Prospects

I have an interview set for Monday for a financial analyst role at a nonprofit organization. I’m doing serious research in preparation for the interview, because this would be a really excellent job to cut my teeth on in the finance industry. Budgeting, forecasting, research and general corporate finance. Interestingly, this opportunity came through a placement agency, which is excellent because it makes my due diligence easier and because it gives me an edge when compared with random external applicants.

Here I will digress into communication theory. First off, if a decision is important (buying a car, choosing an apartment, hiring for a position), advice that comes from a person with whom the decision-maker has a pre-existing relationship is generally given a lot of credit. Second – relating to the placebo effect – people tend to value things that they pay for more than things that are cheap or free.

However, I still have to ace the interview.  Which means brushing up on my corporate finance and my advanced Excel.  I’ll probably create a few pivot tables and VLookup cells just to stay up to date; it’s been a few months since the last time I used either feature.  I’d like to know whether the company uses Office 2003 or Office 2007, but that isn’t something that the placement agency is likely to know.  I’ll create a folder of documents on the CFO, the company, and anyone else I’m likely to run into (LinkedIn is great for that).  I’ll plan my route there and back to avoid the possibility of being late. Shine my shoes. All that fun stuff.

I also have an analyst position at a downtown firm on the back burner, but they’ve taken three months, two interviews, two phone conversations and innumerable e-mails, and I still haven’t gotten a direct answer. So at this point I’m proceeding under the assumption that the answer is no, and if I’m surprised, that will be excellent. It costs nothing to follow up anyway.