Tag Archives: interviews

Academics, Events, Melissa, Recruiting

In defense of mock interviews

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Rishnie and I at our first MPA recruiting event!

Hello everyone! Recruiting season is officially here! This week was a relatively light week according to older MPAs and my audit professor, Professor Kachelmeier.  Regardless, this week has definitely taught me that time management is going to be ESSENTIAL as the recruiting season goes on. This week we had mock interviews, and company nights with a few firms. I will share with you three things that mock interviews taught me this week.

1. Don’t be nervous: This is KEY to the interview process. I can tell you that before I have even had my first ‘real interview’ because it is a universal truth that completely applies here. Your interviewer can sense your nerves. Sounding nervous can convey the message that you are unprepared, which is something that can quickly put you at the bottom of the firm’s prospective intern list. You have to remember that recruiters are people too.  Don’t be nervous because you think that they are judging you. They truly WANT you to succeed.

2. Be yourself: I think this little idiom applies to every aspect of life, however, I will explain its relevance in regard to mock interviews/real interviews. Basically what it all boils down to is that we are all MPAs.  Texas has the number one accounting program in the nation, and the recruiters know how well McCombs prepares us for our careers. That being said, your interviewer is really trying to discover if you would be a good fit for his/her firm. It is all about your personality because nobody wants to work with colleagues that they do not like. You must stay true to yourself because the “interview version” of you must be consistent with the “work version” or else you convey that you are not being real.

3. Practice makes perfect: There is no better way to prepare for real interviews than participating in a mock interview. If you make a mistake in a mock interview, you can fix it before your real interviews. If you make a mistake in your real interview, you can’t go back and fix it.

I strongly encourage EVERYONE to do mock interviews and please comment if you have any questions about the process!

Academics, Valerie

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

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Learning to accept average has been among my many lessons in this competitive program.

Much like the aforementioned idiom this post is more about perspective than it is about beauty. Since I’ve been in the MPA program I’ve had two interesting encounters with perspective:

1. A change in my perspective

When people used to ask me how I did on an exam or an assignment I would always compare to myself, generally my past performance or a goal. So someone might say “how did you do?” and I would think about how my performance stacked up and say “I did well” or “I didn’t do as well as I would have liked”.

In this program I have no idea what “well” means. Objectively my percentage of comprehension/retention of presented material is about 75% which to me seems awful, but we’re comparing apples to oranges in terms of amount material presented.

On the bright side the program does provide an alternative measure of performance: comparison to others. This is a less attractive option to me than self comparison because the people here are really smart, but it’s what I’ve got to live with. Now that I’m getting a better grasp of the curving system I always compare myself to the mean. It’s a very strange adjustment to make statements relative to average because historically average has never been my goal, but I try to remember that in this crowd average is still pretty good. Continue reading Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder →