
**Let's start off by having you introduce yourself:**

Hi everyone, I'm Michael. I'm about to graduate from John Hopkins University with a Bachelors in Economics and Applied Mathematics & Statistics. After graduation, I'll be moving to Australia to be a trader at Akuna Capital. 

**How did you find Edith and why did you decide to join?** 

To be honest, I've been interested in the income share agreement (ISA) space for a while through my role as the managing partner for A-Level Capital (JHU's student-run VC firm). 

College students have a lot of potential with very little immediate earning power - you're theoretically going to be earning a lot later or get a good job, but you don't necessarily make money today and you're surrounded by peers in a similar situation. 

To get from where you are to where you want to be, a lot of times it takes the help of people with much more experience than you or your friends. To me, Edith bridged that gap because you can pay later, and the amount you pay is tied to your level of success, not how much money you have in your bank account today. 

In a funny way, I thought connecting with mentors through Edith was a way to network with my future self. They're where I want to be in a few years, and I was able to soak up their experiences. 

**Let's talk a little more about your mentors, how did they help you and how did your relationship evolve over time?**

When I started the Edith Fellowship, I was pretty set on working in Venture Capital after graduation. Thomas is a VC at Clearvision Ventures, and he was able to get me the experience and exposure to realize that it wasn't where I wanted to start my career, although I might want to revisit it later.

As I explored different potential options, Leo was able to give me similar exposure in the Sales and Trading space. You can try reaching out to LinkedIn on your own, but getting these introductions from my mentors was really helpful for having deep and honest conversations from experts in different industries. 

In the past few months my destination changed, but my mentors were there to make sure I still got there.

Both Thomas and Leo also increased my confidence with behavioral interviews. I wasn't that good at the start, but just going over the questions over and over with them helped me iron out how to best present my story in a confident way.

Presenting yourself to your peers is totally different than presenting yourself to people in the workforce, and getting the reps in really helped out when it came to the real thing. 

**Any final words about joining Edith or the community?**

For the students out there considering Edith, the cost is totally worth it. What's 1, 2, or 3% of your salary for a year when compared to the potential positive of saving years of your life in the wrong career, or not ending up where you want to be? 

Having a mentor is a super unique relationship that sets you up for success. And it's not just your personal mentor - the community is there for you as well. I was in an interview process that Thomas and Leo weren't as familiar with, and there was an Edith mentor that was able to pitch in with exactly what I needed to succeed. 

*We want to thank Michael for chatting with us and sharing his experiences. If you have any questions you can reach us at founders@edithlabs.com. If you'd like to become a Fellow you can [join us here](https://edithlabs.com/join)!*

michael-hammer-spotlight

Edith Fellow Spotlight - Michael Hammer

## Quick Bio

Nancy is a Product Manager at Microsoft working on Office and studied CS and Econ at Johns Hopkins. She previously interned at Microsoft and Karuna Labs as both a software engineer and product manager. 

## Who She Can Help

Nancy is looking to help students at the intersection of software engineering and product management understand the right career for them. 

## What She Does for Fun

Outside of work, you can find Nancy writing and exploring local politics.

1594083517074

New Edith Mentor: Nancy Wang

## Quick Bio

Erica is a business intelligence analyst at Adobe. She graduated USC's Marshall School with a Bachelor's in Business Administration.

## Who She Can Help

Erica can help students interested in breaking into an analyst position at a tech company. 

## What She Does for Fun

On the weekends, you can find Erica hiking, learning to play tennis, or trying a new baking recipe.

new-mentor-erica-lee

New Edith Mentor: Erica Lee

## Quick Bio

Chris is a Product Manager at Facebook. He previously had roles at Rev.com, Favado, and Zynga.

## Who He Can Help

Chris is looking to help underrepresented and under-networked students break into product. He's looking to work with students as early in their process as possible, as he believes it's the best time to make an impact.

new-mentor-chris-tyler

New Edith Mentor: Chris Tyler

## Quick Bio

Lu is a PM at Facebook. He previously had roles as a consultant at McKinsey and Booz Allen Hamilton.

## Who He Can Help

Lu is looking to help students plan their careers and break into product. 

## What He Does for Fun

Lu is passionate about volunteering and giving back, and has spent significant time as an instructor for Minds Matter of San Francisco.

new-mentor-lu-zhang

New Edith Mentor: Lu Zhang

## Quick Bio

Lyndsey is a principal at Better Ventures and is passionate about impact investing. 

## Who She Can Help

Lyndsey is looking to help those from under-networked or underprivileged backgrounds break into venture. 

## What She Does for Fun

You can find Lyndsey hiking, kayaking, skiing, or enjoying live music in her free time.

new-mentor-lyndsey-boucherle

New Edith Mentor: Lyndsey Boucherle

## Quick Bio

Charlotte is a consultant at BCG with a background in mathematics and bioengineering. Previously, she worked at companies like SpaceX and Boeing.

## Who She Can Help

Charlotte is looking to help students from non traditional backgrounds break in consulting or engineering.

## What She Does for Fun

You can find Charlotte running, cooking, and skiing in her free time!

new-mentor-charlotte-kiang

New Edith Mentor: Charlotte Kiang

## Quick Bio

Yusef graduated NYU with a degree in Finance & Data Science. He currently works at Nomura as a Rates Volatility Trader. 

## Who He Can Help

Yusef is open to helping any student looking to break into trading. 

## What He Does for Fun

Yusef is an avid biker, amateur DJ, and film enthusiast. You can find him biking over 20 miles a day in New York after work.

new-mentor-yusef-shaheen

New Edith Mentor: Yusef Shaheen

## A Quick Bio

Deepak received his MBA from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business in 2019 and is currently a product manager at Google.

## Who He Can Help

Deepak is open to working with all types of students and has a particular interest in electronics, specifically in various IoT applications.  

## What He Does For Fun

You can find Deepak playing tennis and hiking in his free time. 

new-mentor-deepak-kumar

New Edith Mentor: Deepak Kumar

## A Quick Bio

George is a Senior Software Engineer at Valon and formerly worked at Amazon and Google. He did his undergrad at UC Berkeley studying EECS and also did his Master's at Stanford with a concentration in AI. 

## Who He Can Help

George is looking to help students especially interested in AI and systems navigate career paths across startups and more established companies. 

## What He Does For Fun

Outside of work, you can find George on a Dragon boat or playing disc golf.

new-mentor-george-he

New Edith Mentor: George He

## Quick Bio

Vivek graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019 with a major Psychology, Economics, and Molecular Biology. He's currently an Associate management consultant at Capco, a boutique global firm that specializes in Financial Services.

## Who He Can Help

Outside of work, his passion lies with helping others come up with career plans and always seek their potential by breaking the glass ceiling. 

## What He Does for Fun

He's an avid foodie and concert-goer and enjoys helping the community around him.

new-mentor-vivek-patel

New Edith Mentor: Vivek Patel

## Quick Bio

Simi is a Senior Manager of Account Strategy for Viant, a digital ad-tech company based out of Irvine. She did both her undergrad in Neuroscience and MBA at USC. 

## Who She Can Help

Simi is looking to help students just graduating college understand the scope of opportunities across strategy, operations, advertising, and marketing and develop and navigate promotion cycles and career growth.

## What She Does for Fun

When she's not working, she's always trying out new recipes or finding some way to get some physical activity!

new-mentor-simi-mazloom

New Edith Mentor: Simi Mazloom

## Quick Bio

Melisa is a product marketer at Google on the SMB Ads team. She's worked at a handful of early-stage consumer startups prior to Google. She graduated from USC where she studied Business Administration and Communication Design.

## Who She Can Help

She's passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion in tech.

## What He Does for Fun

Outside of work, you can find Melisa traveling, cooking, or reading.

new-mentor-melisa-seah

New Edith Mentor: Melisa Seah

## Quick Bio

Kshitij is a senior growth product manager at Invoice2go. Previously, he was a product manager at Tesla. 

## Who He Can Help

Kshitij is looking to help those from underrepresented backgrounds break into product management. 

## What He Does for Fun

Kshitij is a big fan of the Marvel Universe (comics and movies) and is also interested in cooking, Harry Potter, and tennis.

new-mentor-kshitij-maheshwari

New Edith Mentor: Kshitij Maheshwari

## Quick Bio

Winson is a UC Berkeley Economics and Data Science grad from Reno, Nevada. He currently is a business analyst at AMD working on Data Science projects to support CPU/GPU design + sales.

## Who He Can Help

Winson is looking to help students from underrepresented backgrounds break into roles in data science. 

## What He Does for Fun

Outside of work, Winson is into gaming, e-sports, geocaching, bouldering, and anime.

new-mentor-winson-truong

New Edith Mentor: Winson Truong

## Quick Bio

David is working as a Rotational Product Manager at Zynga, and a masters student from Imperial College London. He's currently working on the game [Star Wars Hunters](https://www.swhunters.com/)! Prior to that, he worked as a program manager at Uber.

## Who He Can Help

He's looking to help students who are interested in breaking into product management.

## Check Him Out!

You can check out his [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/zuodavid/) here!

new-mentor-david-zuo

New Edith Mentor: David Zuo

### Mocking with other students is like the blind leading the blind

I did 40 product management mock interviews in the summer leading up to senior recruiting. I had partners I mocked with every week, I had partners I mocked with as one-offs. I had a rotating door of people I tried to practice interviewing with. We'd mock product analytics, switch it up to design, and then strategy. I thought I was the most over-prepared person in the world. I proceeded to land 0 offers.

Mocking with other students is like the blind leading the blind. I'm just as qualified to give advice to someone else as I am to get a role, which apparently I wasn't. It's impossible to get mock interview experience with senior product managers who are also hiring; why would they ever want to mock with a college student?

That was the predicament I found myself in. In my first mentorship with Tyson on the Edith platform, we ran through a lightweight product question. I got feedback that I'd never heard before. What I'd previously thought was decisiveness was interpreted as recklessness. What I thought were reasonable jumps in logic were interpreted as an incoherent thought process. I got actionable feedback for the first time in a long time that moved me forward instead of pointing me in a random direction without any sense of true north.

I've recently accepted an offer to be the fourth product manager at a startup after I graduate.

article-mocking-without-mentorship

Mocking without Mentorship

**A Quick Bio**

[Caitlyn's LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/caitlynlubas/)

During this week's fireside chat, our co-founder Nick spoke to Caitlyn Lubas, a 2020 graduate of NYU Stern School of Business. Caitlyn studied Global Business and Marketing and is an incoming product specialist at Facebook. While in school, Caitlyn did two semesters abroad in Singapore and Florence, Italy, and attended other international experience programs in Ghana, Abu Dhabi, and Lima, Peru. She has also worked as a business operations intern at BLADE, a social media intern at IBM, and a product data operations intern at Facebook.

**Studying Abroad**

Caitlyn’s semesters abroad helped provide her a unique perspective on how the world works. She took advantage of all of the available opportunities that NYU offered to go and experience different cultures. According to her, the most valuable thing she learned from these adventures abroad was the ability to drop into an entirely unfamiliar setting and rapidly build up a network / community of friends. This adaptability helped her pick up the skills she needed in the diverse collection of internships she worked at. It’s helped immensely with her recruiting, since the unique characterization as the “girl who studied abroad a lot” makes it really easy for her profile to stand out to recruiters.

**Recruiting at Facebook**

As someone without a product management or technical background going into the field of product, the odds were stacked against her during the recruitment process. Especially in the highly competitive landscape of recruiting for PM, Caitlyn emphasizes the need to stand out to recruiters and communicate effectively that the cumulative skills you’ve acquired across your experiences add up to the experience a product manager needs. For example, starting a club, leading a startup or taking initiative to begin anything in your own life demonstrates leadership. Keeping track of meetings and coordinating people in your clubs could demonstrate organization and management skills. Tracking attendance or collecting feedback communicates a metric-focused view of the world, and attempting to improve those metrics embody what a product manager is all about.

Additionally, she also emphasizes the distinction between recruiting for startups vs large tech monoliths like Facebook. At big companies, recruiters don’t have the time to parse through thousands of applications and rely on an automated resume screening process called application tracking systems. Caitlyn’s pretty sure her edge, despite applying without a referral, came from her tailoring her resume to include the key words specific to the job description she was applying to, since those would scored well by the automated keyword scanner. Of course, these tricks only get you past the resume screens, when it comes to the interview, you’ll need to do your homework. For that, Caitlyn recommends product management newsletters, Decode and Conquer by Lewis C. Lin, and Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle McDowell.

**Takeaways:**

- If you don’t have past experience in product, find the qualities and skills that you developed in past experiences which relate to being a product manager, and communicate that you’ve picked up those skills
- Find key words in product focused job postings and incorporate those keywords into your resume
- Read Decode and Conquer by Lewis C. Lin and Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle McDowell
- Dive into the world of product, through newsletter, slack communities, Facebook groups, etc.
- Understand frameworks when it comes to interviews, for example the CIRCLES method

**As a Product Specialist**

Her experience as a product specialist at Facebook stands in stark contrast to past positions she held as social media intern and business development intern. She loves how her role allows her to see the results of her work, instead of working on marketing a product that was built by others. Being a product specialist allows her to work on a product team which sits between engineering, business and user experience. Caitlyn describes a key aspect of her role as “having empathy for the end user”, since it’s her job to now figure out what to build!

Caitlyn’s approach to professional development has been one of trying things out. She’s bounced around several different roles in order to find out what she does and doesn’t like and advises everyone to do the same. As Nick points out, this isn’t the conventional path seen in finance or software engineering, where people are expected to demonstrate their passion for their discipline by interning consistently in those fields to prove their commitment to their craft. But true to form, the role of product specialist is seen as a stepping stone career for Caitlyn to try out which direction she wants to go to next, whether it's engineering, user experience, or business. Right now, Caitlyn’s thinking that the world of user experience might be gratifying to go into, but anyone reading should forge their own path based off their experiences.

**Takeaways:**

- The role of product specialist is a stepping stone career to try out the different branches of product at a tech company
- It’s worth exploring different roles to see what kind of career is actually fulfilling, since committing to one before trying everything else out might leave you unfulfilled
- Being in product means you sit in the intersection between engineering, business, and user experience

**Who's Next**

Tune in this Thursday for more Fireside Chats with Edith Labs.

Fireside with Facebook Product Specialist Caitlyn Lubas

#### A Quick Bio

[Max's LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-liu-1588b5107)

Max is a San Diego native who grew up playing tennis. He was on the Varsity Men’s Team at UChicago where he studied computer science. While most of the tennis players encouraged him to study economics, he decided to pursue computer science because his business heroes (entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, hedge fund managers) all had a CS background.

Some of Max’s research at the SAND Lab included mobile computing, advanced adversarial localization, and VR security. He was also a finalist at MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference where he created a sports betting app to increase fan engagement in tennis.

#### Joining McKinsey

The Analytics Fellow interview process is almost exactly the same as it is for consultants, except there’s an additional technical interview during the end. The first round is a behavioral interview and case study, and you can expect similar final rounds.

The behavioral interview goes over working through a disagreement with a teammate. The how/why are the most important parts of your answer. Being able to deal with these situations is essential for consultants. There are three points to hit:
* How did you deal with it?
* Why did you approach it a certain way?
* How did it affect your teammate/you?

In terms of preparation, the classic case books are sufficient. You should practice with friends because talking through your answers is a skill you learn. McKinsey case interviews are known to be straightforward and measure your thinking/clarity of thought – it’s better to pause and gather your thoughts than to ramble without a point.

While networking is extremely important for careers like finance, it’s less important for consulting. Your application will be judged on the strength of your resume, which is broken down into GPA/projects/accomplishments. Worry about improving these rather than talking to as many consultants as possible.

#### Life as an Analytics Fellow at McKinsey

In some ways, Max’s role is similar to a general consultants in the sense that his projects will have a deck or recommendation as a final deliverable. His recommendations, however, differ from general consultants in that they’re more quantitative than qualitative. While he may deliver some model for real-time dynamic pricing, a general consultant’s deck may include more traditional strategy. Think Excel + Powerpoint versus Machine Learning + Powerpoint.

With that being said, McKinsey also gives their Analytics Fellows leeway in the type of projects they pursue because the role is still evolving. There are some Fellows who exclusively work on ML models, while some get involved in more traditional strategy work. Your review as a Fellow depends on both skills – do you have the general consulting toolkit and are you also an expert in analytics?

#### Covid-19 Impact?

McKinsey is one of the more resilient firms in times of uncertainty. Even during recessions like ’07-’08 they typically avoid layoffs, which allows the firm to come back stronger after the recessions end as many of their competitors have reduced capacity. So far, it seems like McKinsey hasn’t seen any impact in terms of recruiting or layoffs for Covid. In terms of work life, they are travelling less and have transitioned to a more regional model.

#### On Consulting and Entrepreneurship

Startups are all about solving a problem and many of them happen to be B2B problems. It’s almost impossible to understand your target customer if you haven’t experienced their pain firsthand, and being a consultant is an amazing way to understand where different types of companies struggle.

By virtue of the job you get to work with multiple companies and see how they deal with different issues. Because you live in their companies for extended periods of time, you get a sense of what is inefficient and can improve. If/when you transition into entrepreneurship after a career in consulting, you can feel confident selling to these companies because you’ve been in their shoes before.

For Max in particular, he can speak to their data analytics tools and workflows. VCs and companies care about product-team fit and doesn’t have to start from scratch trying to imagine what problems they may face.

#### Who’s Next

Next week, we’re chatting with [Sasha Iatsenia](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-iatsenia/), a Product Manager at Google. It’ll take place at 6:00PM PST on Tuesday the 30th. Comment your email on [this LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6682441020451385344/) for an invite to the event!


Fireside with McKinsey Analytics Fellow Max Liu

**A Quick Bio**

[David's LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-liu12/)

During this week's fireside chat, our co-founder Nick interviewed David Liu, a graduate of UChicago from the class of 2018. David currently works as a technology investment banker for Morgan Stanley, out of their Menlo Park office (aka the heart of Silicon Valley, to the uninitiated). While at UChicago, David was a teaching assistant for two MBA classes, conducted research in corporate taxation, and interned at Greenhill & Co. as an investment banking summer analyst.

**Investment Banking Recruitment**

Pretty early on, David knew that he was going to major in economics, as UChicago is a school without specialist finance or business majors, and Econ came pretty easily to him. His decision to pursue investment banking was far from pre-meditated; his first exposure to the industry came from his teammates on the tennis team, who talked about their exciting internships at investment banks last summer. Advice for recruiting for investment banking can be found plastered across the internet, and to David, one thing that’s often left out is the importance of making sure you actually enjoy the lifestyle. Before he began recruiting, he spent a lot of time making sure the life described on investment banking forums like Wall Street Oasis was something he truly believed he’d enjoy and excel at.

Once you’ve made sure that you want to become an i-banker, then it comes time to go all-in on that commitment. David recommends training for interviews and studying finance with friends, emphasizing that the skills needed to go into investment banking can 100% be acquired through self-study, available to anyone pursuing any major. Once your interview skills are down, immersing yourself in the world of finance, reading about recent deals, and keeping up with the news is only the cherry on top. When it comes to applying to companies, he cautions against drawing out the process of writing applications, advising in favor of applying to every investment bank in the industry sector that you're interested in to give yourself the best chance of success.

**Recommended Resources**

- **Breaking into Wall Street Guides**
- **Wall Street Journal**
- **Podcasts (Robinhood Snacks)**
- **Newsletters (Stratechery)**
- **S-1 or 10-K filings**

**Effects of Coronavirus**

From David's perspective, investment banking recruitment hasn't been impacted substantially by the Coronavirus except for a relative reduction in recruitment. Although he does recognize that the current situation has shone a light on the waste of time and money flying people across the country for 30-minute conversations in their offices represent, especially when a zoom conference would work just as well. According to David, the tech-focused branch of investment banking he’s most familiar with has seen a less significant impact than other branches of investment banking. Additionally, he’s noticed that many of his clients, like Scott Guthrie of Microsoft, have been re-evaluating the need to have offices and the true cost of work from home. Industries like agriculture are reflecting on how they can shore up the resilience of their supply chains in the event of another similar crisis.

**Misconceptions of Investment Banking**

Of course, as much as people talk about it, it’s not actually that often that people dive into what investment bankers really do. David laughs off the deck making or financial analysis as nothing more than “typing numbers into a keyboard”, and that the really enjoyable part of the job lies in regularly interacting with C-suite professionals from client companies much more senior to himself. He recalls how last February, he had to model financials to the executives at a $100B tech company, live. It’s not every job where you get to sit in on and listen to the world’s leading CEOs talk about how they think about their drivers and motivations. Of course, as Nick points out, “typing numbers into a keyboard“ is a substantial oversimplification of the complex qualitative skills an investment banker needs to develop, and learning the tricks to carry out the valuation of a company are vital skills any prospective investment banker should do well to pick up.

**Rapid Fire Questions**

- While looking at a recent deal, what should we looks for?
    - Read the press release, and pick up on the aspects that went into the decision making and rational
- Sophomore Year internship?
    - Bank of America Wealth Management, which is where he really found decided that he wanted to pursue investment banking
- Advice on converting internships to full time?
    - Show up and provide a morale boost, hard work and a great attitude
- Favorite Quarantine Activity?
    - Raising chickens with the family! Less context is funnier.

**Who's Next**

Tune in this Thursday for more Fireside Chats with Edith Labs. We'll be speaking Caitlyn Lubas, a mentor on the platform who currently works in Product at Facebook! Comment [here](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6675962070313398272/) to get an invitation!

Fireside with Morgan Stanley Investment Banker David Liu

### A Quick Bio

Andrew grew up in Colorado and graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. At GT, he joined a new program in almost every semester. He was a Varsity Lacrosse player for all four years and joined Greek life during his Freshman Fall. In the Spring, he joined a research group focused on geo technology. This experience prompted him to research abroad in the summer.

He joined the robotics team during his sophomore fall, and started a sustainability club the next semester. He took off his sophomore summer and fall to work at NASA’s JPL. Junior year spring he joined another research group focused on Martian advancement and renewable energy. He spent his senior year finishing up his classes while working at Tesla.

The following describes how he chose what activities to pursue, and his advice for those going through the process now.

### On prioritizing activities

Andrew thinks through his decision making process using the general structure of asking the why, what, and how. Why am I doing what I’m doing? What is the most effective way of doing the ‘why’? How do I achieve or define success within the what?

Andrew knew he was particularly passionate about Climate Change, but his varied experiences were all attempts to figure out how to best attack the problem. NASA’s JPL program was a great first step, but he realized while working there he wasn’t passionate about proving the Climate Change existed – the science has already done that  - rather he wanted to find a way to combat it. This is why he moved to Tesla as their sustainability mission really resonated with him, and it’s also why – for reasons we’ll discuss later – he moved to McKinsey.

While you’re in the ‘what’ stage, you’ll want to experiment with different methodologies to figure out what’s most effective for you in solving your ‘why’. It’s during the ‘how’ stage that you develop the industry-specific expertise you need to succeed in fulfilling both the ‘what’ and ‘why’.

For students who haven’t thought about their careers through this lens before, how should they go about it?

Finding work that’s fulfilling is a luxury that you can have only if you have the experience. Generally, when you apply to a company you are going to fall within two categories:

- You’re qualified and you don’t have the exposure
- You don’t have the relative experience and you’re not competitive for it

Usually, you won’t have luxury of being picky until you’re in the first section. Andrew was lucky to get the JPL offer because his research abroad happened to line up with the recruiters interest, but it was realistically a one in a million chance. Once he got the opportunity, however, he didn’t let it go to waste.

Students can apply the same philosophy to their recruiting processes – once you get the experience from your work or networking, you’ll want to take it horizontally and transfer it to another company.

At JPL Andrew worked on the Mars 2020 rover and did mechanical design for assembling the core. When he received his offer from Tesla, it was for a manufacturing position instead of a design position that he wanted, but took the opportunity and eventually was given the opportunity to move to the valley and work on their battery design team.

When he decided his goal was to work for Tesla, he approached it with a single-minded focus. He applied on three separate occasions and networked with over 10 engineers. He didn’t end up hearing back until the week after spring break and started 5 weeks after his interview. It would’ve been easy to quit during the process because he wasn’t getting the results he wanted, but he persevered because he had a real purpose driving him (his ‘what’).

What did he find was most effective while recruiting?

Being fully set on one company has its advantages and disadvantages, but for what it’s worth he took the same approach for McKinsey recruiting. Generally, Andrew thought there were two most effective approaches to recruiting.

- Alumni/personal connections – find someone who will vouch for your technical abilities and get an introduction from there. The introduction and referral can be extremely important
- Network with others – before he switched to Tesla Andrew talked to 10+ engineers at the firm and talked to 20+ consultants at MBB before he even started his fifth year

For students who haven’t found their ‘why’ yet or a particular company they’re interested in, how should they go about searching for it?

There’s three main questions a student could ask themselves: what kind of impact could my work at ______ have, who would it help, and is this something I care about? When you look around the world there’s a lot of injustice, and if there’s something in particular that makes you angry and no one is solving it, you should be the person who goes and does something about it.

For Andrew it was Climate Change. In Colorado they learned stop drop and roll at the same time as reuse and recycle. When he went to the South he was baffled that many people didn’t believe in climate change.

### What should you do to nail your interviews?

- If you know you’re going to have a technical interview, make sure you have them on point. Touch up on old concepts and be prepared to go into find details for your old projects. Why did you do what you did, and what were some factors you considered when considering the design or manufacturing decisions?
- Find people you respect going through the interview process and get together to practice questions
- Practice how you say things on an interpersonal level – you can get a vibe check with your interviewers (especially for case interviews). Speaking specifically about consulting, for your PEIs (personal experience interviews) you should be recording yourself while you practice. Write out your STARs (situation, task, action, and result) and be able to tell a one minute story to summarize, but also be able to talk about it for 15 minutes and add emotion, humor, etc. You don’t want to be boring or have your expression not match your story.
- The best interviews are the ones where you can make them laugh. If you leave with the interviewer feeling like a friend, you’ve done well.
- Books to read to prepare – How to Make Friends and Influence People, and Never Split the Difference

### On negotiation and emotional flinches

Practicing negotiating is uncomfortable but extremely useful for real life. It’s inherently uncomfortable because you’re trying to persuade someone to give you something they may not want to, but the more your practice it the more comfortable you’ll become. In consulting or other client-facing jobs, you’re going to have to hold your composure under tough situations and emotional composure doesn’t come naturally.

In Andrew’s advice blog (https://www.andrewyi.org/advice), he advocates for taking cold showers. They suck, but you get used to it over time as you practice mastering your emotional flinch.

You should be practicing all these things before you get into any interviews. Even with all his preparation, Andrew didn’t have any interviews where he felt he knew all the answers, but he had the emotional composure to handle that and it helped tremendously.

