Open your calendar and count: you have roughly 60 days until fall recruitment kicks into high gear in September.

If you do nothing for those 60 days, they become a blank space of waiting. But if you use the first 30 for systematic preparation and the next 30 for real-world practice — when September arrives, the gap between you and the peers who “waited until September to start” won’t be about whether you prepared. It’ll be about the level of preparation.

Emma (a pseudonym) graduated from a top-tier Chinese university with a marketing degree. At the end of May, while her classmates debated whether to start applying now, she made what seemed like the most rational decision: