Yeah, big surprise here. I saw this one coming a few years ago.
Back in 2007/2008, I applied for those summer associate positions at various banks. It was for the summer of 2008, which is just when the recession really hit, so you can guess how that went. I was contacted by one bank, BNP Paribas, via email to complete some sort of online “psychological screening.”
I never heard from them again, so I guess I failed.
(I don’t know these people, I just found this online. It’s pretty funny.)
Here is a sample of some people I went to grad school with:
The guy who looks like Dave O’Dell: He doesn’t know it, but he looks just like this guy I used to work with named Dave O’Dell (not his real name, obviously). I never knew this guy’s real name, but every time I saw him, I almost called him Dave. I don’t know anything else about him, except that he once wore a purple shirt with green pants, leading me to believe that he was colorblind.
Yale fleece guy: I saw him sitting in a class, wearing a fleece jacket that said “Yale.” But when the professor went around the room, asking everyone where they had attended college, it turned out that he had gone to SUNY New Paltz.
Girl I hated for no reason: We had one class together, and I always hated her. I’m not sure why. Once, we were at the same party and I wound up talking to her. For a split second, I thought “maybe we could be friends. Why did I hate her?” After a few minutes of conversation, I realized that I had learned an important lesson…
First impressions are always right! She was awful!
There are two main things that I learned in business school:
I will share some b-school vocab with you now! (Bet you can’t wait.)
Term: BATNA
What it means: Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement
A normal person would say: What’s your backup plan?
Term: BRIC
What it means: Brazil/Russia/India/China
A normal person would say: Countries with great investment opportunities for people who aren’t all that concerned with this whole “human rights” craze. It’ll probably just be a short-lived trend anyway.
Term: Brick-and-Mortar
What it means: A store/actual building
A normal person would say: What is this, Tetris?
Term: Company culture
What it means: What are the people like who work here? (Odds are, probably nothing like you and you’ll feel totally uncomfortable every second of the day that you spend in the same building with them. But you’ll take the job anyway, because you’re desperate.)
A normal person would say: This is the ultimate oxymoron. Companies have no culture!
Term: CYA
What it means: Cover Your Ass
A normal person would say: Don’t say I didn’t warn you/don’t sue me
Term: Deliverables
What it means: Stuff. As in, “I have two deliverables for my corp fin class next week.” (Boy am I glad that I’ll never heard this awful word again!)
A normal person would say: Literally, “stuff.” “Stuff that’s due.”
Term: Diligence
What it means: According to the dictionary, it means something along the lines of effort/attention/care. The definitions vary, but it’s definitely a noun.
A normal person would say: I’ve heard people use “diligence” as a verb. (They weren’t “normal,” though, whatever that is. They were investment bankers.) As in, “let’s diligence this out.” I guess working 90 hours a week really does fry your brain.
Term: Economies of scale
What it means: Buy and sell in bulk. It’s cheap. This is the premise behind Price Club/CostCo.
A normal person would say: Making a lot of stuff is cheaper per item than making less stuff. Especially if you outsource it!
Term: Emerging markets
What it means: Third world countries. They used to issue something called “Third World Debt (bonds)” until there was a “Third World Debt Crisis,” and this whole “Third World” thing began to sound…depressing. Hence, emerging markets! Hey, they’ll emerge one day (maybe).
A normal person would say: You have a better shot of getting rich by heading to Vegas and betting it all on black.
Term: Front running
What it means: The origin of this term refers to illegal stock-selling practices. But like “diligence,” finance types really like to overuse this word with no regard to its actual meaning.
A normal person would say: I’ll tell you what a normal person would NOT say (which I’ve heard): “let’s leave work early to front run the rain.” Yes, I get what you intended to say, but it still sounds stupid.
Term: F/U
What it means: I’ve seen this used as an abbreviation for “follow up.”
A normal person would say: Where I come from “F U” means something else…
Term: Networking
What it means: Asking people you (sort of, vaguely) know to help you get a job.
A normal person would say: Dad, are you hiring? Well, do you know anyone who is? Maybe I should go to some “networking events” and desperately try to befriend some people who couldn’t care less about me in a transparent ploy to get a job!
Term: Opportunity Cost
What it means: What you gave up to do something (money or time)
A normal person would say: What did you give up to go to business school? That’s your opportunity cost. In my case it was…a job at…a company that has since gone bankrupt. Guess I would have lost either way. Oh well.
Term: Soft skills
What it means: Skills other than “hard skills,”…like doing financial calculations.
