During a Wharton Undergraduate’s four years, no time is more stressful than Senior year. For those who are not planning to pursue further study, it is time to become engrossed in the all encompassing job search. The job search process is peculiar in that it is a fundamentally irrational process in which both the employer and the potential employee gladly partake. The most peculiar part of the process — and indeed the majority of it — lies in the interview. Though usually itself an ugly creature, the interview can be handled in an aesthetically pleasing approach that is also of the highest ethical standards.

Before we delve into a deeper analysis of the interview itself, it will behoove us to understand the process surrounding it that makes the interview possible. Recruiting occurs on two fronts. The first is through the On-Campus Recruiting Service (herein OCRS), the body that coordinates those firms that wish to reach the majority of Penn undergraduates. In short, there is a four part tier to the OCRS process. The first is attending presentations, the second is dropping resumes, the third is interviewing, and the fourth is the offer and the negotiations that go along with it. The alternative to OCRS is to pursue one’s own job search process. Though the final two steps are predominantly the same for both alternatives the first two differ quite a bit. In one’s own job search, the first step is to research the company; the second is to establish contact and attempt to establish the interview. Table 1. is a comparison of the processes.

Since researching and contacting employers for an interview is a rather self-explanatory and a non-traumatic experience, we will begin our narrative with on-campus presentations — the first step in the OCRS process.

Well over one hundred firms visit campus every year to perform recruiting presentations explaining how different and wonderful their particular firm is in comparison to all other firms. The presentations set the tone for the ensuing recruiting frenzy. By and large, presentations establish a student’s first contact with a firm. The presentations present an interesting dynamic between the recruiter and the student. The recruiters must present to the student an attractive package so he will want to apply for a job with the firm. Since most of the firms that come to recruit at campus are service firms, their only major selling point is what comes to be known as the people. The thing that sets our firm apart from the rest, they say, is the people. The people is the thing that everyone claims to have the best of, while at the same time agreeing that all of that firm’s competitors also have excellent people — just different in an unappealing way. This creates an aura of confusion and distrust that the student cannot afford to be apparent to the recruiter lest they deem him uninterested. The students want to leave some type of favorable impression on the recruiters while having only a very limited time to do so. This combination of factors leads to a state known as schmoozing — creating small talk with people while being flattering and self-promoting simultaneously.

After the bait has been set, students drop their resumes — single sheets of paper that are supposed to list all credentials, work experience, and hobbies that the student has — into slots with company names above them on a weekly basis. From these resumes a company will decide which students will be selected to begin the interviewing process.

Though the interview may take on several different shapes and sizes, the dynamics are almost always the same. Two sides struggling against one another (yet in an amicable way), moving from one stage to another with hidden agendas and unknown tactics — almost identical to chess except that there is one much larger complication: there is no defined act that can be identified as the end goal for the interview itself. The two opponents are clearly the interviewer, R, and the interviewee, E. The material parameter is time, T while the positional parameter is favorability, F which, if high enough, will lead to the Offer, O — either for advancement to the next stage or for employment with the firm. We will refer to the overall success rate of the interviewee as the measure F/T — that is to say the amount of favorability gained per minute. A firm will interview around 7-20 times the number of people it wants to hire and therefore the struggle by E to maximize F/T is intense. To maximize F/T varies tremendously over what type of interview E is presented with. There are three main types of interviews: The Case Interview, IC; the Question and Answer Interview, IQ; and the Mixed Interview, IM.

All three begin and end with the same question/statement but have different contents within as shown in Table 2.

  At the same time two other variables have an important effect on the outcomes of the interview — Honesty, H, and Self-Promotion, P. The relationship between H and P is far from linear and many times they find themselves in direct conflict. However, the aesthetic value of R’s presentation is directly correlated with Honesty but on an exponential scale as shown in Figure 1.

