A "coffee chat" is the name given to an informal conversation you have with an employee of a company you are interested in. Those conversations are not formally a part of the recruiting process.  Coffee chats allow a potential applicant to ask questions about the firm, show their interest to one of the employees and build a network with the company.

• Read more about Coffee Chats are a Central Part of Networking - Here's Why

The INSEAD Consulting Club at the Singy campus recently invited me and other classmates who had received offers from the MBB consulting firms to share tips on approaching the consulting application and interview process. To avoid duplicating the efforts of the many case prep workshops, material and websites out there, I shared the unorthodox aspects of my approach, which resulted from my application of what I learned from violin lessons to consulting interviews.

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Inside the classroom, I could barely pay attention to what the professor was saying. I couldn't avoid constantly looking at my cell phone, as I was about to receive the call from one of the employers I had just interviewed with at INSEAD. Twenty minutes before the class ended, as the professor unveiled the outcome of a hostile takeover in a case about the mining industry, my phone started to vibrate.

• Read more about A story about failure: the 'ding' in my INSEAD job search

Well, that escalated quickly… It’s the last week of class here in P2 and we have our first finals in four days.  Somehow this period managed to fly without I or most of my classmates noticing.  I guess this is what they mean when they say time flies when you’re having “fun”.  I put fun in quotations because while this period was a blast, it was a stark contrast to Period 1.  Whereas in Period 1 almost every weekend was filled with adventures to new, exotic locales, Period 2 was when reality set in.  Summer internship recruiting started in a most intense type of way and the times that weren’

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Already the end of P3, it feels like only yesterday that P1 ended, let alone P2… After an amazing P1 and a stunning break climbing volcanoes in Indonesia for four days, I started P2 already tired…. Little did I know things were only going to get worse! P2: Toughest period yet?

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