San Francisco!? For Free!?
My Cell Phone rings
"Hi B I have some good news for you. You have been selected for second round interviews with P. bla bla bla"
I am not making this up. I was at work making a blog entry when my cell phone rang. I was particularly depressed yesterday before the call because I had gotten my exams back that morning and the results were not good. I had even started the depressing entry when I got the call. Here is what I had so far:
"It's official, I am not in my groove right now. After an unproductive year filled with bad luck, I was hoping that 2007 would bring waves of change. Nothing seems to be different, Yet!, and I don't know what happened. I can't even remember where I shifted from smart, confident and witty to boring and ..."
I was so excited after the call that I did not even finish the entry yesterday and therefore doing this today. The thought of going to San Francisco for free for a couple days was just too exciting. I called my friends after I got the offer and found out that my roommate had also been offered a second interview. Great! Now we can have fun together. Well! I don't know if there would be much time to see San Francisco considering the fact that we will be in P-----'s office all day. Anyways, a free tip is a free trip, right? I am going to enjoy it as much as I can.
The call was very good news for me but not for all of my friends. Most of them were called to say that their application would not be considered further. Anyways, I wondered all day yesterday about the reason for my selection and what I had said that impressed Bobby (the interviewer) in the first interview. I did not have a very good feeling when I got out of that interview especially after I almost put Bobby to sleep. He seemed genuinely disinterested in me and hardly ever looked at my face during the whole thing. The whole time, he took notes on a piece of paper and had a crummy look on his face.
He asked me a couple of leadership questions and a couple of technical questions. The technical questions took me by surprise because I had not been asked anything technical in any of my earlier interviews. One of the questions was how I would audit accounts payable in a company if I suspected that something is not right. I did not have an answer prepared. I knew that I had to say something, so I started off with some materiality BS and talked for about 5 minutes, mostly on Controls. I guess he liked what he heard, which is good for me.
Another interesting segment of the interview was when I got to ask him questions. I gave him a really hard time. No, really. The question that he had the most trouble was when I asked him where he sees himself in 5 years. I put him on the spot. He was very unsure if he would stay with this independent risk consulting firm or he would go into industry. I further asked him why he was so unsure if this firm is so great and if he is trying to attract me to it. Anyways, I did not really get a definite answer from him and that was not a surprise for me because I know how our industry works. people just don't stay put, they jump around like kangaroos every time a better offer comes up.
Overall, I did not think that the interview was very smooth. I also had a hard time convincing him that I was very interested in the High Tech industry and I really wanted to do internal audit rather than Technology Risk. The call, I have to admit, has given me some confidence. I thought that P--- was probably the worst of my interviews. So that might be a good sign of things to come. I wouldn't mind flying into some of the offices of other companies. I am looking forward to next week when all the decisions are scheduled to come.
"Hi B I have some good news for you. You have been selected for second round interviews with P. bla bla bla"
I am not making this up. I was at work making a blog entry when my cell phone rang. I was particularly depressed yesterday before the call because I had gotten my exams back that morning and the results were not good. I had even started the depressing entry when I got the call. Here is what I had so far:
"It's official, I am not in my groove right now. After an unproductive year filled with bad luck, I was hoping that 2007 would bring waves of change. Nothing seems to be different, Yet!, and I don't know what happened. I can't even remember where I shifted from smart, confident and witty to boring and ..."
I was so excited after the call that I did not even finish the entry yesterday and therefore doing this today. The thought of going to San Francisco for free for a couple days was just too exciting. I called my friends after I got the offer and found out that my roommate had also been offered a second interview. Great! Now we can have fun together. Well! I don't know if there would be much time to see San Francisco considering the fact that we will be in P-----'s office all day. Anyways, a free tip is a free trip, right? I am going to enjoy it as much as I can.
The call was very good news for me but not for all of my friends. Most of them were called to say that their application would not be considered further. Anyways, I wondered all day yesterday about the reason for my selection and what I had said that impressed Bobby (the interviewer) in the first interview. I did not have a very good feeling when I got out of that interview especially after I almost put Bobby to sleep. He seemed genuinely disinterested in me and hardly ever looked at my face during the whole thing. The whole time, he took notes on a piece of paper and had a crummy look on his face.
He asked me a couple of leadership questions and a couple of technical questions. The technical questions took me by surprise because I had not been asked anything technical in any of my earlier interviews. One of the questions was how I would audit accounts payable in a company if I suspected that something is not right. I did not have an answer prepared. I knew that I had to say something, so I started off with some materiality BS and talked for about 5 minutes, mostly on Controls. I guess he liked what he heard, which is good for me.
Another interesting segment of the interview was when I got to ask him questions. I gave him a really hard time. No, really. The question that he had the most trouble was when I asked him where he sees himself in 5 years. I put him on the spot. He was very unsure if he would stay with this independent risk consulting firm or he would go into industry. I further asked him why he was so unsure if this firm is so great and if he is trying to attract me to it. Anyways, I did not really get a definite answer from him and that was not a surprise for me because I know how our industry works. people just don't stay put, they jump around like kangaroos every time a better offer comes up.
Overall, I did not think that the interview was very smooth. I also had a hard time convincing him that I was very interested in the High Tech industry and I really wanted to do internal audit rather than Technology Risk. The call, I have to admit, has given me some confidence. I thought that P--- was probably the worst of my interviews. So that might be a good sign of things to come. I wouldn't mind flying into some of the offices of other companies. I am looking forward to next week when all the decisions are scheduled to come.
posted by Mediocre at 11:44 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home