After The MBA

Brainteasers: My Interview Kryptonite

Sorry everyone, I know I’ve been MIA lately but I’ve been busy the past few weeks with interviews (a good thing!).

I recently had an interview with a well-known company in the Bay Area. I was doing well throughout the interview and nailing all the fit questions, behavioral questions and case questions. Then as I came down the home stretch, my interviewer said, “Before we finish the interview, let me ask you some brain teasers”. All I had to do was nail these brain teasers and I would have aced the interview. Other than that, there was no pressure at all.

Question #1:

If you drive up a mountain at 10 miles per hour, how fast do you have to drive back down in order to average 20 miles per hour over the entire trip?

The answer:

First I said 30 miles per hour because you drive up 10 miles for an hour, and drive down 30 miles in an hour = 40 miles / 2 hours = 20 miles per hour. I was pretty excited that I solved the brain teaser until the interviewer clarified that both legs must be equidistant.

Apparently the correct answer was that there is no solution. It is impossible to average 20 miles per hour over the entire trip! Apparently it was my mistake to assume that an interviewer would ask me a brain teaser with a solvable solution. Thus, I wasted all my allotted 30-60 seconds by taking the plug and chug approach. Who asks brain teasers with no solvable answers anyways?  

Question #2:

You have a 6-shot revolver and you load two bullets into the first two chambers, and then the remaining four chambers are empty. You spin the chamber and pull the trigger. The gun does not go off. You have to shoot the revolver again. You do NOT want the gun to fire. Do you pull the trigger right away or do you spin the chamber first?

The answer:

Well, I was still sweating over the fact that I did not solve question #1 so it was hard to be 100% focused on question #2. But I said that you pull the trigger right away because of my gut feeling (plus I figured I had a 1 out of 2 chance of guessing correctly). The interviewer then said, “Why? What are the probabilities for each scenario?” Unfortunately this was like finance class, and you have to show work with your answer in order to get credit. I came close to getting the right answer but ultimately I could not figure out the exact probability of pulling the trigger right away in a timely manner. No credit for me.

If you spin the chamber, you have a 2 out of 6 or 1/3 chance of firing a bullet but if you don’t spin the chamber, the probability is 1 out of 4 because the next possible chamber cannot be the chamber from the first round and it also can't be the 2^nd bullet or else the gun would have fired a bullet the first time around. Therefore, there are 4 possible total chambers and 1 bullet that could be fired if you pull the trigger right away, hence the 1 out of 4 probability.

Hopefully some of you will be asked to answer similar brain teasers in your interviews and you will be prepared to ace them! Just don’t answer too quickly or else you will look suspicious!

Mission District Barrio

You know you live in the hood when thieves steal your rims midday and leave your car on a single stack of bricks instead of cinder blocks. *This picture was taken 2 blocks away from my apartment.*

Bay To Breakers: Why SF Is Awesome

 

Back on the East Coast, I had never heard of Bay to Breakers, but ever since arriving in the Bay Area, everyone has been telling me that I had to check it out. Bay to Breakers is an annual 12K (7.5 mile) race that spans across the city and was originally conceived approximately 100 years ago as an event to raise the mood of the city after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The event is no ordinary footrace and can best be described as a mix of Halloween + Mardi Gras + 12K race. There are serious runners who run the race competitively but most people just walk behind them with “beverages” in hand and creating a moving street party for several miles.

                 

In my opinion, this event represents the culture and spirit of San Francisco because everyone comes out to have fun and be creative. This isn’t some drunken hookup fest for young twenty-somethings like spring break in Cancun and it isn’t a trashy public flashing party like Mardi Gras. Sure, there are plenty of naked people who participate in the event but nudity is part of the carefree spirit of SF, and not an attempt to collect beads or appear on Girls Gone Wild videos. Furthermore, this event would not work in many other places like NYC. For example, people in SF are generally more laid back, friendly, and far less aggressive than people in NYC. I think a testament to this fact, is that I hardly saw any cops for the first few blocks and overall, the police presence was very minimal and many police offers were taking pictures and enjoying the event themselves (rather than busting people). Overall, it was an epic experience and I highly recommend that everyone come check it out at least once in their lifetime.

