HBS Hell (Week)

Hell Week has come to Harvard.  I’ve heard whisperings of this infamous event ever since my first day on campus, and now that it is here I can confirm that it is, in fact, just as scary as it sounds.  Hell Week (or, “recruitment week”, as the HBS administration sugarcoats calls it) is the week that tons of companies come to campus to interview students for summer internships.  This is when the biggies are here - your consulting firms, investment banks, hedge funds, major consumer goods companies, tech companies, etc., and students pretty much run around like crazy people in suits trying to get the perfect internship.  It’s kind of like getting hazed by corporate America.

There are a variety of telltale signs that HBS has temporarily sunk down to the seventh circle.  These signs include, but are not limited to:  Everyone is anxiously walking around wearing suits; the man at the on-campus dry cleaner’s was incredibly stressed out by the insane number of overnight suit cleaning requests; the barista at the coffee place in Spangler is matching customers shot for shot of espresso in an effort to keep his energy up; there was a run on resume paper in the bookstore.

I’ve observed a variety of Hell Weekers, and have identified several different breeds in their natural habitats:

The Consultants:  Probably the most high strung of all of the Hell Weekers.  These aspiring road warriors tend to have upwards of 10 interviews scheduled, and they have been prepping for months.  Consulting interviews are case based, which is basically an excuse for interviewers to lock you in a room for an hour at a time and see how much they can make you sweat.  Hence the increased demand for overnight dry-cleaning service on campus.

The Hedge Funders:  Another particularly hardy breed, these future finance whizzes have been preparing stock pitches for weeks, and are known to pepper their vernacular with financial jargon, like, “I’m long Domino’s man, that sh*t is delicious!” (translation:  I really like Domino’s pizza).

The Investment Bankers:  The bankers run in packs, and thrive on their ability to crunch out financial models in excel for hours and hours (and hours) on end.  Rumor has it that they think in nested IF statements.  Banking interviews serve to assess not only your financial acumen, but also your capacity for working 100 hour weeks for an entire summer, so it’s helpful to enhance your intensity by chugging a 5 hour energy (or two) right before the interview starts so that you can ride that Niacin Flush all the way to an offer.

The Consumer Packaged Goods Peeps:  These bright young stars are the future managers of some of your favorite household brands, and are both quantitatively savvy as well as very creative.  I don’t get the sense that these interviews are as hard core as some of the others, but are nonetheless stressful, I’m sure.  For example, if you had to think of a hip new way to market toilet paper to the masses, could you?

The Techies:  Tech geeks flock to interview with giants like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook to try their hand at breaking the code (get it?!) to enter one of the most dynamic industries out there.  These interviews vary in their intensity, but definitely require a true passion for technology and all that it is doing / can do for the world at large.  HBS Urban legend has it that some of your more hard core techies actually tweet live while in the middle of interviews to keep the world updated on how it’s going.

If you happen to encounter any of the aforementioned in the wild, don’t panic.  Establish your dominance by making eye contact, back away slowly, and – if they start trying to “walk you through their resume” – run!

Good luck to all of the Hell Weekers at HBS and beyond…you’re going to crush your interviews, I’m sure!