Huge blunder on case study email submission and now I’m feeling terrible…. Help - what do I do next?
I applied for a MM GE fund two months ago. Had a chat with one of the associates and immediately realised I would love to work with her. A couple weeks later, was invited to two interviews - it went really well. A week later was invited to interview at the office, went well too. Shortly after, a case study.
I have been prepping a lot for case study interviews and I think I generally did fine - it wasn’t too hard but definitely could improve more on efficiency on my side. I prepared the PPT too and a short list of DD questions.
Sent it over email and just as I finished, I was rushing to City Airport as I had a flight to catch so I shut down and rushed out. This was a Friday. Did not bring my laptop or iPad with me as I was celebrating and taking care of my friend with her newborn so did not check my phone for messages or emails. In fact I was so detached from my phone I don’t even have a photo of the sweet baby newborn.
When I returned on Monday - to my horror, my email with the case study submission was not sent and instead was just in outbox. I really don’t know if it’s bcs of my 1-min delay rule on outlook or poor connectivity or even file size (though files were average sized) but bottom line the email didn’t get sent. And there was an email from the EA following up gently on it, which I only read now because I was not online over the weekend…..
I panicked and explained the situation to them. And reattached the attachments and copy and pasted my previous email content that didn’t get sent onto this new email (for some reason I can’t even resend the email from outbox and I wasn’t sure why?). This was last Monday.
Yesterday I emailed and said I’m happy to retake the case study if possible as I’m sure working under tight deadline is a key component of the assessment, and with my email not-sent blunder, it would be sensible to redo the case study with a fresh one so I can show them that I’m able to prepare the materials in 2.5h (and not a whole 2.5 days……). I also reviewed the CIM again, learnt a little more about the industry and expanded on my previous DD questions to be more in depth and show curiosity and proactivity. I spotted a mistake I made on the excel and was transparent about it and owned up to it by highlighting the mistake and confirming it has been fixed - with an updated / revised excel attached.
There was supposed to be a debrief after the case but I haven’t gotten any update on it. Yesterday the associate neutrally said thank you for my email and said he would call me the next day and asked for my number - I gave him both my personal UK number and private UK number (typically family, banking, etc).
But I haven’t received any call from him today. I’ve been on both my phones waiting for the call bcs I didn’t want to miss it but definitely no calls. guess I’m getting rejected.
I feel so horrible — I was doing so well interviewing with the team. There were some things I could’ve done better for the case study PPT but my submission was quite good I think (and I immediately rectified my mistake when I spotted it and owned up to it and submitted a revised version with the correct inputs).
The only thing is the late submission via email…..I swear it really was just a human, unexpected error (and it would really not makes sense that I would spend 2.5 days just to do one slide and simple lbo and income statement projections….).
I’ve been beating myself up over this for a week now. I did so well with them before and if the email was sent out appropriately- I’m sure I would’ve been fine.
I really don’t know how to steer this back into the right direction. I really wish they would allow for me to retake a fresh case study so I can proof to them that I didn’t purposefully delayed the email send out to them :/ by 2 days :/
I really really like this fund and this team. I know I will learn a lot from them. I’m thinking of giving the associate a quick call tomorrow and clarify if the process is still ongoing and if I’m still under consideration, how can I help them on some key concerns they may have on me in order for us to move forward.
Would really appreciate any thoughts or advice. Sorry this was a long one. Was really heartbroken I accidentally sabotaged myself :/ I’m going to remove the 1-min rule on outlook forever. This has never happened to me before and I’m so anxious now
Eh it happens. See what they say, go from there.
It happens but would not expect to hear back. You've explained the situation -wait and see how/if they respond. Take some learning from it and check your sent folder after sending an important email.
You're cooked bro. Next time idk, casually check your phone or something.
How do you not check your email over the weekend at all? Wouldn’t you have been curious to see if they had responded to your case study?
The emails stuck in outbox happens. Using an extra few days on a case study usually doesn’t result in a demonstrably better work product, so I expect the fund believes your story.
That said, I probably wouldn’t have called out the things you changed - that suggests you were using the extra time to review and it wasn’t just a clerical error. Also, like the comment above, going fully offline and not checking email for the weekend would be a bigger yellow flag than the delayed submission.
I’m sorry this happened OP and wishing you the best. There are many other roles out there and, as a general rule, no role is perfect and you’ll almost certainly find faults in the job even if you get it!
They’re probably more turned off by the fact that you have two personal phone numbers lol
I'd chalk this up as a learning opportunity and move on, nothing you can do about it at this point (and maybe you still end up with an offer somehow).
But if I were on the other side of the table this would unfortunately mean you're not getting an offer unless you were by far the best candidate otherwise - bigger flag not being the delayed submission but not being online at all over the weekend? Maybe it's more acceptable in the UK / Europe, but it wouldn't be in the US.
And I'd personally keep the delay send, it's saved me a lot of headaches at least. Just build in a habit to confirm via your sent folder for important emails going forward.
Et dolor dolor commodi cupiditate. Molestias quaerat veritatis aperiam voluptate fugiat hic.
Id cumque non et aut quibusdam. Non voluptate sit similique dolores. Aut error velit eligendi dolores nisi beatae excepturi eum. Consequatur et dolore velit quas eum sequi delectus. Nihil impedit odit eos.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...