And for you Cornellians out there, B2B is like Slope Day X 10!

Video of Bay to Breakers:

Business Cards – Every Job Hunter Should Have Them

A good piece of advice that I got from a fellow Cornell alum (thanks Suzie!) is that I should have business cards with me when I go to networking events. Initially, I was hesitant about the idea because I wondered what I would put on my card. After all, I don’t own a business nor do I work for one, so it didn’t make sense for me to have a “business” card. But after thinking about it, I changed my mind for the following reasons:

• If someone asks for your card, and you don’t have one, you will look like a clown. OK, maybe not a clown but a less serious networker/job seeker.  And after having business cards, I can say that I feel more confident when I attend networking events (probably because I'm not nervous about people asking for my card anymore).
• You never know for sure who you impressed with your schmoozing. If people have your card and they liked you, they have a means to get in touch with you. If they don’t have your card, the onus is completely on you to follow-up with each and every person you met.
• Business cards are easier and oftentimes more acceptable to carry around than copies of your resume.

So what to put on my card? Sure I could skip the company name but what was I going to put as my title? CEO? The Job Hunter? Unemployed MBA? Well the answer is that you put your target role as your title. If you want to be in investment banking, put “Investment Banking Associate”. If you want to be in internet marketing, put “Online Marketing Analyst”. However, the more narrow your title, the less applicable your card will be in various situations. For example, let’s say you are open to CPG (consumer packaged goods) marketing roles but you put “Online Marketing Analyst” on your card. Well, your card might ding you because it suggests that CPG marketing is not your top choice. It might be better to just put “Marketing Analyst” as your title unless you have multiple versions of business cards (just like resumes), which in case, you can be as specific as you want.

And don’t be scared to be creative (see above sample)! If you bartend on weekends, feel free to add a second title and say you are a mixologist (unless all you do is pour beers). Or if you are an avid photographer, say that you are an amateur photographer (or professional if you have been paid for your work). The point of this is to stand out and show that you are different and unique from all the other job seekers out there. And if there is nothing interesting or different about you, well, you will have a tough time if you are asked why you should be hired over everyone else.

So where do you get business cards from? My personal favorites (I don’t get any commission from this) are MOO cards (http://us.moo.com) and Vistaprint (http://www.vistaprint.com). I have used both in the past and they are good and cheap. You can even customize your own card design and upload pictures and make it snazzy. Be mindful of course of where you hope to work in terms of how conservative their cultures are. For example, don’t jazz up your card and try to be cute if you are targeting bulge bracket investment banks on Wall Street. Likewise, don’t make your card all text, no graphics, and boring if you are trying to get a job at Google or Apple.

The bottom line is that if you are looking for a job, go spend $25 and get some business cards!

The Most Common Question That People Ask Me

If there is one question that you are guaranteed to be asked after graduating unemployed, it is going to be “So what do you do all day?”

Whether it is my parents, my friends, recruiters or my roommates, EVERYONE asks me this question without fail. If you 2010 MBA grads find yourself in my shoes a few months from now, be prepared to have an answer ready. It isn’t an unreasonable question but I get the impression that many people assume that I am just hanging out all day.

This is what people assume is daily routine:

Here is my actual daily routine:

Although my schedule looks devoid of fun, I do deviate from the schedule from time to time to relax and have fun, especially when there are free zip line rides being offered in San Francisco!

The Clock Strikes Twelve

 

It was an epic run to the Sweet 16 and the past week was unforgettable for all Cornellians. The Cornell vs Kentucky Viewing Party here in San Francisco was held at Jillian’s (yes, the chain one). I would have estimated that 250-300 people showed up, but the capacity is listed as 660 people on the Jillian’s website and the place was full. It was so packed that they had to bust out the velvet rope and let people in sporadically as if it were some hot night club. If you came after the opening tip, the wait time was around 20 minutes just to get inside! Now that is what you call Big Red Spirit.

