Future??

Another job interview. Another day. I'll be damned if I screwed up on this one too. I hope here's where my ill-luck runs out.

For the tamilians out there..

மொட்டுகலே மொட்டுகலே முச்சு விடா மொட்டுகலே
கன்மனியாள் தூங்குகிறாள் காலையில் மலருங்கள்
பொன்னரும்புகள் மலர்கயிலே
மென் மெல்லிய சத்தம் வரும்
என் காதலி துயில் கலைந்தால்
என் இதயம் தாங்காது

Does anyone know the lyricist of this song? Tried googling but couldn't find. It's from the film roja kootam. Love the lyrics and the song.

Statistical approach to predicting success

I'm counting my failures. Here's an attempt to know how many times more I may fail before I succeed:

Consider this quote "Failure is a stepping stone to success". Now then, the most pertinent question is 'How many steps there are to success?'. Assuming that the number of steps is a random variable, a study on the distribution of this r.v will provide us the required answer. I'm thinking Poisson distribution would be a good assumption to test.

Ok. That's as far as my thought process goes. The sample data collection & the hypothesis testing is left for the readers to perform...Please let me know of the mean value.

p.s: If none of this makes any sense to you. Good. You're normal.

Another wasted opportunity

I had a telephone interview for an analyst position at a middle-tier analytic consulting firm today. Think I screwed up a great opportunity. Here's how it went.

Right off the bat, I was told the following

> The interview will be a structured one - She has a specific set of questions to ask in that order.

> No clarifications will be provided. One can however ask for the question to be repeated if he/she didn't hear it properly the first time around.

> She won't comment on my response to the questions.

> The interview will be recorded.

And so it started. At the beginning, it was very conventional - "What do you do presently?" "What do like the most about that?" "Where do you see yourself 10 yrs down the road" etc.

Later, it got totally whacky. A few sample questions:

(1) Who would you rather have under you? A mediocre team player or an independent aggressive person who achieves twice as much as the mediocre person. I said I'd take the independent aggressive person.

(2) An employee of yours calls up in the morning and says she won't be able to come in today as her daughter is ill. What would you say to her? For this, I meekly answered that I would ask if there were any meetings that she had scheduled with the client today and would try to get someone else to back her up for that. As I look back at it now, I wonder if I should have perhaps enquired about her daughter's illness.

(3) Do you have a mission statement? - totally messed up this one.

(4) The only marginally technical question: What is the cost of losing an employee who was making 40K an year - screwed up this one too.

I was previously told to expect the interview to last around 45-60 minutes. I finished mine in exactly 20 minutes - largely because I was answering without taking the time to think about each question. Totally stupid.

Edit: Changed the post title. The previous one was nonsensical.

A day in life of a ..

Goldman Slacker! :)

(Source: Wilmott Careers Forum)

Adcom to note!

"Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird" - Atticus to his children (To Kill a mocking bird, 1960)

In the bschool admissions game/society, the equivalent quote to the one above is this:

"Deny all the bankers/consultants you want, but remember it's a sin to deny a young & ambitious engineer" :-)

For the sake of closure..

Denied at Chicago.. :(

Stop posting your admit calls!!

The draining wait, the incessant posts in the forums by admits who received calls from Chicago have practically killed all the excitement in me. The nail in coffin was the post by some Singapore-based guy(Hama, Forrest - is that you??) who got the call a few minutes ago from Esther Choy.

This might very well be the end. Now, I'll have to pass the whole damn day to find out the possibly ugly news. Sucks!

Running on Chicago time

34h:43m:11s to go..

As an aside, here is an interesting pic. Guess the name of the movie.

Plan B

With the Chicago decision less than two weeks away, now would be a good time to prepare myself for the worst. What if no Chicago? I see two options

(1) Put in one more year of face-time at my current job & re-apply next year to a wider gamut of schools.

(2) Look for a new job; more in-line with my post-MBA career interest. Analyst level position dealing with financial modeling/risk management/quantitative analysis n such. In this case, re-apply after at least two yrs in new job.

Option (1) is status-quo. Need not move my ass one bit. Just continue the same routine.

Pluses
* Assured great recommendation from boss. Yeah, my boss loves me and is totally with me on this MBA game ;) Also, if I should decide to give INSEAD a try, my boss can write my recommendation in french :)

* The atypical industry (from bschool perspective) that I am in. Bschools dig applicants with non-traditional work experience (I think so, yes?) and I can play up my current experience from this angle.

* Possibility of a promotion later this year.

Minuses
* Total irrelevance to post-MBA goal.

* Lack of cranial indulgence. :(

I have more but I don't want to get fired just as yet :P

Option (2) is more interesting and is one of the reasons I applied only to a few schools. (The other reason, of course, is that I'm plain lazy. But I guess you already know that from the frequency of my blog update) If things don't work out this time around, I can afford to wait longer than to comprise on quality of the school I will attend. Age is on my side.

This option, however, is more difficult to execute. The kind of companies I'm interested in are very elitist and far more risk-averse in their candidates selection than bschools are. Not sure how successful I'll be.