Last week I was at an open house held by a major investment banking firm, which for the purposes of this column we will refer as Moldman Machs. The open house was held at the faculty club, and for those of you who have never attended an event like this, let me paint the scene. There are about 150 students all dressed in business attire, all sort of milling around acknowledging each other cautiously, but with that look of ambitious determination that suggests that they would easily club out your knees to talk to the head recruiter first.
I sit next to my goofy ex-roommate trying to make small talk. We nervously acknowledge the acquaintances that walk by: the man who shaved his head bare so that he could dress up as Judge Mills Lane for Halloween, now wearing a jacket and tie and looking professional; the girls whom I normally see dancing on the stage at Fish Co., dressed in business suits and talking about global capital markets.
After the presentation ends, it is time for "networking." Now, "networking" in this scenario is the chance for a bunch of ambitious prospective investment bankers to kiss the asses of current investment bankers. This does not entail a one-on-one conversation. Five soon-to-be's talk to each already-is, asking "smart" questions such as, "How do you like the performance of your division?" So I am faced with a decision: should I go up to some of these people and ask questions that will make me sound smart, or should I go hit the little hot dogs at the food table. I think that you can guess which one I chose.
It's around this point that I get the feeling that I'm definitely not supposed to be here. First I realize that all these people have to be smarter and more qualified than me, because they are acting like 45-year-olds. And then I remember why, for my entire high school career and the beginning of college, I had always said I would never go into business or finance as a career path: because it would turn me into this -- kissing ass, wearing a suit and pretending to be something I'm not. This isn't to say I don't find the finance stuff interesting; I actually do, and that's why I was there. But I never wanted to become this guy who asks Bill Wilson from Global Research what he thinks about the consumer confidence numbers for January.
Maybe I, and many of my fellow applicants, are looking at the whole process the wrong way. Deep in the back of our minds, I suppose we still believe in the emotionless, suit-wearing capitalist financier, and on this occasion we're trying to channel the stereotype. But that image is just that -- simply a stereotype. The young people who are already working in these fields are just like us, kids who like to have a good time. They may be brilliant and they may be dynamic, but they don't live in some plane of existence only reachable by disingenuous brown-nosing.
As many of us spend the next few weeks on the job search, let's not try to be somebody else. That's not what our prospective employers want, and it's not who we really are. As corny as it sounds, we have to be ourselves not only because it's what our future employers want to see in us, but more importantly because when we start acting like the stereotype, we become it. Brown is a unique place, and the attitudes that we develop here can be useful in changing the real world for the better. This is true not only for investment banking, but also for most everything we do after graduation. This is not to say that you have to go to your interviews in sandals and the T-shirt that you've been wearing for five days. But when you're in the interview, remember that you're wearing the five-day-old T-shirt under your button-down and tie, and that you're still going to be wearing it tomorrow. I hope you catch my drift.
Adam Nelson '06 is angling for a position with Storgan Manley.