### Why consulting?

When Andrew thought about who he looked up to (Bill Gates, Elon Musk), he realize they’re all entrepreneurs. But has he talked to more entrepreneurs during a stint at a startup accelerator, he realized that to be successful you needed a blend of technical and business skills. The books Zero to One and Bold were both formative in his thinking.

He had a mentor that had a similar career path. He played football at Cornell, studied mechanical engineering, and went to Accenture for three years after college. He ended up starting a company at 25, sold it at 28, and had a life that many top managers couldn’t even dream of.

Working for McKinsey is a career accelerant of sorts for Andrew because he gets to keep his technical skills while learning about various businesses. When you have a project as a consultant, you get to present to senior management in a way that’s almost impossible within engineering tracks.

### If you know you want to leave within 5-10 years, is that something you should mention in an interview?

The more upfront and honest you can be in your interviews, the better. If you try to hide parts of your story, it won’t make as much sense and it’ll be harder for them to get to know and trust you. In all the places that Andrew worked, they were very supportive of him wanting to become an entrepreneur in the future and many had the same sentiments.


Fireside with McKinsey Product Fellow Andrew Yi

# A Quick Bio

[Personal Website](https://krentsel.com/) [Alex's LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-krentsel/)

During this week's fireside chat, our co-founder Kevin spoke to Alex Krentsel, a 2019 graduate of UC Berkeley in Electrical Engineering Computer Science (EECS) and Music. Alex currently works at Google as a software engineer, and held internships at Google, Youtube, and Facebook. While at Berkeley, Alex was also an active teacher in many computer science courses, including internet architecture and machine learning.  In his spare time, Alex is also and avid violin player, see some of his performances on his website!

# Software Engineering Recruitment

Alex’s professional experience started at Google’s freshman program, followed by an internship with Youtube in Switzerland in his sophomore summer, a junior internship with Facebook, before returning to the Youtube team in California. As someone who’s both been on the side of the interviewer and the interviewed, Alex attempts to demystify the recruitment process of top tier tech firms and breaks down his advice into two stages:

## Resume Screen

A recruitment team in Austin, Texas screens all the resumes and decides between interview and no-interview piles

- Your only job at this point is to get into the interview pile
- They only spend a time amount of time looking over each resume
- Explain any shortcomings you have, never use paragraphs, make it readable
- Personal projects are where you stand out; build a simple app and put it on the App Store, just **stand out**
- **If you get an interview, your school, grades, etc. stop mattering**

## Interviews

Phone screens and on-sites involve being interviewed by an engineer the company, like Alex

- This is when you get asked to solve a whiteboard coding question
- Clarify to the interviewer that you understood the question
- Make sure you talk through your thinking, don’t focus too hard on getting it right
- Even if you answer the question incorrectly, the interviewer is looking for a cogent **thought process**
- You can’t get any hints if you don’t talk through what you’re thinking
- Practice actually solving it in front of a white board
- Practice with friends, take turns interviewing to see what kind of mistakes get made

## Working at Google / Facebook

*Skip to the bottom to get the summary takeaways!*

### Company controversies

Alex and Kevin talked about today’s hot button topic that involves both working at Facebook and Google: what is it like to be in engineering at a company that’s wrapped in a ton of political and public controversy; it’s sure to be on the minds of a lot of young undergrads considering a career in the field. Alex’s response was pretty simple: as a software engineer, his role is very much shielded by the PR and marketing teams, and most of the people around him are similarly able to focus on the engineering work.

### Company cultures

On the subject of how different it is to work at Facebook vs Apple, Alex discussed how Facebook’s culture was very aggressively metric focused, and sometimes felt even shortsighted. Often, decision making structures like that push the work towards local maximums, but fail to arrive at global maximums in efficiency and effectiveness. However, Alex admitted, it did pay very well to work at Facebook! Google’s engineering culture is much more engineering driven; despite working on a very product facing team (on Youtube Premium), Alex still feels that a lot of the work is significantly engineering driven.

# Different types of Software Engineering

When asked about how the world of software engineering ended up feeling, compared to when he was still in undergrad, Alex and Kevin both discussed how as a student, it seemed like all their internships would fall under the title “Software Engineering Intern” and it seemed like everything was the same, but that feeling couldn’t be further form the truth. A network engineering working on the ensuring low latency does a very different job from a someone on the infrastructure team working with Google’s massive databases. Both of them also contrast greatly Alex’s product focused engineering teams, which are focused on attracting users. The best advice they have for current undergrads is to take a little bit of everything, class-wise, and figure out which niche you truly enjoy the most.

**Career Progression**

Alex talked about the initial excitement of getting into Google, which laid the pathway for him to succeed at his subsequent internships, eventually giving way to a more realistic realization that once you’re in one of the top companies in the world, you’ll have to work even harder to stand out from your equally talented peers. At Google, getting promotions and vertical experience was actually fairly rare, and if your interest is in climbing through the corporate structure pretty quickly, Alex would advise any young readers to consider looking at high growth rate startups, since if you’t join a team that’s doubling every quarter, within a month you’ll be in the top 25% most senior people at the company.

**Engineering Practices**

Another contrast between working at startups like us and Google is the freedom to start hacking away at certain aspects of the company’s code right away. Alex personally loves writing design documents, which can often be up to 20 pages long, but he also recognizes that a lot of people might find that prospect daunting. Ultimately, you’ll want to be exploring all the engineering cultures for yourself before you pick something that you want to stick with.

**Takeaways:**

- Engineering teams at big tech companies are shielded from the controversies their employers often get into
- Facebook’s engineering culture is very metric driven, while Google’s is much more vision driven
- There’s a huge variety of roles a SWE can play, from networking to cybersecurity, from front end development to database infrastructure, and exploring them all is key to working in the right place
- Career progression is slow at big tech companies, and the best way to get management experience is to work at a high growth startup
- Big tech companies will also hold you more accountable to design documents (which Alex loves!)

# Rapid Fire Questions

- Fun things to do in quarantine?
    - Love to go to the symphony, play int he google orchestra, learning to read Russian
- Favorite book?
    - The Magus by John Fowles
- Do you use Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music
    - YouTube Music
- Do you use Google products?
    - Had pixel buds, but they don’t work as well as AirPods

# Who's Next

Tune in this Thursday when we're speaking to [Max Liu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-liu-1588b5107/), a mentor on the platform working as an analyst fellow at McKinsey. Hope to see you there!

Fireside with Google SWE Alex Krentsel

**A Quick Bio**

[Cem's LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cemkocdev/)

Cem grew up in Istanbul, Turkey before coming to the US to attend UC Berkeley. He graduated in 2017 with a degree in EECS, and is currently working as a data engineer for Apple. Cem participated in two internships while at Berkeley: a sophomore summer internship at TubeMogul (acq. by Adobe) and a junior year internship at Apple where he received his full-time offer.

**Research**

Cem currently works on the data analytics and machine learning team at Apple, but his interest in these fields began long before he stepped on the Infinite Loop campus. During his freshman year, Cem started doing research at the Nanostructures and Nanoelectronics Research Group doing ultrafast spintronics research for new memory devices. He then transitioned into NLP (natural language processing) research and joined the robotics lab under Berkeley AI Research initiative. He continued this research through graduation.

While machine learning is a hot topic today, it was just beginning to take roots when Cem started his research. Cem and his brother would continue their research before circling back to their professor post-graduation to publish their paper. This discussion led to his first few pieces of advice for undergrads.

**Advice:**

- Understanding what you're truly interested in will give you research topics to explore, and talking to professors is a great way to find more guidance. Down the line, you'll end up learning more about fields that you actually enjoy rather than what's hot at the moment.
- Asking for advice is the first step, but make sure to follow up and stay in contact with those who have helped you. You never know what opportunities or knowledge can come in the future from them. Also, your professors are amazing people who were once in your shoes, it's a pretty good idea to listen to them.

**Recruiting**

The current pandemic has created a unique environment, but Cem stressed the importance of surrounding yourself with equally ambitious peers. As an international student, his friends were the ones who taught him the different pathways to recruiting. There are always specific roles and titles that come with a form of social clout, but Cem advises communicating to recruiters your interest in specific fields that you're genuinely interested in. Not only will you actually enjoy your work moving forward, but being genuine will separate you from the pack.

Having personal projects that you came up with yourself and didn't copy off an online tutorial is the best way to demonstrate genuine interest in a particular field of work. Also Cem warns against the pitfall of being obsessed with compensation, especially with early jobs. When going into fields like tech, as long as you work hard you'll make more than you need; focus on finding a job that you enjoy in a field that you genuinely appreciate.

**Advice:**

- Surround yourself with friends who are high achieving, who are willing to go the extra mile, and lift you up alongside them
- Differentiate yourself from the competition by finding a topic you're passionate about, and applying to jobs based on that passion
- Pursue personal projects to develop that interest so you can demonstrate your passion when asked to show it
- Don't get hung up on compensation - it's the experience that matters early on

**Experience at Apple**

Before wrapping up, Cem went over his experience working in machine learning at Apple. Initially, the secretive environment of the company was a culture shock, but eventually developed into a topic of pride. One thing that separates Apple's approach to machine learning from Amazon or Google is their emphasis on protecting user data. Because of this mission, machine learning engineers at Apple have to be very creative in their approach to building models and products in a way that doesn't infringe on their users' privacy.