SF Viewing Party: Cornell vs Wisconsin

After oversleeping for the Round 1 Viewing Party against Temple (it was at 9:00AM okay), I made sure I went to the Round 2 Viewing Party this past Sunday. Watching the game at a sports bar with local Cornell alumni was more fun than watching the game at home by myself. I don’t think my roommates wanted to hear me yelling at the TV either.

About 100 alumni came out for the event and I managed to network with two older alumni who “unfortunately” are working at biotech startups— one is developing DNA sequencing technology and the other is developing anti-bodies. Although their work sounded fascinating, I really had no idea what they were talking about so there was no way I was going to impress anyone into hooking me up with a job. On a brighter note, Cornell crushed Wisconsin and made it to the Sweet Sixteen! Go Big Red!

           
 

Is The Job Market Improving?

My apologies for my blogging hiatus but I have been devoting more time to writing cover letters over blog posts. I love blogging but I really need to get a job so that I don’t become the first Cornell MBA to become homeless.

Because I am usually the token-unemployed person in social settings, people tend to ask me if I think the job market is improving. Well, it is easy to say that the economy is improving simply because the stock market has bounced back and there aren’t massive corporate bankruptcies anymore. However, recent data from the Labor Department showed that in 371 out of 372 metro areas, the jobless rate went up in December 2009 from  a year earlier. But what does the government know? Perhaps a better indicator of an improving job market is the number of job postings on Doostang! (Yes, I am still paying for Doostang despite the fact that I have gotten ZERO interviews from using it.)

So according to the Doostang Help Wanted Index, the job market was off to a slow start in 2010 but in the past week, hiring has begun to pick up. 

Those statistics sounds great until you realize that there are still a boatload of unemployed people out there. For example, I went to a job fair in Oakland the other week and there was a line wrapped around the block. As I approached the venue, I was hoping that some company was having a fire drill but to my dismay, it was just a crowd of job seekers just like me.

UC Santa Barbara & Elephant Seals

Happy New Year everyone! I took a weekend trip down to Santa Barbara over New Year’s weekend and had the chance to check out UC Santa Barbara. One crazy thing about UC Santa Barbara is that everyone travels by bicycle. There were so many bicycles that I thought that I was in China (well, at least China in the 1980s before cars got so mainstream).

             

On the drive back to San Francisco, I saw a kid (at Pismo Beach) trying to pet a pelican (his friends egged him on). This was my cue to whip out my camera in case the pelican decided to try to eat the kid.  I don’t know a lot about pelicans but I know enough that they don’t like people petting them. Lucky for the kid, the pelican did not try to eat him in retaliation for being harassed.

Also on the drive back to SF, I saw one of the coolest things that I have seen in a long time: ELEPHANT SEALS! These animals are HUGE! Apparently the bulls can grow up to 16 feet long and weigh 6,000 lbs. So if you are ever driving up the Central California coast, make sure you stop by San Simeon and check them out.

And as you probably guessed, my New Year’s resolution is to find a job!

California: The Worst Place to Look For a Job

If you are looking for a job, DON’T come to California unless you absolutely must have good weather and the best selection of fresh produce. It has been 6 months since I graduated with my MBA from Cornell University and I find myself still looking for a job. I will admit that things have been more challenging than I had originally anticipated and I think a major factor is because of my unwavering desire to live in San Francisco.

California, with a jobless rate of 12.3%, is tied for the 3rd highest unemployment rate in the country. However, once you factor in total population, California kicks everyone else’s butt in terms of number of unemployed people living in the state. There are more jobless bums (roughly 4.5 million) living in California than there are total people living in the state of South Carolina. Ultimately, this means that the amount of competition that I am facing for new jobs is that much more intense than anywhere else in the country.

All you 2010 MBAs who are still unemployed at graduation:  take heed and choose wisely when you decide where you want to live after B-school. Many companies right now will not consider you if you are out-of-state because they don’t want to pay for relocation. And as you can see, there is a huge variance in unemployment across the country. If I could do it again, I still would have moved to San Francisco because the avocados and tomatoes alone make it all worthwhile.