Airport Tests

Over the past few days, I have spent a lot of time talking to consultants, learning about consulting and figuring out how to prepare for the consulting interviews.

One of the key aspects of the consulting interview is the airport test. Basically, the interviewer needs to feel confident that if stuck in an airport with you for several hours, they won't want to resort to listening to their iPod or reading the Wall Street Journal.

A while back, I blogged about my frustrations with the recruiting process. And indeed, as I started talking to my career consultant this week to go over my resume, the question of networking came up. But I discovered something this week that I think will help with the rest of the recruiting process: I don't have to fit into any sort of mould to network. Previously, I had visions of sliding into a conversation, smoothly delivering my story, asking intelligent but canned questions and listening politely to the answers. While there's nothing wrong with any of those things, it just seems like a stuffy way to spend several evenings in a row.

Instead, I have discovered that networking can be fun, after all. In the past week, I have discussed being stranded in small Saskatchewan airports, Monster Truck rallies, sore feet, how many times you can hit "Snooze" before getting out of bed to catch a plane, and the stealing of the Section B bird. One of the shining moments of the week for me was when I was asked to give a fun fact, talked about how I love road trips and had driven down from Canada and had one consultant say, "you just wanted to slip in that you are from Canada," to which I replied, "well, being from Canada isn't much of a novelty for me." To which the other consultant replied, "THAT is a great line" and repeated it back.

Anyway, what I am discovering is that the nice thing about the people I am meeting in my career progression, especially the Darden alum (though I have had some good conversations with people from other schools), is that they are fun people. There is no need to put on my serious face and figure out how to ask serious questions. These people have all passed the airport test and thus are actually fun to talk to!

Experience, Advice and Social Networking

Yes, two blogs in one day. That's what happens when I've got lots on my mind and chose to eat my lunch from home rather than going out with all my co-workers.

Anyway, I've come to appreciate the value of social networking more than I ever thought possible over the last few weeks. I've also come to learn just how valuable our experience is, simply as experience and not as expertise.

Rather than launching into a long expository, I'll just give some examples.

• The BusinessWeek website has a forum for MBA students. While in recent weeks, this site temporarily lost much of its usefulness, during the height of application season, it was very valuable to me. Not only did I meet people from all over the world, I also gleaned tons of useful information. It was good to hear other people's interview experiences and application tips.
• Being involved on the BWForum has lead to several people writing to ask me advice on various topics. A while back, I got an email asking how the Canadian economy was really doing. (This was before the commodity drop, and I'm still very satisfied with the answer I gave.) Most recently, I got an email from someone who will be applying asking for advice. While I initially thought it funny that someone would ask ME advice, I realized that I do have knowledge having gone through the admissions process myself. As someone who is never shy about giving advice, I realized that I actually had to hold myself back from writing a novel.
• Reading the blogs from the Darden Student Bloggers has been awesome. They've been through everything that I will go through in a few short months, and their insight into the process has been much appreciated. In fact, I can attribute my recent surge in blogging activity to their inspiration! Though I know that I will not be able to escape "Black November," I am starting to think hard about how to keep the main things in my life the main things next year. (Plus, who can forget that I learned about the U2 concert AND found someone to go with through one of those blogs...)
• Twitter... When I first started on Twitter, I thought it was dumb. Then I came across a blog with a link to Darden students, future students and alum and just started following them. Thinking it would be nothing more than the people I was following wondering who the random girl was, instead they started following me and even sending me messages! I've learned a lot just from following their tweets. If I have questions about prepping for student life, I just post it to my profile, and I ALWAYS get a response... usually several.
• Facebook - But of course. Though the value of Facebook has only been slightly marginal in terms of school so far, I am looking forward to being kept informed of the pre-school activities when I arrive in C'ville. I've made several "friends" so far and am getting to know my future classmates.

Anyway... Social networking is, in my opinion, one of the best features of the Internet. I could go on and on about people that I've met through these various forums, but there are just so many stories that they would get boring after a while. (That is, if they haven't already...)

And... having experience makes your information and insight valuable.

Already Behind

School is not slated to start for more than 3 months, but I already feel behind. There's an organization called JumpStart that provides career and networking resources for minority students. Not that I've ever really thought of myself as a minority before, but being a woman in business apparently makes me one!

Anyway, JumpStart has a program called Virtual Coach, which requires the completion of various assignments throughout the months leading up to B-school. My next assignment is due tomorrow, and I had completely forgotten about it. This would be fine except we have the wrap-up for the junior high girls mentoring program I've been volunteering with tonight. I will definitely be able to get it done, but the significant value that I get out of the Virtual Coach comes from the time I put into it. Seeing as how I am looking to make a career switch and get into consulting, which is the most competitive industry other than finance, I need to get as much value as I can! Secondly, I was supposed to get feedback from people in my network on my strengths and weaknesses. Fortunately, I tend to keep a record of these things, so I should be able to pull it off.

For now, I will blame my "behindness" on not being in the zone. These last few months were supposed to be for relaxing, but in a soft economy, no one can afford to just relax!