Cem believes it's important to work somewhere that you can believe in the mission. There's a certain sense of satisfaction you feel when reviewing your work when you know you're creating something of value. At Apple, it's the pride in honoring the trust their users provide them.

**Takeaways**

- Apple has a highly secretive work culture that is intimidating to new employees and presents a unique challenge in its cross-team and inter-team communication
- The emphasis that Apple places on respecting their user's privacy means that Apple engineers face a more daunting task than many engineers at other companies, but the work produced as a product of this challenge is all the more satisfying

**Who's Next**

Tune in next week for more Fireside Chats with Edith Labs. We're speaking to David Liu, a mentor on the platform who currently works at Morgan Stanley's tech banking office in Menlo Park. Hope to see you there!

Fireside with Apple Data Engineer Cem Koc

Last week we held our first Edith Fellowship Kickoff Event! The event was divided into three sections: a networking event, a presentation, and two round tables. All in all, it gave the Fellows a chance to meet other Fellows and Partners while giving some greater context behind the goals and scope of the Fellowship.

## The Networking Event

While Fellows and Partners are officially partnered on mostly a one-to-one basis, the networking event allowed Fellows/Partners to meet others in the cohort for the first time. Upon joining the call, Fellows and Partners were randomly paired with other participants for a five minute chat. The chats looked something like the picture below, and continued until we started the presentation.

![](/blog/edith-fellowship-kickoff/networking.png)

## The Edith Presentation

In addition to welcoming all the Fellows and Partners, Kevin and Nick outlined the long-term goals of the Fellowship. While the cohort is meant to last a year, we hope that Fellows become Partners after graduation and that Partners support one another as they progress or switch careers moving forward. The presentation ended with David Hehman (one of our investors at Underdog Labs) giving some of his thoughts about why he believes in Edith’s mission of supporting undercapitalized students.

You can find a link to the presentation slides below!

[Fellowship Presentation](https://edith-prod.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/Fellowship+Presentation.pdf)

## Fellow and Partner Roundtables

After the presentation, we split up into two breakout rooms. Nick talked to the Partners, while Kevin and Ethan talked to the Fellows. The round tables covered role-specific expectations, and were an opportunity for the Partners and Fellows to all meet each other in one room.

![](/blog/edith-fellowship-kickoff/fellow-roundtable.png)

The Fellowship official mentorship meetings begin next week - we're super excited to get started! Stay tuned for more news on the Fellowship and keep up to date with our public events. For students who are interested in meeting mentors in the Edith community and potentially becoming a Fellow, you can join the community [here](/login). We’re also actively recruiting mentors and Fellowship Partners. To start helping students today, [sign up here](/login).

Edith Fellowship Kickoff

Income share agreements, or ISAs, are essentially IOUs, but instead of having an exact number attached to the IOU it's based on a percentage of a person's salary. Edith's standard ISA is 1% for 1 year after graduation. For example, if your base salary was $100,000 for your first job, you would repay $83 a month to your mentor for your first year of work. Other types of compensation like signing bonuses or end of year bonuses aren't considered as part of the ISA.

## Why use an ISA? 

2 main reasons:

1. **They're affordable -** not every college student has extra money to pay for help, and at Edith we believe that your success should be gated by your effort, not your money or connections. That's why we use ISAs. You pay later based on how successful you become, not by how much money you have today. 
2. **They promote long-term connections -** unlike other mentor platforms where you pay per meeting, our mentors aren't incentivized to upsell you every time they meet. The ISA incentivizes everyone to work together for longer periods of time, which really allows your mentor to understand your specific context when giving advice. To us, this is the secret sauce to success. 

## What are the terms of Edith's ISA? 

Edith's ISA is super simple - 1% of your base salary for 1 year after graduation, assuming that you make over $40,000 a year in your job. If you don't make over $40,000, you don't repay anything until you do. 

## What if I don't find a job immediately after graduating? 

No problem, Edith will continue to work with you to help you find a job after graduation. During that time, you won't owe anything and your ISA enters what's called a **deferment period**. The beauty of an ISA is you **owe nothing upfront**, and only have to repay once you find a job. 

If you end up not finding a job or end up making less than $40,000 a year for any reason (grad school, illness, etc.) your ISA enters a **deferment period** where you owe nothing!

## What's a deferment period and how long does it last?

If you earn less than $40,000 for any reason (grad school, loss of employment, medical reasons, etc.), your ISA enters a deferment period. During this period, you owe nothing until you make a salary above $40,000 a year ($3,333 monthly). If your ISA is in a deferment period for over 5 years, the ISA is completely canceled and you'll owe nothing. 

## What if I become the next Mark Zuckerberg and become a millionaire in college?

That's great! We hope you do. The Edith ISA has a payment cap of $2,000, so even if you do become the next Mark Zuckerberg you'll never repay more than $2,000. We also have plenty of mentors in the VC/startup space, so we can definitely help you get there if that's something you're interested in. 

Any other questions? Reach out to us at [founders@edithlabs.com!](mailto:founders@edithlabs.com)

What are income share agreements?

## Quick Bio

Shadman is currently a senior security compliance analyst at Auth0, and was most recently a tech consultant at Crowe. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Economics

## Who He Can Help

He's looking to work with students who are looking for ways to stand out in recruiting processes - whether it be in interviews or telling their stories through a cover letter. He also believes your job is not your entire identity, and wants to help a student develop holistically.

## What He Does for Fun

In his free time, Shadman likes to play/watch soccer, learn languages, and practice storytelling. He spends a lot of time writing, blogging, and creating podcasts.

new-mentor-shadman-rahman

New Edith Mentor: Shadman Rahman

## Quick Bio

Sarah is currently Product Manager at ServiceNow. She previously transitioned from a finance role at ServiceNow and is a Santa Clara University grad. 

## Who She Can Help

She loves helping students from underrepresented backgrounds explore the product space. 

## What She Does For Fun

You can find Sarah cooking fancy new dishes and mixing drinks or on the golf course outside of work!

new-mentor-sarah-choi

New Edith Mentor: Sarah Choi

## Quick Bio

Rouhin is currently venture investors at Builders VC. He was previously at ICONIQ Capital and Wells Fargo's Tech Investment Banking group. 

## Who He Can Help

Rouhin wants to help ambitious third or fourth year college students who want to break into nebulous industries like venture capital.  

## What He Does for Fun

You can typically find Rouhin outdoors and exploring new places in his free time, and he's also a big sports fan as well.

new-mentor-rouhin-ghosh

New Edith Mentor: Rouhin Ghosh

## Quick Bio

Rafah is currently a PM at Lyft on the Pay team with experience working on the Autonomous and Marketplace teams as well. She's also work as a PM at Salesforce and Acorns and is a Northwestern grad. 

## Who She Can Help

She's looking to help students from underrepresented backgrounds build their network and break into product!

## What She Does for Fun

Outside of work, I enjoy discovering new coffee shops, improv comedy, and skiing!

new-mentor-rafah-ali

New Edith Mentor: Rafah Ali

## Quick Bio

Nora is a History graduate from the University of Delaware who is currently working as a Product Manager at Vestwell. Previously, she held product manager roles at Mastercard and Citi.

## Who She Can Help

She's looking to help women break into product from a non-technical background.

## Check Her Out!

You can check out her [LinkedIn here](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nora-alalou/)!

new-mentor-nora-alalou

New Edith Mentor: Nora Alalou

## Quick Bio

Ninan is an Economics graduate from the University of Chicago, currently working as a TMT Investment Banker at Morgan Stanley in Menlo Park. Prior to that, he interned at Deutsche Bank and BDA Partners as an investment banking summer analyst.

## Who He Can Help

He's looking to help students who are interested in breaking into investment banking.

## Check Him Out!

You can check out his [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninan-kumar-019823109/) here!

new-mentor-ninan-kumar

New Edith Mentor: Ninan Kumar

## Quick Bio

Nicole is currently a Product Manager at Zynga and a University of Washington alum where she got her Master's in Information Sciences.

## Who She Can Help

She's looking to help students explore career opportunities within product and help them break into those roles. 

## What She Does For Fun

Outside of work, you can find Nicole baking and playing board games and puzzles. She also enjoys reading psychology and behavioral econ books!

new-mentor-nicole-wen

New Edith Mentor: Nicole Wen

## Quick Bio

Jenny is currently a Product Manager at Microsoft working in Azure IoT. She's previously worked at Salesforce and Hulu in software engineering and product management roles. 

## Who She Can Help

She's passionate about helping all students find their way into tech and understand the opportunities outside of just pure engineering roles. 

## What She Does for Fun

Outside of work, she spends her time fostering dogs, finding new boba places, and petting every dog she sees (with the owner's permission of course). Ask her about accessibility, IoT, mentorship, diversity & inclusion, and dogs. 

new-mentor-jenny-ye

New Edith Mentor: Jenny Ye

## Quick Bio

Jared is born and raised in the Bay Area and is currently a full-stack software engineer at Google on the Google TV team. Prior to Google, he has experience at companies like Airbnb, Nvidia, and various startups. 

