After spending the weekend helping out with BCSS recruiting at the NBMBAA Conference, I switched gears and hopped a plane to SFO so I could participate in McKinsey’s second-year student recruiting at Stanford GSB. While out west, I had to wear two hats and help out on behalf of both the Southern Office (I’m on the core GSB recruiting team for them) and BCSS (I’m the GSB BCSS recruiting captain). I thought I’d get all mixed up with both roles, but it worked out really well because the majority of the BBSA students at the GSB are interested in the SO, which made things much easier.

While in Palo Alto, I attended a variety of recruiting events, including a high potential candidate breakfast, a series of coffee chats held in the Career Management Center office, an undergraduate diversity recruiting reception, a Southern Office candidate dinner, and an MBA diversity recruiting breakfast. Through all of the events, I fielded a steady stream of questions about everything from my current experiences in The Firm (all 6 weeks worth of it), getting prepared for case interviews, leveraging one’s summer internship for success with McK for full-time, and even what it is like to be a member of the ATL/Southern Office. As you can probably tell, I enjoy reaching out and providing as much information as I can to folks, but answering these students’ questions brought out a different sort of excitement because the responses I was giving could play a role in helping somone make a major life decision about their post-MBA career path. Maybe I’m making a bigger deal out of it than it really is, but I put a lot of effort into making sure that what I was saying was as clear and detailed as possible. Also, as someone who got the big “heck naw” from McK the first time around and was successful for full-time, it felt good to be proof that keeping at it can have successful results. I don’t know if what I had to say had any true impact on the MBA2′s I met with, but I’d like to think it was worth it to McK to have flown me out there for the recruiting effort.

In addition to my recruiting tasks, I was able to visit the folks in the Student Life office and Admissions, both of which I’d gotten to know very well during my two years at the GSB. Also, I saw a ton of folks who were MBA1′s to me but are not second-year students (now that was a weird experience to see MY 1st years being the “big guys on campus”). Finally (and best of all), I got to spend some quality time with my GF, who is still studying at Stanford. Basically, I made sure I got some “social” in with my “professional” during the two days I spent at “The Farm”. All in all, it felt GREAT to return to Palo Alto, not only as an alum, but an alum who was recruiting for McKinsey. Two years ago, I stepped onto the GSB campus with hopes of joining The Firm and now it’s all happened. I really dig it when things go full circle like this