You spend the entire night prior to a recruiting event prepping yourself. You stand in front of the mirror asking highly intelligent questions which reveal your interest in the CA designation, but at the same time show you as a confident, articulate and social person. You practice and practice, thinking about what you are going to do, how you are going to act and how great this event is going to be till you walk in to the event.
In your head, you are thinking about maintaining eye contact, sounding confident and controlling your body language. You know it can be intimidating talking to a partner, but you are ready for it – after all, he’s only human too right?
Then BOOM, an element that you did not prepare for – good looking recruiters. Faced with the challenging task of talking to someone who is attractive, you pretty much forget everything else you prepared and stand there mumbling and jumbling the same way you do when you approach a girl at a club. We’ve all been there…(some more than others, but you know what I mean).
So here is the deal. I know I should be professional and not be concerned about something menial like their looks. However, please keep this fact in mind. When undergrad students start attending these events, they are 21-22 years old. Let me put that in perspective – we started drinking 3 years ago. Now think about how long you have been drinking for. Exactly.
As it is, while studying the exciting subject of accounting, only a few us were able to develop our “game”. What that means is that if you put the majority of us in front of an attractive woman, we will think about all the times we talked to an attractive girl and made a fool of ourselves. That is the last thing we need at recruiting events.
I know this is a ridiculous request, but I hope I have made you realize how serious of an issue this really is. As it is, we have a variety of issues that we have to consciously work on while at these events – throwing unexpected curve-balls at us doesn’t really help.
Awesome post! And so true…once while waiting for the senior manager to come get me for an interview, i was put into a room with two very attractive females who were first years at the firm…man I spent a lot of time thinking about ways to get her number lol
By: The Advisor on August 4, 2009
at 7:16 pm
O man, that is crazy. Can you imagine if they were the ones taking your interview? lol
By: big4bound on August 5, 2009
at 3:12 am
Haha, maybe it’s a guy thing? I always feel to nervous to notice how they look!
By: Kel on August 4, 2009
at 10:20 pm
Maybe they just don’t have good looking guy recruiters, lol. I know what you mean – sometimes I get nervous and my conversation is all I care about (even though I continue to royally screw my words over), but what if Brad Pitt was standing there trying to assess what kind of a candidate you were?
By: big4bound on August 5, 2009
at 2:31 am
@Big 4 Bound: Ever notice how so many girls majoring in communications are cute? Since none of them have any quantitative skills, all of them become recruiters. True story.
@The Advisor: Here is what you should have said, “Hey, if I have any other questions, would it be ok for me to email you or call you?”
By: AG on August 5, 2009
at 9:41 pm
Haha, good point. Although I should add, I have seen some pretty good looking women in audit as well. I guess they pick out all of them and send them to every single recruiting event.
By: big4bound on August 6, 2009
at 3:38 pm
Hee hee, I go to recruiting events so this post made me chuckle. Note @AG – big four firms can’t afford to hire people to work full-time as recruiters, aside from the people running the interviews themselves, who are most of the time former auditors and CA students themselves.
The attendees at these events are “line staff” – the people you’ll be working with. And many show up straight from audit sites having done little to spruce up, so you’re paying many of them a big compliment with this post.
By: Krupo on August 26, 2009
at 12:47 am
[...] – What’s with the good looking recruiters and reps? [...]
By: New around here? « Big 4 Bound on August 29, 2009
at 4:02 pm
How funny! Thanks for the compliment? Krupo’s right though, it’s just anyone signing up to come.
By: klumb on October 5, 2009
at 3:28 am