## Who He Can Help

He's looking to help software engineers identify and break into high-growth startups to jumpstart their careers. 

## What He Does for Fun

Outside of work, you can find Jared traveling or listening to music. He's also into hip-hop dance.

new-mentor-jared-gutierrez

New Edith Mentor: Jared Gutierrez

## Quick Bio

James is currently an Associate Product Marketing Manager (APMM) at Google. He graduated from UC Berkeley studying Economics and grew up in Korea. Previously he's had experience as a tech consultant at Deloitte and operations associate at SAP. 

## Who He Can Help

James is looking to help students from a business background understand the type of roles available to them within tech. 

## What He Does for Fun

Outside of work, you’ll find James geeking out over his fantasy basketball team, playing spikeball at Dolores Park, or whipping up some Korean food.

new-mentor-james-yuh

New Edith Mentor: James Yuh

## Quick Bio

Hannah is a Scripps College grad who currently works as a management consultant at Malk Partners with a focus on social impact and sustainability. 

## Who She Can Help

She's looking to help women break into careers in finance. She's been active in the past as a member and mentor for Girls Who Invest. 

## What She Does For Fun

You can find Hannah at a standup show or a concert in her free time. She also enjoys writing outside of work. 

new-mentor-hannah-alalou

New Edith Mentor: Hannah Alalou

## Quick Bio

Griffin is a Brown CS and MechE grad from Philadelphia who is currently an APM working in data privacy at Google. 

## Who He Can Help

He's interested in helping students think through their potential career paths or advising them if they're interested in working on a startup. 

## What He Does For Fun

In his free time Griffin loves writing and playing ultimate frisbee. 🥏

new-mentor-griffin-kao

New Edith Mentor: Griffin Kao

## Quick Bio

David is currently a private equity associate at the Carlyle Group. He previously worked in Morgan Stanley's tech banking office in Menlo Park. 

## Who He Can Help

David is looking to help students from underrepresented backgrounds break into finance and investment banking roles. 

## What He Does for Fun

You can catch David on a the beach or a tennis court on a day off.

new-mentor-david-liu

New Edith Mentor: David Liu

## Quick Bio

David is an Economics grad from Cal Poly who is now at Shippo as a BizOps analyst. 

## Who He Can Help

He's passionate about helping students understand potential tradeoffs to find their dream careers.

## What He Does For Fun

In his free time, you can find David traveling, blogging, playing sports, or gaming! 🎮

new-mentor-david-lee

New Edith Mentor: David Lee


## Quick Bio

Austin is a UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering major grad with a certificate of entrepreneurship and technology from Taiwan. He's currently a system product design engineer in a secret team at Apple launching an unprecedented product category. 

## Who He Can Help

Austin is looking to help students with a mechanical engineering background find their own career motivation and life values to guide their career.

## What He Does for Fun

Outside of work, you can find Austin powerlifting or grabbing Michelin stars. He's also into hip-hop dance and career coaching.


new-mentor-austin-young

New Edith Mentor: Austin Young

## Quick Bio

Anthony is a first-gen college student who studied CS at The City College of New York. He worked two year at Amazon as a software engineer before transitioning into a product management role at American Express.

## Who He Can Help

He's looking to help first-gen college students interested in breaking into both software engineering and product roles. 

## What He Does for Fun

He enjoys experimenting with new cooking recipes, playing basketball and exploring all that New York has to offer. Anthony also recently got a new dog!

new-mentor-anthony-shalagin

New Edith Mentor: Anthony Shalagin

## Quick Bio

Alex currently works at WeWork where he's focused on improving their global member experience. Previously, he was on WeWork's strategy and operations team where he worked first on growth strategy and then transformation.

## Who He Can Help

He's interested in helping students break into consulting, especially in the real estate or co-working space. He enjoys helping students plan their long-term career goals and excel on the job.

## What He Does For Fun

He's a huge soccer fan and traveler and passionate about creating new tech, real estate, and hospitality products catering to remote workers.

alex-cherucheril-new-mentor

New Edith Mentor: Alex Cherucheril

Excited to have Alex Chercuheril and Faeez Juneja work together as part of the Edith Fellowship. Alex, a senior manager at WeWork, will be helping Faeez break into a strategy consulting role. Hear from Faeez about why he's excited to be working with Alex:

> I’m really excited to have Alex as my Edith Mentor because we have so many similarities and I believe he can help me with my immediate and long-term goals. 

> We’re both South Asians who have been raised in the United States, we have similar interests in international travel, and share the same educational background as we both attended parge, public institutions that are considered “non-targets.” We also happened to join the same South Asian fraternity. 

> I’m very interested in becoming a strategy consultant and he worked at Deloitte S&O which happens to recruit at my university. 

> Long-term, I’d love to become a chief growth officer and Alex’s business acumen and experience with mentorship make him a great fit who can help me achieve my goal. He’s already provided some meaningful advice on how to be more organized in selecting my full-time role and I’m so happy to be working with him!

Edith Partnership: Alex & Faeez

New Edith Partnership: Alex & Faeez

## Quick Bio

Abraham is a CS/Economics graduate from UC Berkeley who is currently working as a Product Manager for Siri at Apple.

## Who He Can Help

He's looking to help students break into product and enjoys playing tennis, participating in triathlons, and making YouTube videos 🎥

## Check Him Out!

You can check out [his channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/AbrahamChen88/videos) here!

Edith Mentor: Abraham Chen

New Edith Mentor: Abraham Chen

“I think the approach Edith is taking \[with mentorship\] is good. I like the longer term \[relationships\] because it takes the pressure off. It makes things more comfortable for both parties. I think if you have a one-off interview it’s good for some sort of tactical issue like, 'I need help with x, can you help think through some solutions that I haven’t thought about.'

But if it’s a long-term ongoing relationship, then you can really get beyond just the platitudes of here’s my giant ambitions for the next five years and here’s some generic advice more towards more tactical things to help you achieve those goals.

The more you \[meet\] the more you get to know somebody and the more you can actually give them advice for large things as well. Because otherwise if you don’t know somebody - if you’re not comfortable around them - then it’s hard to give anything beyond like platitudinal advice. To me, sustainable and interesting mentorship is where you listen to the person’s problems, see if you have an alignment of your own personal experience or someone you know has experienced, and you give opinions but not solutions. If they decide to do it or not do it that’s not the point, the point is to give them context.

chris-oryschak

Product Manager

Chris Oryschak

Spotlight: Chris Oryschak

“Venture capital is a very opaque field – there aren’t many resources that describe how one can break into it, how to prepare for an interview, or what VC’s are looking for in a hire. As someone who was able to successfully navigate that process, I think it's important that I share what I’ve learned and make it more accessible for people to really break into the industry. As we bring more clarity to this field my hope is that more people will be drawn to it and therefore the next generation of VC’s will be of a higher caliber than what exists today. This is especially important as VC’s exercise an outsized influence over new technology and the direction of innovation.

As a mentor, I try to take the time to get to know my mentee as an individual in order to figure out what drives them and where there goals are. As my understanding of the individual evolves, the things we talk about and their action items often change as well. I’ve learned that giving advice is easy, but delivering it in a way that makes it “click” for the listener is a challenge. People may not always be receptive to certain kinds of advice or anecdotes. Usually they need to spend some time thinking and grappling with an idea before they are be ready to implement the advice. For this reason I view mentorship as a back and forth exchange of ideas, instead of

thomas-englis

Associate

Thomas Englis

Spotlight: Thomas Englis

"With Edith, the incentive structure is something that I think is just incredibly important - someone cares about whether or not I get a good job. Edith has done a really good job of finding fantastic mentors and good mentees that are in the program. It's not just mentor mentee relationship, it's also the relationship amongst the mentees that's a big factor too. This is something that even good universities like Johns Hopkins just doesn't really provide. You pay a ton of money and you don't get that value.

I've tried Wall Street Oasis mentors before and had a call with someone. First of all, it was not good. Maybe I got a bad person, maybe it wasn't like the person I chose wasn't good. It just felt like he was trying to upsell me on resume help or something else. He didn't give me the greatest advice. There was no continuing relationship, and if I did want to continue I'd have to pay every time I wanted to meet him. With the Fellowship I can comfortably email Thomas (Michael's mentor) and he gets back to me. I don't think it's just about the money for him. It's more that he actually cares because he's agreed to do something - he's agreed to take on a mentee/Fellow under his wing.

So for me, that's been very valuable. Edith has done a very good job of finding a lot of people in different industries. I can speak to people in different industries, and I can go to the coffee or fireside chats and learn more about various different industries. And then once you're in the Fellowship, you can reach out to people within the network and speak with them. It's kind of like being in Johns Hopkins or being able to reach anyone on LinkedIn from John Hopkins, except it's a cohort of people who have agreed to help each other. This is especially true for the mentors. You wouldn't sign up to be a mentor on Edith if you didn't want to help out, which is as a student is a very valuable thing.

michael-hammer

Michael Hammer

Spotlight: Michael Hammer

“What really made me excited about Edith was it offered a way for me to formally connect with people online and offer them help based on my experiences. At Berkeley, I followed a really odd path. In EECS you’re supposed to take a certain combination of classes, but no one really talks about what you can do if you branch out.