First, we must explore what kind of scenarios one may face during the interviewing process. Interviews usually occur in two to three rounds, of which the last round takes place on the site of the firm. Each interview will have a T value ranging from 20-60 with the first and intermediate rounds consisting of one interview and the final round consisting of up to a dozen interviews. There doesn’t seem to be a set pattern of IC, IQ, or IM and interview round. Therefore one may encounter any of the three at any stage of the interviewing process. The nature of each interview is so different that E often finds it necessary to change personality between them. This is a direct result of the fact that R is asking questions the answers to which he is not necessarily interested in. Within the allotted T for each Ix, R must decide whether or not E should advance to the next level and therefore the answers to the questions posed are simply not enough information for R to make an informed judgment. Rather, R has an underlying agenda the existence, but not the substance, of which is apparent to E. The situation, therefore, unfolds due to a mix of the type of interview and the personality of R. It is best, however, to explain the details of the particular IX at this point to show the positional variables that affect F/T.

The Case interview, IC, seems to be the most straight forward. Though IC has certain variations the underlying theme is almost always the same: a client company is facing some type of problem and E must mitigate that problem. The one exception is the wild card case which asks E to make an educated guess about something he knows nothing about. Firms will identify the following eight underlying points that IC should demonstrate:

The underlying question that R will be looking to answer is whether or not E will fit with the company. In order to ascertain how well a candidate stacks up, R must be thoroughly impressed with the qualifications and answers presented. Many times the questions asked by R place E in a position that makes it appear to be attractive to interview in an unethical non-aesthetic way. The following will list several typical case questions and their aesthetic and non-aesthetic responses. We will assume that the company is a management consulting firm (MCX) interviewing for a typical analyst position. See Table 3.

The answers on the right hand side appear to be aesthetic, while the nature of their non-aesthetic counterparts derives from the fact that the answers are not unique. All beauty is lost in their delivery, because it is the same answer that R comes to expect and wants to hear. Thus the differentiation between one candidate and another lies in minutia — in the ability to go over more items than the other Es and therefore to claim one’s prize. The aesthetic approach is to take the same approach that the manager would — not analytic as much as holistic. It is important to demonstrate analytical skills, but it is far more important to show that there is a deeper understanding of the issue — an understanding that one could not have prepared for outside of the preparation that his life has given him. IC will only consist of one of the questions above and will have much greater detail in both the question and the answer but the essence of the response was what I wanted to demonstrate.

IQ is a completely different beast. Some representative questions are listed in Table 4.

Unlike IC that asks only one of the cases, IQ will ask all of the above and more (IM, of course, is the combination of the two). Therefore one can choose to answer in either of the two forms (or, of course, an infinite number of other ways) for each question. However, here the problem lies with mixing and matching and the ramifications of such a strategy. Let us recall the relation that we discussed briefly between honesty, self promotion, and aesthetic value reproduced in the Figure 1.

If E is a habitual liar, there is no aesthetic value nor is there any self-promoting good in the presentation. However, if E blends an appropriate amount of lies within the interview, he seems to be doing quite well. He is covering up his faults and accentuating the positive aspects while giving R exactly what he wants to hear. However, there is a ceiling to the amount of favorability that one can create with this strategy because the pre-created answers are available to all. If executed perfectly, there is no point of differentiation between the different candidates. If one were to lie a little less that would do a disservice — most of the answers would be truthful but then certain ones will be pre-fabricated. The individual doesn’t cover up all of his flaws yet gives some answers that are standard and thus appears worse off than the E that lies more frequently. However, the E that will not lie at all — that is to say the one that would answer all questions aesthetically — will emerge as the one who has the greatest F and F/T. His point of differentiation is genuine and R can see aspects to this particular E that others — even though they may have such qualities — will either not show them or they won’t be as believable. R will have much greater certainty about honest E’s capabilities than smooth E’s.

This model makes one very big assumption that is essential to outline at this juncture: we are assuming that R is intelligent. It is of very high likelihood that R may not be able to appreciate the beauty of an honest interview. A good indicator of a firm that is looking for a more aesthetic experience is the firm whose T is the highest. T is usually broken down into four possibilities: T20, T30, T45, and T60. It is quite difficult to get to understand a person in any way during a rushed 20 to 30 minutes. T45 and T60 are clearly superior options in attempting to ascertain the best candidates. R has one more responsibility, however: to ask appropriate questions. Though the questions listed above are very common, they are not quite as ethical or aesthetic as possible. These questions invite a candidate to not be fully honest and do a disservice to the firm that takes its time out to interview. Like a true chess master or acclaimed attorney, R must construct questions the answer to which have no meaning, but the process by which E gets to the answers, along with the combination of all of the answers, provides an honest and aesthetic picture of the candidate.

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