Why did I decide to get my MBA? To get a better job. It is as simple as that. Yes, the learning is great and I like my fellow students, but ultimately we are all here because we want to advance our careers.

Internship interviews don’t start until January or February for most companies, but we are already starting to prepare. This is crazy. I haven’t taken a midterm yet and only received my first grade on a project this morning. Since the very first day of orientation, we have been preparing for interviews. Sarah held a meeting (or meetings in my case) with each one of us the first week to go through our resumes and “refine” them. I put refine in quotes because I know a lot of us had to do a lot of work on our resumes, which was painful, but completely worth it. The Center even brought in a specialist to help us with Case Interviews—ex. How many cabs are there in NYC?

During our Managerial Communications class every week, MBA Career Services has been walking us through the different steps of preparing for interviews and getting a job—cover letter writing, resume prep, company research, and basic interview skills.

And now, five second year students—Dave Oehler, Elena Taylor, Heather Holtsberg, Doug Sticksel, and Laura Hufschmidt—will be our Interview Team for the Fall. They spent three hours last night going through interview techniques and STAR story preparation with the 1st year class. We are meeting for three more hours next week to practice these techniques in small groups and have four other sessions scheduled before Thanksgiving. I have already had lunch with my team leader—Doug—to discuss what I need to work on and met with Dave today to learn more about his experience with General Mills specifically and the internship interview process in general. The best part was that Doug and Dave sought me out, not the other way around.

Why do I bring all of this up? Because when I talk to my friends (yes, I have friends) at other schools, they aren’t doing this. When I tell them that we are working on this as a team, they start to laugh. I guess it is much more competitive at other schools than here. A buddy of mine said that he expects to have three interviews at most and this is a supposed Top 10 MBA school. From what I am being told, I can expect to have at least three in one day. I guess our attitude is that there will be enough offers to go around so we need to help each other make the right decision and get better. When Corrine for example does a great job on an interview or at her internship, she will make me or Rishi or whoever look better and that is what matters.

I might be panicked about the Finance midterm (I am by the way), but for some reason, I feel like I am going to get a great job. I think that all of the time I am putting in right now is going to pay off when the real interviews start in January.

Off to study for Finance and Accounting, awesome.