Bombed my IB interview and feel like complete shit. Where do I go from here?
I am a senior at a target school, with good experience, decent grades, and made it to near the end of the process at an investment bank. Needless to say, I bombed my interview. It was the worst interview I have ever done in my life. I looked at my interviewer's face and I could just tell that she knew I was fucked. I am not looking for sympathy here but I feel like complete shit -- considering my friend really helped me with the process by pushing me through it. I don't know what happened I just sort of froze, the vibe wasn't there and I went downhill from there. I don't know what to do at this point - I feel like a loser, embarrassed, and my self-esteem is at a low. I feel like I don't deserve to be there. Has anyone else been through this and any advice you can give me? I am just really down right now.
A bit about me, I have worked at numerous private equity firms throughout my undergrad, as well as two major global banks in asset management. I just don't know what to do from here.
I remember during my FT recruiting process years ago. I did a summer internship in consulting, but decided to pivot for IB. I prepared for my interviews, networked hard, went the full nine yards, and before I knew it, I had a SD for Moelis LA. I remember being super hyped about Moelis LA, telling myself that it's the office I wanted to end up at, the culture's great, the people are great, and I was a perfect fit. Yet, during my interview, I completely froze up and messed up my technicals. They weren't even big mistakes, just an addition error here, a multiplication error there, simple stupid mistakes, which when added up cost me my opportunity at Moelis. I remember beating myself up the night after getting the official HR rejection call, berating myself over how I could cost myself such an opportunity with such juvenile errors. Thankfully, I had a friend who shook me out of my self-pity, mock interviewed me hard until I could get my technicals perfect in my sleep, and after networking hard, I had another SD at Evercore. The people at Evercore tried so hard to find a reason to give me an offer, one of the MDs I networked with and clicked with even gave me an entire interview off during the SD, where he just told me to take a 30 minute break. I nailed the technicals, and waited for that offer call after the SD, which never came. I had a post-mortem with the MD, who told me that the unanimous feedback from my other three interviews is that I was technically perfect, but I had absolutely zero personality and came off as a rock. After that, I felt like a loser, a failure. How can you mess up an interview where you were literally given a free pass for 1/4 of the process? Thankfully, once again, I had a friend who reminded me that feeling bad would not do anything to help me, and pulled my head out of my one-man pity party.
Keep your head up. You are going to fail, and not just in recruiting, but at many things throughout your life, and that's not just completely fine, but is expected. What's important is to learn from your failures so you don't do it again. You may feel like a failure right now, and I guarantee you today won't be the last day you feel like a failure or a loser. It sounds cliche, but what's important is that you learn from your failures, because everyone fails, but the differentiator between a failure someone who succeeds is that one who succeeds learns from his failures to improve himself. It's OK to take a day to bathe yourself in self-pity, but tell yourself that tomorrow, you're going to get your head out of your ass, and improve yourself. Tomorrow, you're going to do a post-mortem, diagnose what went wrong, and find ways to ensure that won't happen again.
My process didn't end the way I had hoped, but it still taught me an important lesson.
I made the pivot to IB relatively late, and while FT recruiting was more common back in my day, it still wasn't huge. Ultimately, I wasn't able to land an IB offer, and instead took the best offer I had: BB ER. I was absolutely crushed that I couldn't land my dream job back then, but I was still determined to achieve the goal. I spent 2 years in ER, internally lateraled into IB at my BB as part of the third-year analyst rotational program, went A2A, and then ultimately lateraled to an EB.
Ultimately, my path didn't end up the way I thought it would senior year, but that's a part of life. Life is unpredictable, and you will face obstacles that set you back or make you modify your plans. You have to realize, like I did, that life is a marathon filled with twists and turns, not a one-lane sprint, and what may seem like the end of the world today is nothing in the ultimate scheme of things. If you end up having to take a different path to achieve your goals, you embrace that path in the short term and find a way to navigate back onto the track towards your ultimate goal. Once I adopted the perspective of looking at achieving my plans long-term, short-term setbacks meant much less than me. If you learn to embrace the unpredictability and take a long-term view towards life, no setback can discourage you.
fuck, this the type of energy i love to see on WSO
Found the guy who said he didn’t have time for girls or partying during the ‘rigorous’ recruiting process….
Can’t cram life experiences that make you more relatable/interesting the night before.
OK Intern
I bombed 5 interviews before landing an EB and BB. Just keep applying.