I spent all-day Friday interviewing for the Orr Fellowship. I spent the night before at home, drove up to Carmel for the interviews, drove back down that night, and returned to Wabash on Saturday, which made my weekend seem oddly long. But don’t think I got a bunch of work done. Thursday was spent prepping for the Orr Fellowship, Friday night was spent stressing out about the Orr Fellowship, and Saturday was spent waiting for a call from the Orr Fellowship.
The call never came. This alarmed me at first, since at the end of the interview day, the organizers said most of us would get a call the next day, Saturday…Tuesday by the latest. By Tuesday, none of us had heard anything, and I was shoving it out of my mind in order to concentrate. I’m crediting the delay to a basic of business hiring: it happens later rather than sooner. Plus, the interview follow-up email said expect an answer in 7-10 days. So! That’s far away, so I’m ignoring speculation for now.
The interviews themselves went well. There were 23 companies, 4 of which each participant interviewed with. There were technically 23 spots but some of the companies intend to take more than 1 fellow. I interviewed with 4 companies, plus had an informal one during lunch:
-Briljent, a consulting company that does a lot of government work
-Aprimo, a marketing software company looking to become the “Adobe for marketers”
-Courseload, a startup putting electronic textbooks into college students’ hands which I talked about earlier
-Techpoint, which is actually a non-profit organization that serves as a sort of cheerleader/connector/manager of the Indianapolis tech world. For instance, it runs the Orr Fellowship.
-Cannon IV, a printing hardware and software company
Though Courseload was my favorite coming in, I left every interview with a budding interest in the company. I’m sure that, in their eyes, some of my interviews went better than others. But I was generally enthused by all of them.
One of the nice things about the Orr Fellowship is that the tail end of the selection process is mostly out of our hands. Well, maybe that’s not a nice thing. But regardless, we weren’t able to choose our interviews. And afterwards, the companies organize amongst themselves and pick people to offer a position to. So now I simply wait, and either devise alternate plans for graduation, or sit back, relax, and finish schoolwork.