I was very interested in the mathematical aspects of computing – what was eventually going to be called machine learning – but no one in my friend group was interested in doing it. There was no real support in the ecosystem at Berkeley either, even though it’s supposed to be one of the best programs in the world. And that felt really lonely. I had my brother, but it was still a very lonely path.

Because I had to go about figuring out how to look for internships, new areas of research, etc. on my own, it’s helped me accumulate a lot of experience that I want to give back to students who are also feeling alone. I hope I can offer some guidance or help them critically examine their own college experience as someone who isn’t in their immediate friend group, because that allows to me to offer an interesting or different point of view.

At the same time, Edith is a positive sum experience for me. Mentoring others helps me take a step back from my problems at work and concentrate on certain areas that I wouldn’t have otherwise. So for me as a mentor, I get to go outside my comfort zone as well as give back.

max-liu

Growth

Max Liu

Spotlight: Max Liu

"Because ISAs aren’t tied to my tuition like student loans, Edith’s ISA allowed me to live off campus this year when I couldn’t live on campus anymore. It also connected me with Chris – a PM at Google – and allowed me to start to build a real relationship with him.

Normally in mentorship meetings we both know that I’m asking them about something I want to pursue (like a job, scholarship, etc.). Because there’s a time limit, and it’s far from guaranteed that I’ll have subsequent meetings with the person, I really have to get to the meat of what I want to talk about. I have to do research before the chat to know more about the program, understand how to talk about it in an interview context, and maybe I'll be able to ask for a referral at the end.

All these extra details prevent me from developing an authentic relationship with mentors. But with Chris, I know there’s no rush. During the week I had a lot of little questions (such as when they ask ‘why this company,’ should I talk about the industry and the company or just the company?) which may have been too granular for a normal networking call. Because we meet regularly I was able to unload all these questions on Chris and get a better window into the general interviewers process.


luke-bender

Luke Bender

Spotlight: Luke Bender

“I am an engineer interested in business, but I couldn’t find my way into the industry. I realized that talking to people would offer me more insight than just trying to get an internship and ending up not liking it.

For international students, it’s easy to be clueless about industries because you’re not from here. School career services doesn’t usually help as much because people want specialized suggestions and help. You can’t get that because schools are so big.

There’s a whole set of challenges that Edith helps me overcome. With Edith, I can connect to multiple people in multiple industries very easily. I can talk to quants and I don’t have to go to Reddit and look up something. You find things there but it’s not helpful because it’s not specialized or tailored.

fabio-hodo

Fabio Hodo

Spotlight: Fabio Hodo

I wish I had a mentor when I was first starting my career because there was so much that I didn't know I didn't know. For instance, how do you lead teams? What should even be your goal leading teams and how do you set that goal? I remember talking to a four-star general and he asked me how I would know someone is struggling for non-work reasons and whether I had a process that enabled people to check in with me in an honest and open way. That was a really big revelation for me because I realized I can't be an effective mentor unless I could do that with people.

To me, being a great mentor is being the person who someone can come to in order to help them take a step back. There's a lot of things in life that you can optimize for - money, family, prestige, satisfaction - and it's really easy to get narrowly focused on one without testing your assumptions. My goal is to help people widen their field of vision and come up with a framework for evaluating choices in their lives. Of course, we'll have tactical discussions like how to best prepare for an interview, but it can now be informed by the greater context of their decisions. 

Ultimately, mentorship is figuring out how to have a long-term relationship with someone. I want to give unique advice to the person and that means getting to know them. I think checking in on a cadence is really valuable because that means you're keeping a continual rapport. That way I can understand their context when we talk because as you know life is dynamic. There will be critical times where we meet much more often and there will be times where they don't need to make as many decisions and we meet less frequently, but it's important to be there for them and be able to give them relevant advice when it really matters.

josh-gutman

Founder

Josh Gutman

Spotlight: Josh Gutman

What I think is great about mentorship is as a mentee, you're able to speak to someone at a stage where you want to go to. This helps a lot because they've been in your shoes before and they know what's going on, so they can give you actual steps based on the situation and their experience to help you get there. In general, mentorship helps the mentee figure out what they want to do, and you do that by asking them the right questions, sharing your experiences, and helping the mentee get to that answer.

As a mentor, I like being able to share what I've gone through to help someone else. In a way, it lets me replay the past for myself as well and put into practice what I've learned. I think it's really interesting because you can teach a lot of what's not taught in traditional education. Things like how to present yourself, or how to even get into the room where the important conversations are being held. For me, it was a lot of trial and error. Now that I've learned from it, hopefully my mentees will be able to learn from my experiences too. 

What I like helping my mentees do is to create an action plan. For instance if we're discussing networking, who are they going to reach out to this week? Depending on the stage, what are the three different points they want to hit on during the meeting so they can get the most out of it? I encourage mentees to go towards being more on the proactive versus passive side, especially right now, given the way that things are moving. There isn't really that much to lose if someone just doesn't respond.

You can find out more about Leo from [a podcast episode](https://anchor.fm/celerinetwork/episodes/Episode-25-Leo-Lu--VP-of-Digital-Partnerships-at-BNY-Mellon-Talks-About-How-To-Manage-A-Business-eh3653) where he discusses his role in corporate venture. In his free time, Leo runs [After Hour Projects](https://afterhourprojects.com/), a site focused on side projects. 

leo-lu

Vice President

Leo Lu

Spotlight: Leo Lu

I found Edith awhile ago and I, like many other students, was sort of struggling with what my career would look like, especially with COVID. I was trying to figure out things for myself. I've always been proud of having a bias towards action, and what made me really excited about Edith was what it could do for me as a non-technical candidate from a non-target school. I wanted to meet people who could give insight not just into careers, but launching products and going to market with a product.

At the time, I just started my company Dorm Ops and I wanted some early advice for my go to market strategy. I used the free platform on Edith and met a bunch of really awesome people that gave advice that ultimately helped me pivot my company and bootstrap up to 25 employees within a month. Because of that I kept tabs on what Edith was doing, and after I found out about the Fellowship I thought it was a win-win. Financially it was awesome, and I know I have some knowledge gaps that the mentors can help plug. So it's been awesome.

Tyson \[Jeremy's mentor\] has been very helpful. It can be overwhelming to recruit for product management, and what Tyson does really well is delineates everything I need to do into steps. After being inundated with all the recruiting resources and newsletters, he helps me sift through the noise and just focus on what I need to focus on. Something that he does well that no other programs do is calling me out when I'm making a mistake or not holding myself accountable. It's cool because we've only been working together for a month, and I feel like I've already made a ton of progress.

jeremy-navarro

Jeremy Navarro

Spotlight: Jeremy Navarro

cem-koc

Software Engineer

Cem Koc

Spotlight: Cem Koc

"As an international student at Berkeley, I often felt like my voice was drowned out by the endless sea of underclassmen, all eager to share their own unique stories and each headed in a different direction. In such a crowd, it’s difficult to find a community you can belong to and depend on, while also building the skills that would distinguish you from the rest. Navigating this fine balance is hard for all students in their collegiate experiences, and only one thing set me up for success despite that obstacle: mentorship. Edith is one of the very few opportunities that international students can conveniently access to build their network in an unfamiliar country, while also cultivating a community of like-minded students who are going through similar recruitment processes.

Through Edith, not only did I find an incredible mentor, I also found students across the US who could relate to my professional experiences and career aspirations. Tapping into this community means you won’t be alone when making your way through the daunting process of finding opportunities, and that manifests in a million ways. Ashish literally spent hours on call with me so we could go through my application, making sure every detail was perfect before I sent it in, and no mentor has ever given me that much time out of their busy schedule!

I’m now able to access resources I previously couldn’t, leverage connections I didn’t even have last year, and learn about industries I’m interested in, even outside the Berkeley ecosystem. That’s what I love about Edith, it’s committed to your success no matter where you’re from or where you want to be. Edith truly aims to equip you with any tools you need to build the future of your dreams!

guneesha-sawhney

Guneesha Sawhney

Spotlight: Guneesha Sawhney

Mentorship is critical to succeed in the workplace, and it gives mentees access to company and industry knowledge trees. Throughout my career, mentors have helped me to develop frameworks to solve critical problems and avoid pitfalls / mistakes, saving time and money – two scarce resources. Unfortunately, many individuals and firms lack effective mentors and mentorship programs, hurting both employees and employers.

In my opinion, the only way to make a meritocracy is by ensuring everyone has access to a mentor. Some people are naturally born with mentors from their family or network, and they start on an uneven playing field. But if everyone has a mentor who will guide and vouch for them, then it's really about execution - not where you were born or who you know. You solve the asymmetry problem because everyone has access to the same information.

