Got rejected from VC looking for feedback
Urm at target school(think Ross,gtown , stern, uva ,haas)
Made most selective finance club .
But basically didn’t get an interview from Harlem capital .What did I do wrong for the winter 2022 decisions. Just got it back today . Was it being at a non ivy.
My man… I don’t know anything about Harlem capital but I do know that you cannot apply to a single place then be upset when it doesn’t work out. Getting an internship or job, even getting an interview, takes tons and tons a applications. There will be a lot of rejection. A lot of it is luck. Just keep trying.
It's all a numbers game. It sucks to hear, because I'm sure you've had a strong run of success to get to where you are, but you're literally one of tens of thousands.
You need to apply to a ton of places, network with everyone and keep pushing forward.
I remember applying to their most recent internship for fun/interest in what they do (not because I thought I would get it), and when I got my rejection, HRM wrote back saying they got over 1,000 applicants that needed to be cut down to 100 just for the first round of interviews, not to mention the next handful of rounds.
The folks over at Harlem Capital have done an outstanding job branding themselves and the fund on social media + LinkedIn, and I’m sure they probably get more nontargets than most shops because they boast championing merit + skill set over prestige to project authentic, valuable diversity that doesn’t just check boxes. I can’t imagine the women or minorities from targets that also apply there for the opportunity to work in VC without feeling patronized.
You can also probably imagine how many more people who might’ve been hesitant to apply to another VC fund would want to specifically work with them for their brand and their investment vision for women and minority-founded startups, for whom I’m pretty sure they raised 9 figures for just this year.
Basically—don’t take it personally. I don’t come from finance or business, and am making the transition myself from a completely different area of work, but speaking as a person who had several years of work experience before going to school/pursing this path—the application process needs to be egoless and impersonal. Many times, a “no” isn’t a reflection of you directly. It is more or less a reflection of the overall talent pool, and how much another person really stood out for the role. Even if it is a reflection of you, that’s not a personal attack. It just means you need to be better, and that’s okay too because you have time to improve.
My suggestions going forward:
Wherever possible, get live feedback from rejections (sometimes challenging to do, but I’ve had great success with this apply to tech jobs or tech-focused firms). Otherwise, do your best, vet/hone whatever you’re submitting 5x, run it all by a professor/colleague/etc. for an outside perspective (I’ve even done a cold LinkedIn message for feedback and they were happy to help), and understand that it is 100% out of your hands once submitted. You can’t make it happen every time, and 99% of the time you’ll probably be glad the thing you wanted to happen so badly didn’t happen exactly the way you wanted it to.
Keep your head up bruv—the road can be long and arduous, but rewarding in the end.
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