tracking our Presidents’ speeches

A graduate student in the library science program told me about this last night at the Intervarsity meeting. This web site tracks the speeches given by American presidents over the last 200 years and, very much like certain web sites, has a “tag cloud” feature that shows you how often certain key words show up.

 

Enjoy!

Life is good

Earlier today I overheard a classmate talking to a recruiter saying “I am a second year in business school, life doesn’t get much better than this.” To which the recruiter responded, “it’ll be all downhill after you graduate.”

 

The exchange illustrates something I am keenly aware of, that life as a second year is a significant and substantial improvement over life as a first year and that this big party all comes to an end once we rejoin the workforce. Much of this has to do with the classes and schedule most second years have. To illustrate, I am only taking four classes this Mod, services marketing, brand strategy, leading organizational change, and negotiations. Negotiations meets only three times for an entire day on Friday. I have no classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My current “weekend” began when my services marketing class ended at 5pm yesterday and will not end until my leading organizational change class begins Monday at 2pm. This four and a half day “weekend” is longer than the work week of some people I know, especially those who work for the national government. I was having dinner with a friend of mine after class on Monday and when I mentioned this incredible schedule that I have, he said “you will never it this good again.”

Mardi Gras on Franklin Street

Tonight me and a friend from my life prior to the Kenan-Flagler program went out to Franklin Street for the biggest Halloween party in North Carolina. An entire stretch of Franklin was shut down to vehicular traffic and filled with revelers dressed in the most creative costumes I have ever seen. I saw guys dressed up as Bill Clinton, girls dressed up as bumblebees, Dick Cheney, a giant penis, George W. Bush (if I have more time I would insert a very funny joke here linking the last three items), women in short skirts, the camera crew from Girls Gone Wild, an iPod, Hare Krishna followers parading down Franklin Street (oh wait … I think they were actual Hare Krishna followers), women in extremely short skirts, Adam and Eve.

I went as Uncle Sam and my friend went as (one of many) Johnny Cash. After tonight’s Halloween party I can finally say I have seen everything.

Update: Here is the link to the newspaper article in the Daily Tar Heel about the party.