I joined Edith because to me it helps level the playing field. We can give students who weren't naturally born into families with extended networks the mentorship and support they need to succeed. I believe if we can democratize mentorship, then people's success will ultimately come down to execution and results rather than luck or family background.

ashish-bhatt

Consultant

Ashish Bhatt

Spotlight: Ashish Bhatt

"Having both Cem and Brian as mentors has been nothing short of a great experience. Brian offers a lot of technical help and if I have any specific questions about internships, career paths, or even projects, I look to him and his expertise. Cem, given that he is a Berkeley Alumni, has really helped me roadmap my goals for the present and future career goals. He always questions me with statements like "How are you going to balance this with classes? Have you consider attending career fairs?" Both dynamics have provided me with all the support I could have wanted from this fellowship.

Cem was walking me through the steps that he took to prepare for \[coding challenges\] and helped provide me with strategies given a short timeline. He also talked about going to career fairs and suggested approaches for them and what to expect.

With just a one-off call that you get from most networking, you miss out on all their other personal interests and daily life - like Brian is talking about the kind of side work he's doing with Cem with the airline industry. There's true depth to these conversations that I have never had with professionals which has definitely been a plus. And I think things like that, you don't really get the chance to talk about when you just see those one-off calls. We've been diversifying our conversations a lot more which I really like because it shows their vested interest to learn about me as an individual as well.

rithvik-sunku

Rithvik Sunku

Spotlight: Rithvik Sunku

Personally, I haven’t received a lot of mentorship. Looking back on it, I think I ended up in the right place, but I certainly can’t help but feel that it was a bit lucky. With a bit more guidance I would have been more efficient in my career. With that being said, I think there’s certain lessons that someone just has to handle on their own. But yeah, I can’t help but think my career would have been a little bit more efficient.

The first part - which is the hard part - of being a mentor is trying to help your mentee match their career to their life goals. What is it that they value in life, and what are the ways to get it? You could go and try to figure out all this stuff yourself, but you might end up spending time doing things that aren’t necessarily conducive to your goal. The second part is once they know what they want to be doing, is how to actually go do it. The second part is more important for new college graduates because they don’t necessarily have enough data to make informed decisions on the first part. They don’t really need to know exactly what they want to get out of life yet, but we work together to keep their options open.

I can never tell the student what’s actually right or wrong for them, but I do have an extra 15 years of work experience. Because of this, there are certain facts that I can try to pass on to them. These can be helpful when evaluating if they’re really spending their time on the right project or goal, or if the path they’re going on is really going to make them happy. One of the benefits of the mentorship on Edith is it’s longer-term relationships, which really allow you to explore these more ambiguous ideas. Because if you’re sitting down for one conversation and you get some random advice, you really can’t (and shouldn’t) act on it.

There are certain interview questions - like how many golf balls can fit in a 747 plane - that can have a surprising amount of depth. No one really expects a college graduate to really dive deep \[on these types of questions\], but what if they could? Just think about how much you could stand out. Your ability to stand out gets harder in your career as problems become more complex and expectations are higher, but this is really where a mentor could help you.

tyson-mao

Tyson Mao

Spotlight: Tyson Mao

Hi there, I'm David Fleischman and I've been living in the tech world for a long time. As someone who has been helped by a lot of people, I'm always motivated to do the same. I recently moved companies and went through a lot of interviews making this a good opportunity to document the patterns I've seen and used in my processes. As anyone who works with me knows, building learning loops and constantly testing is core to who I am. Successful interviewing, as is the case with just about anything, is about preparing with a strategy and improving every time.

When you're interviewing for a position, you generally are in one of two scenarios:

1. You need a job and don't have a ton of choice or time. You're graduating soon, or you know you need to switch roles because staying is no longer an option. 
2. You're lucky enough to have a choice. You either are in a great role, but looking, or have a number of possibilities. You're one of the lucky ones, enjoy it! 

This article covers the first scenario above but applies to both. 

The key to a successful interview is telling a story - your story. Humans are fundamentally driven by narratives and stories. Everyone loves a good story. Positioning yourself often feels like it's about numbers and brand names, but ultimately it boils down to whether HR or the hiring manager believes people at that specific company will want to work with you and if your story adds up.

Think about how you tell your story. Why did you make a move? What did you learn? What do you hope to learn? How do you hope to grow? How to help others? Your LinkedIn profile, CV, and the story should set up this model.

With a few exceptions (engineering roles in particular), everyone invited to interview likely has the skills necessary to qualify for the role. While you are always being measured on skills, you're also being measured on fit. The best way to convince companies you are a fit is to research them well, and understand why your particular story makes you the best candidate for the role.

As a reminder, if you fall in the first bucket and don't have a choice, the first and simplest rule to know is that **you love every company you talk to**. As the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers and neither can you until you get some competitive offers. 

As we're all taught, every good story has a few common elements: a protagonist, an antagonist, a beginning, a middle, and an end. Good interview stories are centered around you as the protagonist and business challenges as the antagonist. You, as the storyteller, must have **specific examples** of how you grew or learned - how your story has evolved. 

Being specific is extremely important. No one would care about Harry Potter the boy who did something and maybe killed someone. We care about the boy who lived who transformed from a lonely orphan to a giving hero who laid it all on the line for friends and family he met on his journey. 

Nobody cares that I just worked at Microsoft, they want to know what I did and how I learned. My answer is always that I started off so junior that I didn't have a job title that matched. However, I did everything nobody else wanted to do with a smile on my face and learned from those around me. Today, I'm comfortable at all levels of an organization as that experience taught me empathy. 

The same is true for interview candidates. No one cares about that guy who maybe learned something from his school club, they care about the candidate with the amazing story. This is not to say that you need to drone on for hours - every story needs to have tangible results. If you were an individual contributor, that boils down to statements like "I achieved this." If you were a manager, it's all about what your team achieved together. Turning around a failing flight business at Expedia, along with describing the learnings and failures along the way is much more interesting than just showing numbers. Speak honestly on openly. 

Teaching you how to tell your story is impossible. Your story is yours and you're the author. If there is interest in this concept, we can spend more time detailing the techniques involved. Until then, there are some tips below on general interviewing. 

As a good storyteller, it is important to read the room. Regardless of whether you're in an in-person interview or remote interview, you want to confirm that you answered the given question. Simply asking, "Did that answer your question?" should be sufficient. 

Asking questions like this shows a sense of humility that can go a long way in interview processes. It is a good way to engage the room and more importantly stop yourself from talking so much that the interviewer has to interrupt you to ask more questions. A good interview is part skill assessment and part conversation. This technique builds in the "breaks" to facilitate that conversation. 

One of the best ways to stand out from other interviewees is to be genuinely curious and inquisitive during the interview. People love talking about themselves, and getting a recruiter or hiring manager to open up is a strong way to build rapport. Asking about their experiences at the company, their careers, or how they might solve a problem engages interviewers in purely human activity; expressing themselves. You can then build on that conversation to create connections. 

LinkedIn stalking is good. Find out what you can about your interviewer and bring up any people you might know in common or shared interests. This connects you with your audience. 

Something you can do early on to help with crafting your story and questions is to ask the recruiter what they're looking for beyond the job descriptions. Oftentimes, job descriptions will have skills they're looking for but won't list if they need a strong individual contributor or aggressive leader to turn around a team. 

Having this information allows you to craft your approach and to tease out more of the company culture. Good recruiters and hiring managers will tell you a lot at these moments. 

As you become more senior in your field, it's less likely that companies are hiring senior managers because everything is going really well. They're usually hiring because they need a leader to turn around a situation, and understanding that context can be key for your interviewing process. 

When interviewing there are also some easy to follow ground rules:

- **Never speak poorly about a previous employer** - not only does this set a bad tone for the interview, but it also reflects poorly on you. Instead, talk about what you learned from the role and how you grew as a contributor or manager. There are a ton of lessons if failure. Lean into *those.* A great phrase to use when asked why you're looking; *I've learned a lot and I'm grateful for the experiences, but I've decided I want to learn [insert your story here].*

    Not everything has to be professional rationale either. Sometimes it can be personal reasons such as family or change of interest. For example, when I left my role at Apple, on paper it made no sense. The iPhone was amazing, I had a great role and Apple was growing really fast. For years, everyone I spoke with asked me why in the world would I leave Apple with a super skeptical tone - searching for the "bad." My answer was honest, simple, and personal. I loved working at Apple (true story) but my family was really unhappy with our living situation so I put them first. The answer builds trust and shows humanity. 

- **Do not bring up compensation early in the conversation** - while compensation is obviously an important factor to any job search, potential employers do not want to feel like that's your primary motivation. Remember, you have a story about why the company *is a perfect fit for you*, and that story usually revolves around other factors than compensation. There's plenty of time to discuss compensation later in the process.
- **Send thank you emails within the day** - this should be table stakes to any interview, so don't be one of the candidates that forget. Ideally, each thank you note should contain something specific to the interview that will help them remember you as a candidate. If you had a really strong story, this is where you tie it into your email to leave a lasting impression. If you can't get to the folks who interviewed you, at least send a thank you to the recruiter and ask them to thank the team.

If you use these tools, you'll have a stronger chance of getting the position you're interviewing for, or worst case, you've learned to be better. If you're lucky enough to have the luxury of choice, you'll need to have a framework for how to evaluate them. I talk about that in part 2 of my interview series, which will be out soon.

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