After countless presentations, happy hours, informational interviews and cover letters, MBA internship interview season is finally here! The process for interviewing for your internship is both exciting and stressful. I know this personally, as an MBA graduate who had to navigate this process, but also because for my book MBA Insider: How to Make the Most of Your MBA Experience I talked to hundreds of MBA students about their time in business school and heard first-hand their challenges, learnings, and successes in the internship interview process. Through my own experience and research, here are five tips to help you navigate your path to a summer internship
Tip 1: Focus on The Process, Not the Outcome
It can be easy to focus on the outcome as the barometer of your interview success. While outcomes are important (we all want an internship!) I think the best approach is to focus on developing a process and executing against that process as opposed to focusing solely on the outcome. By focusing solely on the outcomes, if you don’t get the internship after a great interview, you might think you did “poorly,” but you’d be missing so much of the positive aspects you put forth in that interview. Not every person lands an internship right away, and it may take a bunch of “no’s” before you get a yes. Furthermore, let’s say you nailed an interview, and so did the other 3 candidates, so you don’t get an offer. Focusing solely on the outcome may hinder you from seeing all the things you did well. But if you focus on your process (Ex: Did you prepare? Did you come with good questions? Were you succinct with your responses?) and how effective you were in following it, you can learn so much more from the interview, that you can then take into account when you prepare for your next one.
Tip 2: Debrief Each Interview
Telling you to stay calm will probably not do much, so I’m not going to suggest it. (However, if you’re an even-keeled person, good for you – stay that way..) If you do tend to have highs and lows, take time to reflect after every interview. After each interview, write down what you did well, what you could improve on, what questions were challenging and how you would have answered them differently. The internship interview process can be a lengthy one, so making time to reflect, and to use that insight for the next interview, can help you on your path to success.
Tip 3: 24 Hours and Move On
While self reflection and analysis is important, it’s also important not to make too much of any specific interview, regardless of how good or bad it went. The last thing you want heading into your next interview is the ghost of the previous one! To manage this, follow Drew Miller’s advice, and time box the debrief of any given interview: give yourself a set amount of time to debrief an interview, and let your emotions (all the feels) out. After that time period is over, move on to the next one.
Tip 4: Make it a Group Effort
During the interview season, it can be easy to want to hole up on your own and remove yourself from the rest of your peers or your class. You might want to do this because you want to focus, or because you’re afraid of sharing your success or failures too publically. I’m going to challenge you to instead, lean into collaborating with your peers and classmates. So much can be learned from what others are doing in the process, and when you collaborate and share best practices, what you learn can help you improve your own interview process. Furthermore, in those moments when you are down, or struggling, being a part of a group can give you support and confidence to keep pushing. And at some point, you surely can be that support mechanism for your classmates. Finally, when you do have a breakthrough, having others to celebrate with is certainly a nice feeling!
Tip 5: “No” isn’t permanent
Getting a “no” or rejection isn’t fun, but also know that there are very few hard “No’s” in the interview process. If you’re still interested in a company after they turn you down, it never hurts to keep the door open. You might end up recruiting for full-time jobs or end up looking there later in your career. As such, remember to email everyone that you interacted with throughout the interview process, to follow up with them and thank them for their time. It may seem tedious or unnecessary, but sometimes the little things make a big difference.
A quick story: When I was interviewing for internships, the first company, a software company in San Francisco, I interviewed at was actually one of my top choices, but while the interview went well, they decided to go with another candidate. I sent a thank you note to the recruiter, and she asked to stay in touch. A week later at the end of February, I had 3 offers, and ultimately selected a Brand Management Internship position with a CPG company, and was ready to coast for the rest of the semester. Long story short, (a different article) I got my offer rescinded from that company at the end of April, and with 2 weeks left in the semester, I now had no internship. I was shocked and scared (admittedly, so was my Career Center) and with my back against the wall, went back to the drawing board.
Not ready to give up, I resumed my internship interviewing process that had already worked fairly well, and got to work. I scoured job boards and company websites. I reached back out to alums I had built relationships with, and I relied on the process that got me 3 offers. Soon enough, the interviews started coming in. Eventually, I saw a late posting for the same company that I previously interviewed at but lost out to another candidate, so I reached back out to the recruiter, who quickly put me in for a first round interview.
After moving to the second round, I finally broke through, and got an offer with a tech company based in San Francisco . I wanted to evaluate the two against each other, but the offer I got had a 24-hour window and I had to make a decision. I reached back out to the recruiter of the software company, but unfortunately she could not move up my final round interview. I told her that while I would love to see it through, I was going to accept the offer I had, because it was good enough and it was so late in the year that I didn’t want to pass it up. She was very understanding, and again, told me to stay in touch. After I hung up the phone, I decided to wait on my decision just to be sure, and went for a workout before making the call.
Less than an hour later, the recruiter from the software company called me back, and asked if i had accepted the offer. I told her that I hadn’t, and she said she would waive my final round interview if I could commit to accepted. I accepted that instant, and got an internship at a company that was actually my first choice!
The point of the story is this – there are highs and lows but when you have a good process and are focused on your goals, things have a way of working out. It doesn’t always mean it’s easy or straight forward and a little lucky certainly helps, but when you are patient and persistent, things have a way of working out.
Oh, and the company that i interned at, is the company that I’m at today.
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