A normal person would say: Can you hold a conversation? If you’re in business school, the answer is…probably not. At least not one about something that actually interests other people, like reality tv or Beyonce or something.
Term: Space
What it means: Sub-category (for pretentious types) – i.e. “experience in the ‘structured space’” means “used to work with MBS/CMOs/etc.” Now, doesn’t that sound better??
A normal person would say: Field. As in, “what field are you in?” That’s what my mother would say, anyway. When I was little, I though that she worked in a real field, with grass and everything. I was quite disappointed to see her actual office, complete with photos of me.
Term: SWOT
What it means: Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats
A normal person would say: “Weigh the pros and cons.” But I guess we can’t say that, because it’s too simple, huh?
Term: TVM
What it means: Time Value of Money – a dollar yesterday is worth more than a dollar today because you can invest it and earn interest (theoretically).
A normal person would say: If you gave me this dollar last year, I could have invested it then and would have made a penny in interest, you dumb fuck!
Term: Vertical
What it means: I don’t know.
A normal person would say: I made it goal to NOT learn what this word means in a business context. It’s used to frequently that I wondered if it would be possible to obtain an MBA without ever actually learning what anyone was talking about in my “Business Policy” course. I can now say that, yes, it is possible to complete an MBA without actually learning the meaning of this word.
Looking for someone who is detial-orientated
Looking for a hard-working self-starter to work in a fast-paced environment (ad in entirety).
Looking for someone with 35 years of internet experience.
Looking for someone with an advanced degree and 5 years experience for a full-time unpaid internship.
Looking for a student for a full-time unpaid internship.
Random questions like: if you were an animal/car, what kind would you be?
Must be thick-skinned and able to take constructive criticism.
Looking for someone with experience performing research.
Looking for someone with good communication skills.
Specify your salary requirements.
Salary: $45-50M.
Looking for someone with a great personality, must be really bubbly and positive at all times!
Looking for a “rock star”…
Looking for someone who is discrete…
Looking for someone to “wear a lot of hats”…
Looking for someone who is bilingual.
On the other hand, there is: Looking for someone fluent in Spanish, Arabic, Italian, German or Portuguese.
Low pay, but we have a great espresso machine!
Casual dress code (but no jeans).
We’re really crazy/zany/weird, but we have a great time together and go to happy hour every Thursday/Friday!
Lots of projects…
Must have a collage degree.
Looking for someone with a 2 or 4-year degree.
Must be willing to do anything.
Here are some other types of people I find irritating:
A while back, I saw an ad online seeking an MBA student to write blog entries about business school. I threw a few samples together and applied but never heard back from whoever posted it. It only occurred to me later on that they were probably seeking something more along the lines of this: http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/mbajournal These people seem to be, for the most part, true believers that they are following the good and righteous path by furthering their education. They use buzzwords (which any normal person despises) and appear to be absurdly perky and bright-eyed. It must be from loads of espresso, because any b-schooler (I use that horrid hyphenate mockingly, I swear) knows that it’s never too soon to start preparing for the inevitable corporate drug tests and quit the hard stuff before even taking the GMAT. Just kidding - from the looks of these people, they’ve never been offered drugs or even attended a party. If they did, they had two beers and left by 11 pm, in order to be a good little productive soldier at work the next day. But, I digress. I assume that I was not offered the “MBA blogger” position since my writing samples sarcastically made fun of the institution, my classmates, “career services,” and pretty much everything else related to business school. (Or they just didn’t like my writing, but I’ve chosen to ignore that possibility.) Silly me, I thought that they might want a fresh perspective rather than another mealy-mouthed sycophant proclaiming that meeting a bunch of other middle-class buttoned-down people who are virtually identical to each other “really opened my eyes” (I have no idea what this means, but it seems to be a very popular thing to say on the business week site). Also, I guess that publishing anything remotely critical of business school would probably force them to risk losing advertisers, especially since 90% of all web advertising appears to be paid for by shady-sounding “distance-learning programs” (AKA online classes - University of Phoenix, here I come!) Anyway, here are my cynical writing samples. Enjoy! Recruiting 101 All MBA students at my school must attend a mandatory workshop before applying to any jobs designated as “on-campus recruiting” positions on their website. This generally applies to students who are closer to graduation than I am, but I signed up for the workshop last week just to get it over with. Well, that was an hour of my life that I’ll never get back. First, there was a little speech about the importance of cover letters. Then we were treated to a presentation that epitomized the phrase “death by powerpoint.” There was actually a slide titled “How On-Campus Recruiting Works,” which included the scintillating bullet points “We find employers” vs. “Employers come to us.” My second favorite slide was the one with the Excel