Internship/Full-Time Interview Bidding

Do all schools have the open/closed list bidding system? If not, which ones don't? Are the people on the open list at a disadvantage (i.e. the firms resent having to interview them)?

Feel free to move this if you think it belongs in one of the other sub-forums (B-School Life maybe).

Is there a thread or some other source of info that you can link to that explains this whole process? I'm not very familiar with it and would like some background info (in addition to others' thoughts on the questions you asked).

(edit: And I'm quite sure Kellogg uses this system, or so I have gathered during some of river's chats)

Here's basically how it breaks out (here at booth anyway)

Just about every firm (a few exceptions sometimes exist) will interview X candidates as interview invites and Y (where Y is generally quite a bit smaller than X, but sometimes as much as X) candidates as open candidates. Round here, we call the X people "closed listed" - meaning they made the closed list. There's no set ratio of X:Y -- sometimes you'll see it approach 1:1 and sometimes its 10:1.

From there, you get a fixed amount of bid points you can allocate as you see fit. Here, its 1000 (the number doesn't matter really, it could be 10,000 and all the prices would just increase appropriately). That 1000 points you can allocate any which way you want to firms that haven't closed listed you and you just have to think ahead of how you want to handle that.

So here's a hypothetical example: You apply to 5 firms. Lets say that in week 1, 3 of those firms release their decisions. In week 2, the other 2 will.

Week 1:
-------
The three firms releasing their decision might be, lets say, Apple, Microsoft and Sun. You get Apple, but Microsoft and Sun don't closed list you. You go online and look them up to see if you can bid on them. Lets say you look em up and you see the following for Microsoft:

# Length Date(s) Open/Invitational Slots
1 30 Tue 18-Nov-2008 Open 4
2 30 Tue 18-Nov-2008 Invitational 11

(BTW, I'm pulling a random job here, its not one of the three actually mentioned). That means they invited 11 (but not you) and there are 4 slots avaliable for you to bid on. Here at Booth you can see the bid history from last year (if the same job existed) so here you see:

Slots: 4; Bids: 16; Price: 500; Min/Average/Max bid: 8/326/775

That means that, last year, 16 people bid on this job - 4 people got it, and the average bid was 326 but you needed to bid 500 to get it. Thats actually quite high.

Lets say you then look at the next job you didn't get -- Sun and you see something similar but now the bid history says

Slots: 3; Bids: 10; Price: 60; Min/Average/Max bid: 1/48/135

That means that last year, Sun was "cheap". You could get a slot for just 60 points. (Again the numbers/data here is made up, I'm not even sure Sun is in business anymore, is it?).

Now you have to think through things:
1. You know that next week you find out from 2 more firms. Are those more important? If you don't get them, how many bid points will you need?
2. If you bid on these and get them both can you prepare?
3. You notice that Sun's interview is on the Friday after Apples. If you get a second round for Apple it might conflict with Suns -- and here's the thing, if you bid, win and don't cancel soon enough, your points are gone. If Sun costs you 60 points thats one thing, but what if it was 500?
4. Last year Microsoft was really popular - 500 points! What's it worth to you?

So you have to plan ahead a bit.... but basically its really simple.

1. You get invited. If you don't get invited you can bid.
2. If you are successful bidding you can interview.
3. If you are not sucessful you can be on a waitlist (so that if someone drops out you can fill their slot. The waitlist is ordered by bid quantity. So if the price was 50 points and you bid 49, you'll be first in the waitlist). The waitlist does move - and sometimes a LOT - especially towards the end of the recruiting cycle as waves of offers come in and suddenly 20-30 people might accept an offer.

Thats about it.

As far as people knowing you bid - in general, your interviewers don't know (and don't care) - people do get jobs from the bid lists, but I'm sure it varies by firm.

great insight into booth recruiting , thanks rhyme +1

+1 rhyme

I didn't know that you got to bid after the closed lists come out. Good to know.

good stuff, thanks rhyme! +1

Awesome rhyme! Thanks you!

