Marquis' Weblog

Interviewing on the east coast is tough

dang, your boy is SO tired right now. the past few days have been hectc as I don't know what, so i knew I had to write them up for the people to see.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I had my second round interview with Booz Allen yesterday morning. the drama involved with it started before I even left california...On Thursday, I went out to SFO to catch my 1:45pm flight to JFK and found out that it was delayed by 4.5 hours, which meant that I wouldn't be arriving on that one until 2:30am. I tried to get Booz's travel agency to switch me to a flight that would have left SFO earlier, but, because I had agreed to a cheaper non-refundable ticket for the first flight (in order to save Booz $$$), I couldn't get switched to a different flight and I was stuck. The delayed flight left even later than it was supposed to so I didn't get to JFK until almost 3am. By the time I got to the hotel, it was 3:30am and I promptly requested an 8am wake-up call so I'd have time to get up and prep for my interview, which was to start at 9:45am.

So, at 8:45am...yeah, that's right, 8:45am...I randomly wake up and realize that my wake-up call never came. I frantically scrambled to get ready for my interview and was ableto get over to the Booz Allen office on time, but I was so tired that I was barely coherent (thanks goodness for Starbucks). My session consisted of only two interviews that were each supposed to have a case given. I was pleasantly surprised when my first interviewer told me that he wouldn't be giving me a case because he felt that they were too widespread and that he'd rather get a sense of who I was during our interviewer. The second interviewer gave me two mini-cases that each took about 10-15 minutes and asked me a bunch of questions about my work background and my time at Princeton. When i left the interview session, I felt like I'd done OK, but I've learned that I'm often a bad judge of how well I do in these things.

The flight back was tough because I had a hard time getting comfortable for most of the 6 hours, so i was damn near a vombie when i got back. Then, when i got back here, we had a huge party for one of my roomies, so I had to act all social and what not when i would have rather been in my bed knocked out. I was finally able to crash at about 2:30am, but then I was awakened bright and early at 8am with a phone call...from my first Booz Allen interviewer. he was calling to tell me that they wanted to give me an offer and that news made me wake up all kinds of quick. He told me that more details would be coming in an offer letter, but the info he did give me had me grinning pretty big. I guess my struggles with the on-campus recruiting process are finally over. After all of those consulting companies faded me last year, it's good to have been able to seal the deal this year...I think I can say that my reign as "King of the 2nd Round Knockout" is just about over.