for Dummies graph that the presenter could barely explain. She said that one line represented full time jobs, and the other represented summer jobs. The various months showed increased and decreases in hiring, and she stumbled though some half-assed theories about the dips: “Well, hiring always drops around the holidays…but there was a drop in April, and I don’t really know what that was about…” Haven’t these people heard that if you don’t have anything to say about the graph/chart, you really shouldn’t include it? Finally, after listening to instructions on how to apply for jobs on the school website in excruciating detail, the discussion topic turned to the importance of networking and how most jobs are found through networking rather than the internet anyway. All in all, it was a waste of time. But I took a (paid) day off work for this, so at least I had the whole afternoon free after the torture was over. Networking So every semester my school has two or three graduate student socials that all grad students are invited to. Although most students here are in the MBA program, there are also a few smaller programs for Arts & Sciences. Needless to say, I have not met any of them. This event was no different, as the dozens of business students in attendance vastly outnumbered the few scattered students from other programs. The general tone of the event seemed geared toward us as well, especially since presidents of several student organizations gave brief speeches encouraging us to join their clubs in order to boost our resumes. Overall, it was an enjoyable evening – free (very bad, but free nonetheless) wine, an Italian buffet (ditto), and mini quiches. I had a chance to catch up with some friends and meet a few new people. After the presentations were over, the party had livened up and everyone seemed to be having a good time…when we were interrupted by an announcement. Someone from the Graduate Career Center stood up to reiterate the importance of networking, and to remind us that we should network with everyone we meet in hopes that s/he will someday help us get a job. “Your classmates are your best resource! Network with them!!” she exclaimed. I wanted to tell her that was exactly what we had been doing before she had interrupted us… Types of grad students We’ve all read those forwards about different types of coworkers or college students. But what about grad students? They’re older and (allegedly) more mature than college students, but they’re not sitting in an office all day like most corporate employees. Here are some clichéd categories to get you started when you feel like judging a fellow student: The MIA group member – If you’ve taken at least one class in an MBA program, you know all about this guy (or girl, but I’ll use male pronouns for simplicity). He joins your group for the semester-long project and then proceeds to remain silent when you are all discussing ideas. The only contribution he makes is to correct the spelling of his name on the cover page, but he’s nowhere to be found when everyone else is deciding who should present various sections in class. He skips finals week to leave early for Taiwan/Bangladesh/Prague/Cozumel but is sure to email you upon his return to inquire as to whether “we” got an A. I would hate this guy, but I’m too jealous of his tan and how he gets away with this stuff while the rest of us slave away in the library past midnight. The career student – Self-explanatory. This guy already has master’s degrees in two other subjects, but decided not to pursue either of those fields for some reason. He’s pushing 30 and has never held a paid job, something that does not seem to bother him at all. Am amusing subset of this population are the “fuck humanity” types, people who worked as teachers/social workers/Peace Corp volunteers for a year after college and decided that since helping people is a lost cause, they might as well make some money instead. These people are the least sympathetic and most cynical ones you will meet in business school. However, they usually drink heavily, which is always a redeeming factor. The human calculator - Makes Rain Man look like a slacker. Can figure out complex equations in his head, and makes you wonder why he’s not at MIT or something. Typically has no knowledge of current events or weather, and shows up for class wearing argyle socks with Birkenstocks. The bullshitter - There’s one (or many) at every school. This is the guy who says he studied for the midterm during his twenty-minute commute to school. Yet he always gets good grades, leading you to believe that he’s lying. Same type of person who’s always talking about a great party that happened the night you were out of town, despite that fact that there is no photographic evidence on Facebook. Has a mysterious “consulting” job that allows him to use IM all day, mainly to update you on the greatness of his life, his new summer home, etc. The second-guesser - The person who asks you about all of your exam answers the second you leave the room after handing in your blue books (or scantrons, if you go to my school which also provides us with high school-type desks.) Sometime they accost you in the hallway, sometimes they send you a text message, but either way, these people are intent on getting the answer to their critical inquiry: “What did you put for number 4? What about number 19? Did you count the fixed assets on the balance sheet?” Upon which, I must choose one of my stock answers, either “How the hell should I remember?” or “It’s doesn’t matter, since we already handed it in.” Never mind common sense, these people are on a mission to find out every correct answer and figure out their own grade as quickly as possible. However, they have no way to figure out how the professor will curve, so the joke’s really on them.