The process is basically identical here at Darden. Students have a chance to go through the recruiting process and attend firm events; then at the end of the process, the closed list comes out and there is a certain amount of time for people who didn't make the list to bid and see if they can get one of the available spots. Of course, if you've attend 4-5 events with a firm and they didn't add you to their closed list, bidding for a spot might be quite futile. The school has a requirement that firms that interview on campus must allocate a number slots (generally 1/4 I think) to open bidding. Certainly, some firms would prefer not to be forced to interview people they didn't select for their closed lists, but the school has the policy for the benefit of students. Darden provides a record of bidding and results from past years, so students can plan accordingly, and inject their own views on the current job market.

The OP asked whether firms resent being forced to interview people who bid their way onto their interview lists. The answer is that it depends. With the IB firms, which tend to visit early and often, some clearly gave no shot to people who bid their way onto the lists. DB was one where people who made the closed list were given rubber-stamp first-round interviews, while bidders were grilled mercilessly and from what I could tell had no real shot of moving on to the second round. On the other hand, I know that Citi and I think CS eventually hired people who bid for their lists. Keep in mind, the actual process used by a particular firm will vary depending on the team interviewing at a certain school, and the relationship they have, so don't apply the names universally.

Another dynamic you must consider is that some firms interview earlier (and from what I understand pay a hefty chunk of cash to do so) while other come later. The firms that come earlier have the best shot of landing their targeted candidates, while the firms that came later seemed more likely to take bidders, which probably correlates with the fact that many of the top choices had already committed. An interesting twist was that one firm (maybe more than one) actually asked some people who were clearly top candidates to bid to get on their lists - to use some of their points to show that they were really committed to that firm. The reality, of course, was that the firm was slightly less desirable and the top candidates were in fact more interested in other firms.

Hey terp, where'd you get that image as your avatar? I'd be curious to see teh full size.

Great posts Rhyme and Pelihu, kudos.

I'm wondering whether it's an advantage or disadvantage when schools require a high percentage of interview slots to be open to bidding. For example, at Tuck all on campus recruiting is 50% closed list, 50% bidding. That's mandated by the school, the companies have no choice. In a way I guess it's positive because you can pretty much interview with any firm you want. On the other hand if close listers are looked at much more favorably then bidders (as stated in Pelihu's post) then having only 50% of the slots closed would obviously make it harder to be one of the "favored" closed list candidates. Any thoughts on whether its an advantage/disadvantage/neutral to have this many open spots?

+ 1 pelihu.

You answered the follow up question that I was going to ask rhyme with regards to what on earth would one's chances be if he/she didn't get placed on the closed list.

At Kellogg right now its 50/50 split for open and closed. Next year it is supposed to be switching to I believe 70/30. You can get on the closed list, alternate, or not invited. Alternates get in if people drop off whether they bid on or are invited. Alternates get ranked, I have heard of people being very high numbers for the consulting companies who have 100+ interview slots.

As for getting in off the open vs. closed list. It really depends on the company...I have seen some companies who take a lot of open list people and some who take none. However, if you get alternate here at kellogg you know your position relative to their list. So if they have 20 spots, 10 open and 10 closed and you are number 2 alternate...then at many schools you would be on the closed list since they dont use the 50/50 split.

Its not as complicated as you would think. I tend to feel if you make the alternate list for a lot of these positions its not that different than getting invited you just have to spend points. Huge numbers of people apply for a lot of the lists and there are certain people who clean up...the girl who worked in marketing before is probably getting on all the top CPG lists where as the person with no background will have a harder time. As rounds get later on your chance of getting off the alternate goes up drastically as people who are on lists get offers and drop off. A lot of MC people use other types of companies as their plan B.

Thanks River! +1

Ugh, I know that i will be terrible at this when the day comes. I always think that I'm being super sneaky and clever on e-bay and it never works out quite right.

I can totally see myself being like "i'm all in on google" and then realizing afterwards that I've just totally and completely screwed myself.

Yeah, I hate those bastards that come in and 'snake' your item.

You are like me. I downloaded a firefox extension to monitor last minute interview drops (which are handled in real time, so theres a benefit to keeping an eye out).

Great info rhyme, pelihu, and river.

FYI: Yes Sun Microsystems still exists, but just barely. http://quotes.nasdaq.com/asp/SummaryQuo ... ected=JAVA

Thanks rhyme, pelihu and river!

Fantastic insight. Thanks rhyme, river and pelihu! [+1]