Staying Optimistic During Recruiting
Sabrina Moyle and LaVonda Williams
Issue date: 10/15/01 Section: Features
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Logging onto the CMC web site to see the list of companies who have cancelled campus recruiting is a bit discouraging. It’s especially upsetting to second years, who feel a dark cloud moving in on what was supposed to be a carefree clambake of a year. Either in jest or in seriousness, many of you have shared your concern for future job prospects. Here are some of our suggestions for how to keep things in perspective:
Externalize Your Failures
Psychologists have long held the belief that people tend to hold outlooks somewhere on a spectrum of optimistic to pessimistic. Optimists view the causes of positive events as long term, due to their own efforts and generalizable across situations (Yates, 2000). They see negative events as temporary, due to external causes and limited to specific occasions. The reverse is true of pessimists, who interpret negative events as permanent, personal and pervasive and positive events as transient, external and ephemeral.
Most of us experience some combination of optimistic and pessimistic moments. But in an economic climate when external forces are really stacked against us, it’s important to recognize that the negative outcomes of recruiting are truly temporary and external. If you get dinged, in the immortal words of Frank Sinatra, “just pick yourself up and get back in the race.” Since recruiters rarely give constructive feedback, look for it from your friends and family.
Dr. Martin Seligman, a renowned psychologist and expert on optimism and pessimism, presents the decision to be optimistic as a cost-benefit analysis, comparing the cost of optimism with the cost of failure. When choosing whether to spend his mental energy on being optimistic, he asks, "What would it matter if I fail here?"
“For example, if I’m a salesman and I’m making another ‘cold call’, or if I see someone attractive at a party and want to say hello afterwards, the cost of rejection is small. On the other hand, the cost of failure can be very large, such as getting into an affair that will lead to divorce if your spouse finds out. When the cost of failure is large and catastrophic, you don’t want to use optimism skills. That’s the basic rule of thumb.”
For most of us, the outcomes of an ignored job inquiry or failure to get an offer are not catastrophic. They may be setbacks, and may seem significant since we tend to identify closely with our chosen professions. Although there are fewer jobs available now than in the past, we are still among the most educated and talented people in the work force. If we “fail,” the biggest blow will be to our pride. However, if we remain optimistic, as we should, chances are that we won’t internalize the outcome. The rewards we anticipated from our MBAs may be farther away, but the gap can be closed with time, persistence, and determination.
Know Your Unique Selling Proposition
Consulting has historically been the most popular job choice. The majority of our class will likely pursue jobs in this career field. Yet, with the number of firms recruiting on campus falling fast, getting invited for closed-list interview schedules means you’ll really have to shine. So how to be better than the rest? A first impulse might be to assimilate, and attempt to present the perfect, polished, professional exterior to recruiters. (Never mind that this is the morale equivalent to joining the Borg.)
What we encourage is that you focus on what makes you different. In the long run, research has shown that fit is one of the most important determinants of job success. Furthermore, people don’t leave jobs -- they leave managers. In other words, your genuine rapport with the interviewer and ultimately your manager will determine the success of your first career move.
Career web sites and the CMC provide lots of tactics for approaching interviews. However, one approach that can help you not only persuade your interviewer but resist the urge to be someone you’re not is to define your unique selling proposition. What makes you better than other candidates applying for the position? What can you offer that no other applicant can? What is the one reason the employer should want to hire you above all other candidates?
Separate Academic Achievement from Future Success
With all the discussions around academic achievement, it’s understandable that some students might question whether their prospects may be influenced by their academic achievement. Although second years voted to adhere to class norms of not looking at or disclosing academic standing, we wonder how strongly these norms will be upheld in such competitive times.
Will students who are unsatisfied with their grades or class standing feel less confident about “selling” themselves in interviews? Will they pale in case interviews next to other students who have mastered the lingo and are confident about course material? What should you with those feelings of insecurity?
This one is a little tougher. We are always going to be compared to each other, at least while we’re here. Professors do it, recruiters do it, and we even do it among ourselves. The comparing, not the individual performance, is usually the source of the anxiety. We compare how we stack up to the “ideal candidate.” At the extreme, excessive comparison also fuels unhealthy competition and/or secrecy.
Our only suggestion is that we each resist the temptation to measure ourselves in relative terms. Otherwise, it becomes extremely difficult to find satisfaction in our individual B-school take-aways. If we each make personal choices about how much time to devote to outside jobs, recruiting, SO’s and children, we each need to take pleasure in our individual results. If we each make choices about meaningful career paths, we can focus on individual rewards instead of median incomes or outside pressures.
