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Summer OCI interview time selection opens up tomorrow. Wondering what the general consensus is... better to interview first thing in the morning? Or be the last one of the day? Or does it really not matter? Submit your thoughts.

This his been discussed a lot of times. Generally I'd say the earlier the better. Last of the day and right before lunch are probably the worst slots, imo.

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bk1 wrote:This his been discussed a lot of times. Generally I'd say the earlier the better. Last of the day and right before lunch are probably the worst slots, imo.

My bad. I did a search but wasn't able to find a thread dedicated to this. Mind you, a single search isn't exactly comprehensive either.

bk1 wrote:This his been discussed a lot of times. Generally I'd say the earlier the better. Last of the day and right before lunch are probably the worst slots, imo.

This does seem to be the conventional wisdom, but when I interview on campus, I tend to have the best memory of the first couple of interviews, the last couple before lunch, and the last couple of the day. And assuming it was a decent interview, having a better memory of it makes it more likely that I'm going to recommend a callback. So I think it really depends on the interviewer. My advice is not to worry about your time slot and just focus on doing the best you can in the interview.

My gut says earlier is better, but I also received callbacks twice from the last interview of the day (~4:40pm).

In my experience, it made a HUGE difference. I kept track and the difference in percentage of interviews converted into callbacks was 57 percentage points. I was solid in the morning and pure shit in afternoon. I attribute this to a number of things: conveying less enthusiasm repeating the same shit all day; the rooms being hotter in the afternoon; the interviewers being bored; and my contacts being dry. I also slept very little the night before the first day (in addition to nerves, my apartment's fire alarm went off at 2am).

Obviously ymmv, but if you think any of those factors would affect you, definitely put the important firms in the am.

enibs wrote:

bk1 wrote:This his been discussed a lot of times. Generally I'd say the earlier the better. Last of the day and right before lunch are probably the worst slots, imo.

This does seem to be the conventional wisdom, but when I interview on campus, I tend to have the best memory of the first couple of interviews, the last couple before lunch, and the last couple of the day. And assuming it was a decent interview, having a better memory of it makes it more likely that I'm going to recommend a callback. So I think it really depends on the interviewer. My advice is not to worry about your time slot and just focus on doing the best you can in the interview.

In addition, the last slot before lunch and the last slot of the day give me the flexibility to run the interview a little longer if I want, which I think is also to the interviewee's benefit. Otherwise I have to be focused on ending the interview before I hit the 20 minute mark lest I get behind schedule (which is death in a day of OCI interviewing). I hate 20 minute interviews - always feel like I'm ending before I got started. But those are just my idiosyncracies, so I wouldn't want to generalize.

stannis wrote:In my experience, it made a HUGE difference. I kept track and the difference in percentage of interviews converted into callbacks was 57 percentage points. I was solid in the morning and pure shit in afternoon. I attribute this to a number of things: conveying less enthusiasm repeating the same shit all day; the rooms being hotter in the afternoon; the interviewers being bored; and my contacts being dry. I also slept very little the night before the first day (in addition to nerves, my apartment's fire alarm went off at 2am).

Obviously ymmv, but if you think any of those factors would affect you, definitely put the important firms in the am.

Obviously, the quality of your interview is more important than anything else, so if you're a morning person (or not a morning person), you should try to schedule accordingly.

Right after lunch (1-2) also sucks. I got cutoff a couple of times because the interviewer was late coming back.

I actually liked the 3-4ish slot, because this seemed to be a time when a lot of interviewers had to step away for clients and so you'd get stuck with an associate, which is a much easier interview.

This probably depends on the interviewer as much as your own personal quirks; either way, you can't control who you're going up against, so no real point in overthinking it.That said, my worst interviews were generally the very early morning slots (think 8:40 am) where neither of us were properly warmed up for 20 minutes of bullshitting. The best ones were often the interviews immediately afterwards.

Another thing to factor for is how much time you leave in between screeners. I liked the chaos of having four screeners back to back with literally no time in between. You're running around like a lunatic rather than creepily lurking outside a door, listening to the kid ahead of you while dread slowly builds. I got the sense that everyone else preferred to lurk. Embrace the chaos, I say.

I would rather be dead last than late in the day. My last slot screeners I'd open with something akin to "Hi nice to meet you, this is the last slot right? gimme a few minutes to run through my thing, and we'll see if we can get you out of here early." They were pretty all about that idea.

Glasseyes wrote:This probably depends on the interviewer as much as your own personal quirks; either way, you can't control who you're going up against, so no real point in overthinking it.That said, my worst interviews were generally the very early morning slots (think 8:40 am) where neither of us were properly warmed up for 20 minutes of bullshitting. The best ones were often the interviews immediately afterwards.

Another thing to factor for is how much time you leave in between screeners. I liked the chaos of having four screeners back to back with literally no time in between. You're running around like a lunatic rather than creepily lurking outside a door, listening to the kid ahead of you while dread slowly builds. I got the sense that everyone else preferred to lurk. Embrace the chaos, I say.

I second the idea that you're probably overthinking this. Unless your resume changes things, your mesh (the kind that doesn't have anything to do with the time of day) with the interviewer will matter more than anything. With that said, I felt most comfortable in my second and third interview of the day. You get your nerves our after the first, and during the second you still are energized but have less nerves. Good luck!