Own Your Career

Chapter 4Interviewing for Success

Interviewing used to terrify me. In college, I was selected to interview at a huge insurance company. They flew me from Raleigh to Boston and put me up in a top floor room in the Liberty Hotel. I was one of 15 other candidates being interviewed for a competitive rotational program, and we were all in Boston for their Super Day.

If you're not familiar, a Super Day is a marathon interview day, usually held for entry-level analysts who are feeding from universities into banks, insurance companies, private equity firms, or hedge funds. It's often a four- to six-hour day that includes a handful of interviews, a lunch, and social hour for networking in a “casual” setting. To put it lightly, it was the scariest day of my life. If I wanted to land this job, I needed to step up.

I put so much pressure on myself. I spent days preparing, I got my best suit dry-cleaned, I had my sister stay with me in the hotel, and leading up to it, I could barely eat. I wanted to get the job, but really, I think I wanted to be liked and get the validation that I was smart enough to succeed in this environment.

Fast-forward, I did not get the job, which sucked. But it was an amazing lesson for me that I still carry to this day: interviewing is a mutual experience. Yes, you want the hiring team to like you. But you also need to like the team, the role, and the company. It needs to be the right fit for both parties; it can't just be the company deciding whether you're worthy ...