Here I Come Merrill! ... At least that's what I thought.

In the middle of October, I attended a national Black MBA conference, and I met many Investment Banks and Investment Management Firms, and I applied to most of them. One of the firms I applied to was Merrill Lynch, the wall street juggernaut that pulled off the largest leveraged buy-out to date acting as an advisor, investor, and high-yield bond underwriter to finance the LBO of HCA, hospital chain operator. In preparing for my consulting interviews, I read the Wall Street Journal always on the look out for the latest turnaround strategies, to aid my consulting case preparation.

I also read about the capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and I felt I could do very well in this field, but I knew I didn't study finance, but at the same time, I easily understood everything about the markets, valuations, and macro economic principles that govern the U.S. economy.

Anyway, I met the recruiter and sold my self like I always do, and he asked me to follow up in two weeks. I followed up and he told me he passed my resume on to the I-Banking folks, and if there was interest, they'd contact me. That was the last I heard from him in late September.

The First Miracle
++++++++++++++

After my string of rejections from Bain, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and others, early Monday morning I received an email inviting me to interview for the "2007 Investment Analyst Program"!

Wow! What a miracle! Although I hadn't yet received an offer from any firm, I knew this was God working behind the scenes. So I set up my flight, got to the Air Port and tried to board my flight.

That evening, there was a hurricane flying through the east coast and all of Laguardia Airport had been shut down. Here I was with a final round interview invitation for 9:00 a.m. the next morning in Manhattan, and I and 1000 other passengers were stranded in Atlanta struggling to fly out; it reminded me of the Titanic when all the passengers were fighting for the limited spots on the boat. I tried to reschedule my flight for the next morning and I couldn't even reach the customer reps, as their lines were busy.

So remembering what I had learned from all my rejections (trusting completely in the Lord as your only option), I said a 3 minute prayer, asked God to find away out of Atlanta, and thanked him for the opportunity to interview at the end of the recruiting season with a top firm that I felt was out of my reach.

It was a stormy day, and all flights to New York had been cancelled. The customer services lines were all jammed, and the queues to get on other flights (which I couldn't afford) were so long. Once I said a quick prayer, I met this guy in a red shirt at Delta Air, and told him about my Merrill Lynch interview opportunity which seemed to be slipping away right before my eyes. It turned out that he was the regional booking manager, and he virtually did the impossible:

He found one vacant seat in the very last TSA approved flight to NY-JFK, and he said "You're so lucky, I found only one seat that someone just cancelled on at the last minute.", and he even waived my fee!

I believe the Lord made him show me exceptional favor by placing me on the last flight out of Atlanta that night to JFK since all of LaGuardia had been shut down due to the Hurricane. I was the only one who made it to NY that evening and I successfully completed the first and second round interviews. I prayed, believed, acted, and my faith became sight. Hallelujah! God is Alive and is truly merciful, He gives us many chances to turn back to him!