Well there we have it: as many as 2000 of you have submitted your applications to the 2011 Fellowship and are now waiting for some kind of response. As I remember (and my memory should not be trusted), around 100 of those applicants will be invited to a first round interview and then 20 or so of them will eventually be asked back for the final round of interviews.

Nostalgia Trip

In November of 2007, I was staring into the screen of my new third generation iPod Nano (wow, things have changed) as "Conquest" by The White Stripes thundered through my headphones. I clicked "Submit" on my Fellowship application with a bit more vigor than was probably necessary. Instantly the waves of doubt and regret began to wash over me: maybe I should have asked someone else to check for typos?; what if I'd been too casual with my self-description?; how could I justify quoting Chekov when I neither liked or understood his books? I remember thinking that I had no hope against the countless other applicants that knew what they were talking about.

I wanted to offer some advice to this year's applicants on 'how to survive the first round of interviews', but very quickly I realized I had no idea how I had done that myself, nor do I even understand why they liked my application in the first place. Useful I know, but bear with me. 

Fate Luck

I wouldn't be so crass as to suggest that it was 'fate' that got me through to the final round of interviews, but no doubt luck played a part. I was lucky that my application came across as funny and not daft, and lucky that the interviewers didn't mind me asking if they ever felt evil working in marketing, which in hindsight was a bit of a stupid question. [Incidentally, my interviewers did not feel evil, but what the hell would I have done if they had said "yes"?]

Whatever it was that brought me to final round of interviews, the real piece of luck I encountered was to realize before the final round that I had been approaching the application process in completely the wrong way; I shouldn't have been trying to outsmart the hundreds of other applicants going for the Fellowship, I really just needed to stop myself from sounding like an arrogant prat. 

To explain, there's plenty of people who are very good at selling themselves (especially in marketing), and often they use big words or meaningful references to make their opinions sound more relevant or important - whether they know they are right or not. I suspect that generally I do come across as one of these people (sorry) and ninety percent of the time I am not speaking from real experience: I'm only 26 after all. 

Death of a Salesman

In the final round of interviews I was far from being the loudest person in the room, and for once I tried to offer my opinions as ideas rather than definitive facts. I took a few extra seconds to think before opening my mouth and asked a new question for every time I was able to answer somebody else's - in the belief that there is no shame in uncertainty. I think this approach would have served me well during the earlier stages of my Fellowship application, and it's helped a great deal during the Fellowship itself. So that is the once piece of advice I feel is probably worth sharing. 

As a final thought to close this rambling post, I want to say that every now and then I am still surprised by how far an honest question can travel in this industry. For instance, if I was to go back to November 2007, I would probably ask myself "why do I want to be on the Fellowship?", because there is no wrong answer to that, and it is probably the best piece of information that any applicant can be armed with.

Good luck, 

Dan Brenikov

3rd Year Fellow,

Landor, San Francisco