Monday, February 1, 2010

The Summer Hunt

I am trying to be very focused on my summer internship search, which should take me out of OCR (on-campus recruiting) for the most part. However, I am finding the job board and classmates' aspirations to be very distracting.

A winery in northern California, a New York private equity fund, Apple's online store--none of these are great fits for what I want to do this summer. However, when I think long enough about them, I seem to be able to fit them into a box that makes them acceptable enough to invest 30 minutes writing a cover letter. But do I really want to invest a couple hours preparing for an interview and then an hour actually doing the interview on campus? And if I got an offer, would I accept it? No and no and no.

But the real problem is actually not the 3-4 hours applying and interviewing for a job I don't want. The problem with this strategy is that when I expand the universe of jobs to pursue from truly excellent fits to maybe-I-can-get-them-to-fit jobs, I am completely inundated. There are enough potential positions that are truly excellent fits that I barely have enough time in the day to make the connections I need to pursue them, so opening up that universe by even half a degree is to truly open the floodgates.

Time to refocus.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow man, that is so frustrating, you know, when unemployment is at 10% and you're worried that there are just too many great jobs to choose from you'll never be happy!

Palo Alto for a While said...

Not so many jobs to choose from, so many job leads to follow. Most may not actually lead anywhere.

Elizabeth Dark said...

My husband has been having the same problem...it's hard trying to stay focused. He had to turn down a good offer already because it just wasn't what he wanted to do! It was scary, but it's really best to only pursue internships/jobs that you'd take if offered. Good luck!!

Dorothy said...

I think a little bit of focus would help here, after all you only got so many hours in a day, use it wisely to pursue something you feel really passionate about pays in the long run I suppose. It's a fine balance between being open to new opportunties and focusing on your areas of interests. I can totally see myself struggling with this one year down the road~ :) good luck!

Jeremy C Wilson said...

Sounds like things at b-school are still a bit better than law school. But nonetheless a tough time to recruit. Best of luck!

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