Interview Discussion - February 23, 2017

A few weeks ago I attended an on-site interview for a summer internship with a well-known investment management firm. There were four back-to-back interviews. Two went exceptionally well, one was okay, and one was just downright bad (I failed to solve the problem and had to get the interviewer's help). As a result I thought I would get rejected.

Two weeks later, I was offered an internship from the company. The director I spoke to on the phone said they really wanted to bring me on the team. He said I had very high marks from my interviewers. He mentioned those two interviewers who I mentioned in the previous paragraph and how they had a lot of good things to say about me. I'm glad that those two pulled through for me.

Suspicious part #1: The guy emphasized that I would be working as a "consultant". I would be working on the same projects as other interns and it is a full-time, paid internship over the summer. Additionally, I have the choice to work remotely after my internship if I do well.

Suspicious part #2: I never applied to the data engineering team. I originally applied for the software engineering position. Then I was invited to an on-site for "business operations" (which turned out to be very similar to SWE). Now I have an offer for data engineering.

I've never experienced something like this before, so I was wondering what you guys thought about the situation above. So I was specifically looking for your thoughts on these two issues:

Being a "consultant" rather than "Data engineering intern" or "Summer analyst" (Common title they use for summer interns). I have no idea what this means. I assume it means I'm a second-tier hire who they hired out of desperation (no clue if that's true, but that's what it sounds like).

The switching between teams... SWE --> BizOps --> Data engineering. Suspicious but i'm not sure what to make of it.

/r/cscareerquestions Thread