Today in LEAD we discovered ourselves through personality typing. There were several reactions to this. One student stated under his breath that this was akin to horoscopes. I interpreted this as a bad thing. Other people were bowled over by the uncanny accuracy. So it takes all kinds. Anyway, we first went thorough all facets of the test and came up with our thoughts of what type we are, and then we reviewed the results of the actual test we’d taken over the summer.
Then we did a little exercise in comparison and found that a group of “feelers” comes up with a very different approach to a problem than would a group of “thinkers”. Then they separated us by temperament and showed us our composition in comparison to the U.S. population and the make up of our class. It was interesting to see that my type had about 1.5% representation in business schools, and that there were like 4 of us out of 55. I hope this is indicative of lack of interest and not ability or I am in trouble. So I got that going for me.
We finished off the day with Mocktail. No disrespect to Career Services, but this event was out of control. The point was to simulate a company presentation with recruiters and how you should act. So they set us up in small groups with a recruiter and an appetizer spread. I attended the Investment Banking session and it was very entertaining. I thought we’d be getting tips on polish, but as most things go, we had to review fundamentals for the minority who have no idea how to behave.
As we’d done several events this summer, we knew a little bit about how to conduct ourselves professionally. I introduced myself to the “recruiter” and politely turned to hear the introductions of the other people in my group. I was shocked when one woman in our group excused herself from the presentation to answer her cell phone. There were also the people who would come and grill the recruiter, “Are you sales and trading?” If they replied in the negative, the student would just walk away. No “Thank you, or closing. They just walked away.
There were students who simply stood around the food table. Then there were the people in the back of the room who just stood around and talked while the presentation was going on. It was a crazy thing, but it had the benefit of making me a little more confident.