This is going to be a challenging and illuminating journey. We hope that everyone will try to keep a positive attitude and be open to the lessons that this recruiting season will bring.
Externalize Your Failures
Psychologists have long held the belief that people tend to hold outlooks somewhere on a spectrum of optimistic to pessimistic. Optimists view the causes of positive events as long term, due to their own efforts and generalizable across situations (Yates, 2000). They see negative events as temporary, due to external causes and limited to specific occasions. The reverse is true of pessimists, who interpret negative events as permanent, personal and pervasive and positive events as transient, external and ephemeral.
Most of us experience some combination of optimistic and pessimistic moments. But in an economic climate when external forces are really stacked against us, it’s important to recognize that the negative outcomes of recruiting are truly temporary and external. If you get dinged, in the immortal words of Frank Sinatra, “just pick yourself up and get back in the race.” Since recruiters rarely give constructive feedback, look for it from your friends and family.
Dr. Martin Seligman, a renowned psychologist and expert on optimism and pessimism, presents the decision to be optimistic as a cost-benefit analysis, comparing the cost of optimism with the cost of failure. When choosing whether to spend his mental energy on being optimistic, he asks, "What would it matter if I fail here?"
“For example, if I’m a salesman and I’m making another ‘cold call’, or if I see someone attractive at a party and want to say hello afterwards, the cost of rejection is small. On the other hand, the cost of failure can be very large, such as getting into an affair that will lead to divorce if your spouse finds out. When the cost of failure is large and catastrophic, you don’t want to use optimism skills. That’s the basic rule of thumb.”
For most of us, the outcomes of an ignored job inquiry or failure to get an offer are not catastrophic. They may be setbacks, and may seem significant since we tend to identify closely with our chosen professions. Although there are fewer jobs available now than in the past, we are still among the most educated and talented people in the work force. If we “fail,” the biggest blow will be to our pride. However, if we remain optimistic, as we should, chances are that we won’t internalize the outcome. The rewards we anticipated from our MBAs may be farther away, but the gap can be closed with time, persistence, and determination.
Know Your Unique Selling Proposition
Consulting has historically been the most popular job choice. The majority of our class will likely pursue jobs in this career field. Yet, with the number of firms recruiting on campus falling fast, getting invited for closed-list interview schedules means you’ll really have to shine. So how to be better than the rest? A first impulse might be to assimilate, and attempt to present the perfect, polished, professional exterior to recruiters. (Never mind that this is the morale equivalent to joining the Borg.)
What we encourage is that you focus on what makes you different. In the long run, research has shown that fit is one of the most important determinants of job success. Furthermore, people don’t leave jobs -- they leave managers. In other words, your genuine rapport with the interviewer and ultimately your manager will determine the success of your first career move.
Career web sites and the CMC provide lots of tactics for approaching interviews. However, one approach that can help you not only persuade your interviewer but resist the urge to be someone you’re not is to define your unique selling proposition. What makes you better than other candidates applying for the position? What can you offer that no other applicant can? What is the one reason the employer should want to hire you above all other candidates?
Separate Academic Achievement from Future Success
With all the discussions around academic achievement, it’s understandable that some students might question whether their prospects may be influenced by their academic achievement. Although second years voted to adhere to class norms of not looking at or disclosing academic standing, we wonder how strongly these norms will be upheld in such competitive times.
Will students who are unsatisfied with their grades or class standing feel less confident about “selling” themselves in interviews? Will they pale in case interviews next to other students who have mastered the lingo and are confident about course material? What should you with those feelings of insecurity?
This one is a little tougher. We are always going to be compared to each other, at least while we’re here. Professors do it, recruiters do it, and we even do it among ourselves. The comparing, not the individual performance, is usually the source of the anxiety. We compare how we stack up to the “ideal candidate.” At the extreme, excessive comparison also fuels unhealthy competition and/or secrecy.
Our only suggestion is that we each resist the temptation to measure ourselves in relative terms. Otherwise, it becomes extremely difficult to find satisfaction in our individual B-school take-aways. If we each make personal choices about how much time to devote to outside jobs, recruiting, SO’s and children, we each need to take pleasure in our individual results. If we each make choices about meaningful career paths, we can focus on individual rewards instead of median incomes or outside pressures.
This is going to be a challenging and illuminating journey. We hope that everyone will try to keep a positive attitude and be open to the lessons that this recruiting season will bring.