The highlight of the large firm's selling process is the "sell day": The company pays your way to visit the office, stay in a posh hotel, and schmooze with current employees. One unspoken objective is to impress (and entice) you with luxuries you are not accustomed to, to create an image of banking or consulting that is fast paced and glamorous. During the sell day, the firm will trot out extremely senior people to make you feel important. Sometimes, these bigwigs won't remember your name once you've joined the firm. All of the people you talk to will be friendly, positive, and happy with their jobs—people who are unhappy with the company are not included in recruiting. Some firms also may massage your ego, trying to flatter you into taking the job. Be cynical.
Although you should discount at least half of the official information you hear, you can pick up valuable information by carefully observing the subtleties of what people are saying and doing. Listen to your gut instinct when evaluating your surroundings. Use the selling process to fill in informational gaps.
Their Sales Techniques
The importance of an unbiased career decision can't be stressed enough. Some very intelligent people feel that their rational thinking fall victim to banks' and consulting firms' sales techniques. Whether during sell day or other recruiting functions, be aware of the effect of these techniques on your thought process:
- "Attending our sell day event doesn't mean you're obligated to join us. We just want a chance to answer your questions." This is a classic case of escalation of commitment. The objective is to break down one large act of commitment (your taking the job) into several smaller acts of commitment so that you can more easily stomach the large commitment. Once you arrive at sell day, you may find yourself seriously listening to the arguments put forth by the firm's employees. The firm has therefore won a share of your attention by convincing you to take an initial step.
- "We love our jobs." Human beings like to see themselves as consistent. There would be a large contradiction between hating a job and doing it anyway, especially when explaining one's actions to others. Therefore, analysts and associates justify their actions by claiming that they love their jobs. They want to love their jobs because they've already chosen them and are doing them. This is especially true of first-year analysts, who still care that their college classmates see them as having chosen the right path.
- "Carefully consider whether you're cut out for this job, because not everyone can make it here." This technique plays on your ego, your machismo. It challenges you to try to succeed, an offer that tempts overachievers. Also, describing the analyst program as difficult builds mystique around it and makes outsiders want to belong to a "club" of people who have succeeded in this experience. The analyst program is made out to be a special and separate world from the outside.
- "We had one analyst out of sixty last year who was so good and worked so hard that he was promoted to the associate position without an MBA." The firm will create myths around certain people and elevate them as role models. This communicates to you what the firm's values are—hard work and sacrifice—and may tempt you to try to resemble these mythical analysts and to become a legend yourself.
- "Look at it this way-you're going to be working long hours anywhere you go, but it's better to be working at our bank than at XYZ bank." Translation: It's better to be low on our totem pole than on someone else's. This argument presents your choice solely as one between investment banks rather than as a choice between investment banking and something completely different. Once this argument has narrowed your perspective to just investment banks, it appeals to exclusivity and encourages you to pick the best of investment banks. This argument is also used by consulting firms. Remember, you don't have to do anything you don't want to. Evaluate any job offer in absolute, not relative, terms.
- "But you told me that you'd join our firm if you got an offer." Be careful what you promise during an interview or any other contact with the firm: it will come back to bite you. Firms like it when you make very public, verbal acts of commitment. When they challenge you later by recalling these statements, they rely on the fact that you don't want to see yourself or have others see you as flaky. This ignores the fact, of course, that it is perfectly reasonable to change your mind.
Other, subtle, self-imposed factors also may influence your decision:
- Sunk costs: You already have put so much time and effort into interviewing with this firm. Do you really want to go through the process all over again with another firm and waste all of that precious effort?
- Peer concerns: Your friends on campus know that you have been interviewing. How will it look to them if you change your mind all of a sudden about what you've been doing and decide that banking and consulting aren't right for you? It's better to change course now than to be miserable later.
- Public failure or success: You want to show that you've succeeded in an immensely competitive process, and often this means accepting one of the jobs you've won. This pressure is especially high for people who are very self-conscious.
