Rehashing the BCG experience.

The fact that I got my rejection call from the HR lady and that I had to prompt her to provide feedback (which she gave seemingly begrudingly) didn't sit all that well with me at last week so I emailed one of the interviewers to say thanks and see if he was up to giving me some feedback on the process.

He emailed me back on Monday, by which time I had sufficiently recovered from the situation. But he gave me his cell phone number and told me to call and that he'd be happy to discuss this with me so I felt obligated to call. Rehashing the interview experience in my head, I picked out many opportunities where I could have done better or used a better example and leading up to actually calling him, I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear all of this uttered aloud by some else. But I asked and he consented so I called.

See, if I had received my rejection call from him, I would have been perfectly happy. I received areas of improvement but contrasted with my experience with the HR person, I got some positive aspects as well. I need a little boost to the ego. I did well on his case, I got the key insights but I let him lead me too much. I apparently needed to take more charge over where the case was going, and hence, the lack of structure comment. Apparently he wouldn't hesistate to put me in front of a client on my first day because I have enough poise for that and apparently, the behavioural component of the interview went well. I guess that's another reason why I'm not really scared of my next interview because chances are, whoever is willing to give me one, will be asking behavioural and not case questions. [no, I'm not bitter towards consumer packaged goods companies]

He also explained the interview process for me. Every recruiting season, BCG interviews somewhere in the neighbour of a hundred University students across Canada and then ranks us based on how we did on the interview overall, with particular emphasis on the case component. They then call back a handful of applicants for second round interviews (4, 45 minute case interviews). Well I know that they even reject Yale law graduates who have worked on Wall Street so that's fine. Somewhere on that list of Canadian University undergraduates that were deemed potential candidates for BCG, you'll find my name. I'm proud of that. =)